Why you need trust to build your fashion brand
In my previous article, I discussed briefly the concept of trust and its importance in building your fashion brand and business. This is a deeper dive into the concept and how you can use it to your advantage to build an amazing fashion brand.
Business success is made possible due to relationships, more than anything else. Relationships between businesses, between employees and bosses, between companies and customers, between suppliers and companies. Relationships happen to be the essence that drives company performance, efficiency, and effectiveness. The essence of relationships is trust.
What is Trust?
It is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as the: firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something. Wikipedia went further to put it into a social context, saying; one party is willing to rely on the actions of another party; the situation is directed to the future.
Truth is, trust is widely misunderstood, as it is defined in so many ways. People say “I trust you”, but what does it mean?
Entrepreneur.com listed the most trusted companies and brands. This means we trust Nike, we trust Coca-cola. How do you know when you buy a Nike sneaker, it won’t lose its midsole, have bad lace or if you buy a Nike shirt, it won’t get torn the moment you wear it? How do you know that when you pick up that can of coke that it's not going to make you sick? How many times do you read the Apple license agreements on their products before you agree? I’m sure you didn’t read all those pages but you agreed to it. You don’t know what you’ve agreed to, but you agree to it. Why? Because we can trust Apple. So what is trust?
Trust is a willingness to be vulnerable. You choose to take the risk to be vulnerable to the other party. Vulnerability and risk push trust.
The Propensity To Trust
A propensity to take on that vulnerability and risk. Everybody is born with a propensity to take a risk, it's driven by geography, it's driven by family, it's driven by upbringing, it’s driven by society. But it's more than propensity. It's more than that innate willingness to trust and take a risk.
The Drivers Of Trust
There are three drivers of trust. It's our perception of that other person or that company that drives these drivers. They are;
Ability: are you able to perform what you say you can perform? Do you have that ability? Ability is situation-specific. Do you look like it you can do it? Do you look like you’ve done it before? The ability is not to be generalized. It's specific to the thing that they’re trusting you to do. You will trust Nike to make your sports shoes but not Couture outfits, the same way you will trust a chef to make an amazing meal for you but not to fix your car.
Benevolence: do you care? Do you care about them? Can they talk to you, can they connect with you, do you care about them or is it driven by your ego and your own gratification? If you really care about them, they’re more apt to trust. People can sense if you care for them. If all you have is the ability, and no benevolence, then you’re an assassin (they have lots of ability and they don’t really care). If people fear you, they wouldn’t trust you either.
Integrity: will you? Integrity is having a set of values that you live by and other people agree with. Those who believe in your values will trust you. I.e if you say you’re going to be there, you’re going to be there. Whatever you say is not driven by ego. Your story is real. What your brand is communicating is real.
How To Use Trust
Brands are like people. They are in the business of trust. Trust is the currency of brands. Branding connects your business to a group of individuals. These are individuals that are connected with your brand and trust you based on that connection.
This trust is developed by putting out a promise; your brand identity, your products, your communication, and your consistency. As humans, we set expectations, and whenever these expectations are met and surpassed, trust is built and retained. Marketing borders on trust, regardless of if they’re prospective customers, current customers, or past customers.
Trust comes from meeting and beating our customers' expectations. It is formed via the combination of “RELIABILITY” and “DELIGHT”.
We trust who we have a connection to - Marty Neumeier
A brand is typically broken into its;
Identity: how it looks
Capability: what problems does the product or service solve?
Communication: how you talk to your customers.
But then, beneath this, there is a love that goes beyond that product. This exists between a brand and a customer because that customer trusts the brand.
Have you ever stopped to ask why?
Why week after week brands like Supreme and Palace Skateboards drop new merchandise weekly and right in front of their store during every drop, there is a long line of customers waiting to buy their products? Among these people are those that do not even have an idea of what the product looks like?
Why people subscribe to Vogue, ID, and GQ magazines to receive a glossy magazine monthly without ever knowing what the magazine actually contains. Maybe they had a look at the cover, a couple of headlines, but not the contents. But they subscribe on a yearly basis. why?
There’s a promise. A promise of consistency. The trust their customers have has gone beyond normal brands, these customers can now be tagged fans. This is why whenever such a brand makes a change, the customers are upset, they feel betrayed because the consistency they were expecting is not there.
Conclusion
Brands are now focused on building emotional relationships with their customers. When this relationship is built, it is proven to build stronger affinity, stronger business, and much stronger growth.
Jim Stengel, branding consultant, and former global marketing officer at Proctor & Gamble said:
"When we look at brands [at P & G] that had very strong emotional benefit vs our competition, our shares were much, much higher, and the margin of growth vs our competition was much higher than those that just had a functional superiority"
Remember, you don’t have control over how people perceive your brand. It is all built across all the experiences they have with your brand (brand touchpoints).
If you want to reduce your friction and improve people’s perception of your trustworthiness, build their perception of your ability, benevolence, and integrity. You will build trust.
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