Posted on : 2023-07-28 03:27:54
Article : Good evening Friday Management TASK 252- Marketers have a responsibility to safeguard brand trust, particularly when an organisation is intent on embracing change.
It is well understood by marketers, and increasingly by senior managers, that brand trust is hard to earn. It arises from an amalgam of defined capability, strong dependability, redress when something goes wrong, humility when everything goes right, the wisdom to stick to ethics even when it costs – and time.
It is less well understood by marketers, and rarely by senior managers, that brand trust cannot be spent. It can be whittled down, where the brand depletes its store of goodwill through incompetence, deceit, profiteering or societal harm. The greater the brand trust to begin with, the longer the consumer forbearance. But there always comes a moment when trust needs urgently to be rebuilt. This is as impossible as it is tempting to isolate a chunk of brand trust and directly invest, leverage or monetise it. The reserves may be high, but the prospects for transference are zero. Trust cannot be thought of as a pile of golden chips that can be portioned off to soften a price hike, sneak in a quality downgrade or underwrite success in an unrelated field. That doesn’t stop the more aggressively ambitious managers from trying. It’s why it is always a warning sign when you hear one declare that “We are one of the most trusted brands out there.” It is the kind of phrase that gets uttered at the confluence of hubris and greed to the extent that you can almost see the dollar signs in the eyes.
One such declaration was made in 2018 by a spokesperson for a brand that was, indeed, one of Britain’s most trusted: “the Post Office”. “We are already one of the UK’s most trusted brands,” it began, “and that’s a great platform as we develop new services like digital identity.” It had been clear long before where the Post Office saw its future: in the sleek, weightless, impersonal digital domain. And, although the competition it would face there would be far tougher than anything encountered throughout its largely monopoly past, it was also clear that it expected its high brand trust to be the bridge to success.
But how was that “The Post Office “brand trust earned in the first place? by decades of competence in unglamorous tasks in the weighted, physical realm. It is earned by centuries of rooted presence in town and city streets and, especially in local-neighbourhood and rural areas, by people; sub-postmasters with names, personalities, smiles and quirks, who were known to their customers and valued by their communities. What we know now, to our incomprehension and dismay, is how the Post Office treated those human vessels of trust. How, over a 15-year period, it prosecuted sub-postmasters at the rate of about one a month for false accounting and theft. How it wrongly attributed to them reported losses that arose from a faulty computer system supplied and maintained by Fujitsu. Over 700 people were prosecuted in all. Some were imprisoned, one of whom was pregnant with her second child. One committed suicide. Three died before their names could be cleared.
At the Court of Appeal hearing, it exonerated the first 39 of the falsely convicted, the counsel for those appealing asked how the Post Office leadership, in face of all the evidence, “was prepared to accept that sub-postmasters with previous good character became criminals overnight”.
In a case that spans so many years, there will be multifactorial answers for that. But it is suggested that a seminal one will be found in the organisation’s ambition for the transference of customer trust earned in the old paradigm over to its tech-based ventures in the new one. If managers are inviting business customers to respect the organisation’s prowess in the digital technology sphere, how does it play when doubts arise over one of its own, internal computer systems?
Post your comments and similar case stories in our comments box or mail us. Our POST OFFICE brand trust solution will be posted on 31st July 2023 on our Good Morning Monday Management Solution for the TASK 252.
Log on to www.wingsofmanagement.com to know more about our “Strategy” Management consultancy’s versatile capabilities, global clients and to read our weekly posts and projects.