Such shortcuts could also lead to missing valuable opportunities to gain audience trust. Gonzalo Del Fa, president of multicultural at WPP Media, listed some of the core attributes of a successful trust-building campaign: consistency, reliability, integrity, honesty, empathy, vulnerability, respect, and accountability.
“If we had this in front of us every time that a brand is running a campaign, campaigns would be amazing. I think the challenge is that we forget about these things,” Del Fa shared.
The other common slip-up is not bringing diverse voices to the campaign creation table, said Keena Grigsby, CMO, VP at Samsung Electronics America. “There are all these headlines of brands not doing something well, but if you actually take a step back, there are these small cultural missteps that happen,” she explained.
And, she added, Gen Z is especially adept at recognizing such shortcomings.
“They hold brands more accountable because you have to check yourself at the door. Are we doing this for clicks? For views? Were you actually investing in communities that we’re borrowing equity from?” Grigsby asked.
Griewski agreed, adding, “We have to treat trust and culture with the same rigor that we treat performance.”
Building trust in the age of AI, data, and personalization
Some of the speakers touched on data privacy concerns as being a potential barrier to establishing brand trust.
“Data is a very shiny object, and to be able to show a consumer that we fully understand them has become sort of the holy grail for many marketers,” acknowledged Preeti Nadgar, chief strategy officer at Starcom.
But what’s more important than maximum data collection, she added, is data integrity and letting customers know exactly what their information is being used for.
