Trust and Reputation
Follow Your heART — 2nd Medium Article; Reputation & Trust, Rachel Botsman, Personal Branding
We are the team Follow Your HeART. A newborn company whose aim is
to provide young, talented, but unknown artists with a safe online space,
in which they will be free to exhibit their work and communicate their
artistic ideas. This startup business, founded by Greek students Theleia
Papantoni and Marialena Stoubou Sideri, is part of a larger project
conducted during our fourth semester and more specifically in the
context of the course Introduction to Advertising and Media Relations.
In the following pages we will shortly present our team’s journey those
past few months, whilst giving some insight into the tasks we have
completed. Our work has been divided in three separated articles. In the second of our articles, we shall analyze the concept of Reputation in relation to Edelman’s Trust Barometer and Botsman’s Trust theories and for the end we have an analysis on the topic of personal branding.
|Reputation
We continued our journey with a research on the term “Reputation”. Reputation is the subjective view of a person or group of people on someone else’s traits and activities. Brand Reputation, which we shall discuss, is “What others believe and say about your company” and by others we mean consumers, potential buyers and employees. We should, also, mention that a good or a bad reputation depends on the experience of clients while consuming the company’s products or making use of its services. A good brand reputation could easily function as an asset for a company since it could result in benefits that summarise in the enhancement of trust, loyalty, visibility and credibility, profit and less risk of damaging the company’s image. We then proceeded with the study of the beneficial changes that online reputation has brought up and the crucial ones, such as the upload of negative comments that could potentially harm or even destroy a brand’s reputation. What we wanted to endorse in our own company’s strategy are trustworthiness, quality of products, safe and friendly environment towards employees, financial reputation, balanced supplier relations and a good crisis management.
|Edelman — Trust Barometer
On the context of trust, a chapter which was highly discussed in this course, we had the opportunity to delve into this subject by studying Edelman’s 2021 Trust Barometer. Being conducted during the year of the pandemic outbreak, Edelman’s global Report examines the changes in levels of trust in different sectors and stresses out the need for businesses to reassess their values and lead their employees out of this period of uncertainty. The survey indicates that there has been a decrease in government trust internationally, whereas mistrust in spokespeople of other institutions continues to increase from 2020 to 2021. More specifically, citizens accuse their leaders of misguidance and deception, whereas 56% of people believe that business leaders are responsible for the tragic turn of events as well. Another critical issue that the article points out, is the strong influence of misinformation upon the matter of trust and mistrust. Despite the fact that all information sources (traditional media, search engines, social media) hit rock bottom, a large amount
of people still continued to not check the quality of information they received, which resulted in only 1 out of 4 people having good information hygiene. This raging infodemic is playing a major role in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic, as people with poor information hygiene will in all probability refuse to be vaccinated. As the most reliable source of information, CEOs are expected to shoulder the burden and do what the governments have failed to do. Apart from being guardians of non-biased, fact-based information, they must create healthy and credible working environments and always respond to their employees’ requirements and true needs. Also, they have to keep their employees updated on current affairs, by attending to matters like discrimination, inequity, racism or even the climate change. These
conclusions have been proved more than necessary. They helped us understand the meaning of trust, while also contributing to the building of our startup. Despite the lack of basic knowledge, we managed to upgrade our company by setting our priorities, congruent with what we have previously read on Edelman’s Report. We figured out that in order to be the best in what we do, we should always keep our focus on our employees’ well-being and on our clients’ satisfaction, while being transparent, honest and authentic.
|Rachel Botsman on Trust
We started off with the study of Rachel Botsman’s theory around the issue of trust by examining all her work through her website, social media accounts, Podcasts and her TedTalks. As mentioned by Botsman, “Trust shapes our life. It is a remarkable force that enables us deal with risks and take leaps in the unknown.” Rachel Botsman, or as many call her Trust Expert, has taught us the importance of both trust leap, which occurs when we take the risk to do something new or different to the way that we’ve always done it and the so called “Trust Stack”. Trust Stack includes 3 steps; 1. Trust the Idea, 2. Trust the Platform and 3. Trust the Other User. Trust Stack is a 3-step process that begins with trusting the idea, believing in the potential of it and trying to imagine how it would work best for you. Secondly, putting trust into the platform which means having confidence in the people behind the platform that if something goes wrong, they will help you overcome the problem. Lastly, learning to trust the other user, evaluate and decide, based on the information that you have, if the other person is trustworthy, take a leap in the unknown and connect with strangers. Something that was quite interesting was her theory about the economy of trust, in which we did a thorough research and analysed its components, which are rethinking value, leap of trust and evolution of trust through the years from local to institutional and then distributed.
Through our research on trust we learned how significantly important is the development of trust within not only an organization or a company but people and their everyday interactions. Trust consists of an extremely important foundation for every company worldwide which contributes in its welfare and growth. In terms of our company, we tried to enhance our trust related policies such as caring about our employees by committing to universal human rights, equal paying and supplier diversity, our customers by fulfilling their needs and serving them authentic and quality products and, lastly, the environment by operating our facilities so that they conform to applicable environmental regulations and following eco-friendly materials. Last but not least, as far as the Trust Stack of our company is concerned, we truly want our customers to TRUST OUR IDEA: We want to provide as many artists as possible with a fair chance of their work being known to the public, TRUST OUR PLATFORM: online customer service 24/7, confidentiality, authenticity, integrity and TRUST THE OTHER USERS: Trust our artists and the other users’ reviews and create meaningful relationships based on effective communication and respect for different points of view.
|GenZ’s Most Trusted Brands
Most Trusted Brands — Morning Consult
After doing some research on GenZ’s 25 Most Trusted Brands in America, the company that drew our attention was Colgate. Colgate is a company that cares about its people, its products and the environment. The company’s values summarise in caring, global teamwork and continuous improvement while trying to create a learning mindset, build a coaching culture and create a fair and equal working environment. What has kept them successful all these years is a combination of many things. Quality in their products, innovative marketing strategies while listening and adapting to their customers’ needs, is, as it seems, a method that has helped them establish a strong brand in the hearts of the American people. As we can understand, Colgate is company that puts a lot of effort in the creation of a bond of trust with their customers, their employees and the people that work with them. Their technological methods and procedures show us that they respect their environment and are extremely careful with the environmental regulations.
Through their very successful advertisings, community programs, charities and donations, their values and policies, the company has managed to earn the trust of millions of people from all around the world and has found its way into people’s hearts and minds. Through the years, they have earned numerous awards for their leadership and marketing strategies, their trust, their ethics, their corporate responsibility, their management and many more.
After doing our research on Colgate, we realised that it consists of a well-established company that has a clear vision of its goals and knows how to stand out from the rest of the competitors and be the best at what they do. Following their example, we established a policy about our values and the principles that our company abides by while also enhancing our social media image.
|Personal Branding; TEDTalks
As a next step, we focused on personal branding and more specifically on the study and analysis of 5 different Ted Talks concerning this topic. We started off by explaining the definition of personal branding and then moved on highlighting some key elements of the concept. The research we conducted helped us acknowledge the role that personal branding plays both in our everyday life but also in business, since it is so powerful that it could be described as the future of businesses, as technology evolves with rapid speed and social media already have massively expanded their use. As far as our company is concerned, we tried to embrace change and enhance our social media interaction while also embracing our identity as a company, creating value for our customers and, finally, building our network with parallel creation of good quality content on our social media profiles and website.
Where to find us!
https://www.instagram.com/followyourhe__art/
Our email: followyourheart221@gmail.com
