trust is king (and queen)
This quote came up in a regular convo over a glass of wine the other day. I was sitting with a friend of mine, great talker and occasional philosopher, and we started chatting about trust.
It happens so recently I have personally questioned my trust in the current system, friends, loyalty, justice, truth.. you name it. The list can go on for ever but this is really not the point of this post. The point is the key word trust. It is one of those concept words which surrounds us everywhere even if we don’t think about it.
Money is trust. It is the trust that when you are handed that one piece of fancy paper (or a sweet number in an electronic bank account) you are getting something in return, which is of the same value. Without the trust there is no money. Money wouldn’t mean anything.
Contracts are a form of trust. It is the two signatures at the end of a larger piece of paper which states a simple cause-effect relationship: if this is, that will happen.
Brands are a form of trust. It is the kind of trust for which you establish a relationship over time. It is won like friendship is won. In the past brands came to exist to prove quality. It was “Patty’s Bakery” for example, just a fictional character here, that meant – you come to our bakery to get quality bread and sweets. If the quality goes down, the brand goes down with it.
Friendships are trust. True friendships that is. You trust a person to have a good time with, take care of you if you need it, help you avert unwelcomed people’s attention; or you trust them that they trust you for the same. Because it goes both ways.
For the most part, trust is a building block of any stable and constructive relationship. You lose the trust, you lose the relationship.
Good post, but I’ll play devils advocate. I don’t think money is trust. Money is just an item that has a pre-agreed upon value typically between 2 parties, for instance.
$1 = 3 Bananas
I agree to give you a $1 and you agree to give me 3 bananas. The trust is only between you and me money and bananas don’t take part in the negotiation, or the outcome. That’s not to say there isn’t some level of confidence that the dollar itself won’t lose it’s value but that’s not trust. Because a dollar doesn’t care what it’s worth to us.
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Contracts you trusting that your lawyer is a good one. It’s the lack of trust that results in a contract being created in the first place. Contracts are an artificial construct specifically designed to remove trust from the equation because neither party really trusts the other.
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Brand trust, I really don’t think there’s much trust between brands and consumers. To me it appears that people anthropomorphise brands, and for lack of a more complicated understanding of the world our brains look at brands as if they were people. This unfortunate assumption results in the consumer’s humanity being taken advantage of.
True, a consumer is probably safe to trust that Coca-Cola will always taste the same. However taste is only one variable in the brand/customer metric. Coca-Cola may always taste the same, but what does replacing sugar for high-fructose corn syrup say about the brand-consumer-trust relationship? How many Coca-Cola drinkers noticed when they replaced 2 liter bottles with 1.5 liter bottles that while in terms of height and width the 1.5 liter bottle look nearly identical to 2.0 liter one but contain 25% less product, and cost more per liter?
The trust between brand and a consumer goes one way and I believe most companies take advantage of this. That’s not trust that’s manipulation of human nature.
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True friendship can not exist without trust because friendship is trust. Each party must poses trust for the other in order for a relationship to evolve into a friendship.
People can be like Brands, friendships can be like contracts, and confidence is frequently mistaken for trust. But trust can only exist when two people both have it for the other.
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Personally… I trust you’re brilliant, and that you’re already crafting a response as equally thought provoking as this post. Till next time I hear from you.
Peace!
-manno