At the start of 2015, Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer revealed that the speed of innovation was greatly out of step with consumers’ ability to process the information. Even more poignant was a self-diagnostic of sorts for marketers in which consumers indicated they believed innovative products were being rushed into market without adequate testing and evaluation when in fact, many brands had met minimum standards required by local laws.
As marketers, we are either failing to match the available evidence with the concerns and needs of consumers, or failing to distill these connections at a pace that makes consumers comfortable and receptive. Fast-forward a few months to the recent Cannes Lions, and Richard Edelman’s talk on The Power of the Earned Brand. These highlights come from the study’s findings. Pay special attention to the descriptions used:
- By a two-to-one margin, people feel that the pace of change is too quick.
- Two out of three consumers believe that the motive for innovation is greed and corporate profit.
- Two of three are nervous about privacy and security.
- Three of five are anxious about the environment and over consumption.
- Half are concerned about having to “be on” all of the time.
Edelman concludes his list by reminding us, “Most worrying, 87 percent of consumers said they will stop buying innovative products and services unless companies address these concerns.” Can content marketing get ahead of this problem? Aren’t brands being transparent in offering access to infographics, data points and available research findings?
The miss is not a lack of information. Most innovative brands have readily available content that maps exactly to the kinds of concerns surfaced by the Edelman study. Dr. Gerard Gibbons talks about the feeling mind and the thinking mind as the elephant and the rider. His point is to show that no matter how much the rider knows or steers (thinking mind), the elephant will end up going wherever it wants (feeling mind). Personal devices have placed an infinite compendium of facts and information in the hands of nearly every consumer and through these portals, consumers can come to “know” many things. It is the responsibility of the brand to disarm the fearful feelings that stand in the way of consumers’ availability. Consider this equation for trustworthiness where credibility + reliability + intimacy is divided by self-interest.
Brands leading the way in innovation have got to set the stage for, as Richard Edelman says, “My experience to become your evidence.” He continues, “Said another way, it is the experience that peers have with an innovative product and their emotional shared reactions that are the necessary evidence for purchase.”
Conscious marketing makes it possible to add a significant and important prologue to the first chapter marketers get to tell at the brand level. In this prologue, the feeling mind is on a foundation of trust where the most credible sources, those who have practical experience with the brand, are encouraged to interact and share how the brand has delivered on the promise of innovation. By encouraging peer-to-peer storytelling, the brand demonstrates that loyalty is their objective in pursuing a relationship, and surrounds the customer with experiences that are relevant to how the customer feels at a point in time.
Innovation, today, is as much about disrupting the status quo within a brand’s industry as it is about adding to the quality of life at the personal, organizational and community levels. It is because of this extra-dimension in what consumers expect when it comes to innovation that marketers must be able to fuse their brand’s mission and purpose with the functional outcome delivered by the innovation.
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