Curations & Musings Towards Building Influential Brands To Influence The World.
As a convenient reference point, here are all the posts on the the recently released Edelman Trust Barometer 2016.
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One of the more surprising findings from the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer was the swing in trust towards business.
Despite the general population’s skepticism of business, findings indicated that the sector had the best opportunity to bridge the trust gap:
Perhaps unsurprising to many, business is also significantly more trusted than government in 21 of 28 countries, with large gaps in countries such as South Africa (44 points), Mexico (44 points) and the U.S. (12 points).
This new found position of strength for the business sector has also recharged credibility of the CEO as a spokesperson:
Yet, typically most CEOs believe that their duty is to focus on the operational and financial aspects of the company when communicating. This year’s Barometer indicates that the focus of CEOs is misaligned with what the general population believes to be most important. For instance, most say that CEOs focus too much on short-term financial results (67 percent) and lobbying (57 percent). Equally important, 49 percent say that they do not focus enough on job creation and 57 percent say they don’t focus enough on positive long-term impact.
So, CEOs cannot just focus on operational and financial narratives – alone, they are insufficient for fostering connection and building trust.
In a world where influence has moved to the mass, making the human connection through the story of personal experience and shared struggle is more important than ever. Almost eight in 10 say that hearing information about personal values is important to building trust in a leader. Just as important is hearing about the obstacles a CEO has overcome, their personal success story, and how their education has shaped them.
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The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that respondents are increasingly reliant on a “person like yourself”, who, along with a regular employee, are significantly more trusted than a CEO or government official. On social networking and content-sharing sites, respondents are far more trusting of family and friends (78 percent) than a CEO (49 percent).
“This year’s data reinforces the trusted role that search and social technology platforms play in taking a fragmented landscape of published content and re-aggregating it in a fashion that often directly reflects an individual’s worldview. The data reinforces the need to build integrated communications programs that map the total journey stakeholders take to consume information,” opines Steve Rubel, Chief Content Strategist.
In sync with the emergence of a widening trust gap, influence today decidedly rests in the hands of the mass population. The net result is a new phenomenon where the most influential segment of the population (or 85 percent of the population) is at the same time the least trusting. This reality stems from the fact that “a person like yourself,” or an average employee, is far more trusted than a CEO or government official. In fact, a person like yourself is almost twice as trusted as a government official.
Peer-influenced media—including search and social—now represents two of the top three most-used sources of news and information. Both search and social outrank every traditional source of information, with the exception of television, in terms of frequency of use. And increasingly, peers influence purchasing decisions, with 59 percent saying they’ve recommended a company to a friend or colleague in the last year, and according to the 2015 EARNED BRAND study, 75 percent saying that they made a decision about a brand based on a conversation with a peer.
The Barometer shows that trust in employees as credible spokespeople for companies is on the rise: in 2016, 52 percent agree that employees are a credible source of information—four points greater than a year ago.
In several areas, employees are viewed as the most trusted sources of information, particularly when it comes to communicating on financial earnings and operational performance, a business’ practices or handling of a crisis, and how it treats employees and customers. In each of these areas, they outrank a company CEO, senior executive, activist consumer, academic, and media spokesperson as far as trust and credibility.
“Virtually no spokesperson is more trusted than a company’s own employees. And yet, one out of every three employees doesn’t trust his or her own company. For nearly every company, deeper engagement with employees is a low hanging fruit—and a direct avenue to growing trust in business, at the organizational level, and at the institutional level,” said Michael Stewart President & CEO, Europe & CIS for Edelman.
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A couple of days ago, I mentioned on Twitter that I had been called out by a tech journalist, friend and quintessential Twitter troll, Andrew Yew, to do the ALS #IceBucketChallenge, along with another tech journalist, Vernon Chan.
(Photo credit: Vernon Chan)
For the uninitiated, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge basically involves dumping a bucket of ice water on someone’s head to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encourage donations to research. (Now, as with all things there will be those who have a different opinion, which I fully respect. In our case, we felt that this message from a family coping with ALS helped us decide to move forward in our support for this initiative)
The three of us decided to take up the challenge – but, inspired by the genius that is Charlie Sheen, we added a twist. We asked for donation pledges a minimum of RM100 per bucket, hoping to raise at least RM1,000 for ALSA.
(No) Thanks to some very generous friends from my end (who clearly felt that it was money well spent to see me suffer) as well as my neurotic overachieving personality, I (unfortunately) managed to raise RM800 – which meant I had to douse myself with eight buckets of ice water.
I hate you generous idiots. #ALS #icebucketchallenge pic.twitter.com/XWq1J4pcXR
— Leigh Wong (@giokleigh) August 23, 2014
Altogether, it was all in good fun. Along with our personal contributions, we successfully completed the challenge raised a combined total up to RM1,800, surpassing our intended goal!
So, for your viewing pleasure, here’s my #IceBucketChallenge video:
Now, being the marketing geek that I am, here are several reasons why I think the ALS Ice Bucket Challenged worked the way it did – so much that it even crossed over to having Asian celebrities, politicians, and industry captains participating.
1) It was fun
Whether you were watching the video or participating in the challenge, it was a pretty fun experience (unless you have to pour eight buckets!). Never underestimate the value of simple fun to get that buy in – whether it’s to share a video, participate in the activity or to even be challenged to donate to a good cause. And, by the way, it needs to be genuinely “fun” for the participants – and just for the brand/organization.
2) It was easy
The idea was very simple: Dump a bucket of ice water over your head or donate to Alsa.org, then nominate three others to do the same, all via video. Easy to do, easy to communicate, easy to pass on the challenge. Too much “viral” campaigns have complicated T&Cs (the infamous “terms and conditions apply”) that more time is spent trying to explain the activity and its expected outcome, than actually participating in the initiative itself. Don’t let legalese and marketing-speak crowd out beautiful simplicity.
3) It was involving
The Ice Bucket Challenge worked because it involved people nominating people – which is essentially your good ol’ “Word Of Mouth” marketing at work. The transmission by participation meant that the people involved would be responsible for getting others involved – basically serving as “sneezers” spreading an ideavirus” (to borrow Seth Godin’s parlance). Another thing to note: while the attention to the campaign was greatly accelerated globally when big names got involved, what truly got people participating was the direct challenge from someone they knew. While it mattered that the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were lending their names to this great initiative, it was the “people nominating people” bit that helped the movement gain traction and become that elusive “viral campaign” that many aspire towards.
In the end, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is clearly going to be this year’s marketing, digital and social media case study. Plenty of people are already starting to analyze the campaign and attempt to reverse engineer it.
In fact, Samsung even attempted to capitalize on it…
… and, in board rooms across the world, marketing teams are hoping to dream up the next “Ice Bucket Challenge” for their brands and organizations:
Still, say what you will, though, the campaign worked. The latest update from Alsa.org (as of this writing) shows that the campaign has raised a staggering US$70.2 million.
I recently posted about 5 Story Archetypes To Become More Powerful. Well, here’s another 9 by Lois Kelly, the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing.
More often then not, you’re probably telling one of these “stories” already in your marketing… if you’re not, that might be why it’s not working.