All individuals, relationships, teams, families, organizations, nations, economies, and civilizations around the world have one thing in common - one thing that, if taken away, would destroy the strongest governments, the most successful companies, the most prosperous economies, the most influential leadership, the best friendship, the strongest character, and the deepest love. That thing is trust. Trust is the belief in someone's good faith and honesty. A statement by Martin Luther King illustrates trust in a beautiful metaphorical way: "If you have trust, you don't have to see the whole staircase to take the first step." This statement essentially conveys what trust is: assuming that someone has good intentions towards you.
What is trust?
In psychology, trust is defined as "believing that the person one trusts will do what one expects of him." Trust can also be seen as a state of uncertainty. Someone who knows all the facts can make a rational decision and does not need trust. Trust is something that is needed when a person has limited information about a particular situation. This person then has no choice but to weigh the options with the information available and trust in the best possible outcome.
In a telecom market with dozens of providers and hundreds of subscriptions, it is impossible to make a purely rational decision. Trusting in the best possible outcome with the information you have is therefore the only option. You can already see that trust is about a "perceived quality," an evaluation or assessment. David Maister, former professor at Harvard Business School, shows in his Trust Equation how we humans make a trust assessment.
TRUST = (CREDEBILITY x RELIABILITY X INTIMACY) / SELF-CENTEREDNESS
As this formula shows, trust is built from different elements that are closely related.
Let's fill in the Trust Equation for brands and advertising, not scientifically, but purely based on gut feeling. If promises of brands (words) are poorly kept (actions), credibility and reliability are under pressure. If brands find it difficult to be vulnerable, for example, to keep their mistakes, there is a lack of intimacy. And if brands only talk about themselves, always telling how fantastic they are, self-absorption increases. If the formula is filled in this way, the trust in advertising and brands is not good.
It is interesting to measure the banking sector with this gauge. Banks naturally have a mega problem when it comes to trust. They have allowed the factor of self-centeredness to get out of hand in recent decades. It was not about the customer, no, it was about the profit. Poor and incomprehensible products were sold to customers. Everything for the stock price and the bonus. It is logical that we have a trust problem with our banks.