When I was growing up life sure seemed a lot easier. I could watch three main channels, newspapers were the main source of news, we wrote letters or made telephone calls from our homes/business lines, and we could spend vacations undisturbed. We gathered our information about companies and anything else through the tried and true providers of information like television, newspaper, radio, magazines, etc. It was truly a broadcast and print world where companies published, reporters reported, and we trusted.
Oh, how things have changed today, it seems the trust factor has really taken a hit. Companies still publish, reporters still report, but we no longer trust. At least, that's the conclusion of a study conducted by Edelman Public Relations and their research firm StrategyOne, titled "The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer."
According to their study, there has been a major fall from grace for business. And to make matters worse, the CEO as a reliable purveyor of information has hit an all time low. It's a double whammy. We don't trust companies to do what is right and we don't believe CEO's are reliable communicators. You can read the full study here.
As a business person my first thought is, "what can business do to regain trust?" As I read through the study one piece of information stood out to me, which was the listing of credibility, in other words, who can you trust to put out truthful information. The top three answers are industry reports, business articles and a network of friends and peers. To my surprise in this age of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others I was expecting the personal/social networks to get the top spot.
The study suggested that people today need multiple methods/sources of information. And the more sources, the more credible. The statistics cited claim we need to hear information about a company three to five times before we believe it to be credible. The take-away is that a company needs to utilize multiple channels and spokespersons to improve its chances for believability and acceptance.
In the end the conclusion of the study made a broad-based statement that the essence of rebuilding trust was for companies to "say--and do as they say." Now that's an interesting idea and it I think I've heard this before ... let me see ... oh, right ... "but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation." Now this study was written in the first century (several hundred years ago) and I guess it still holds true, truth is the best possible source of credibility. Well, the more things change, the more things stay the same. That's my thought, what's yours.
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