Why is Trust important?
“Trust is like the air we breathe — when it’s present, nobody really notices. When it’s absent, everyone notices.” — Warren Buffett
Every brand has a core promise. When they keep that promise, they gain trust. Companies build trust on a daily basis in each interaction with customers, consistently delivering on their promises or going to great lengths to make sure the customers can receive the promised service or product.
Trust is therefore at the core of every business.
But establishing a trusted brand begins with how you communicate with your customers. If you send a wrong message or miss the mark, it can be extremely difficult to get back in their good graces.
But establishing a trusted brand begins with how you communicate with your customers. If you send one wrong message or miss the mark, it can be extremely difficult to get back in their good graces.
Take these two examples of companies that failed, owing to lack of trust.
Ratners. The cut-price English jewellery famously shot itself in the foot. On the night of April 23rd, 1991, their CEO, Ratner, began his speech innocently enough, harping on the values of quality, choice, and prosperity. Then, about 3 minutes in, he dropped several brutally honest jokes, describing his company’s products as “total crap.”
DSB Bank. The Dutch bank, with about 1.3 million clients and 1800 employees, got into serious trouble in 2009, when they lost the trust of their customers. After a bad publicity stunt, and the warning of some financial experts about the risks the bank was taking with money, people started to withdraw cash. This finally led to bankruptcy.
Today, trying to differentiate from competitors is very demanding, since the market is becoming more and more crowded and many companies — especially in the tech industry — tend to communicate in an increasingly similar way (tone of voice, colors, typography, …)
That’s where design comes into play, influencing all the aspects of a brand’s presence: from social media to press releases, from CRM to User Generated Content.
The objective of a good design system should be not only to put the customers at the center, but also to create a relationship with them.
We discussed the topics with Giuseppe Montella, Head of Design at illimity, during a talk from our Digital Heroes series. illimity is a new-generation bank that relies on high-quality Information Technology without ever losing the touch of human connection. According to him, every design should help to run a business based on three pillars: clarity, transparency, and content.
“The most successful brands are those that have recognizable content, and convey it transparently by identifying with customers”, says Montella.
Think globally, act locally
Also in this field, such as in many others of the business world, it’s important to be focused on the audience you are speaking to. Also, companies that are winning on a global scale, tailor their products and services to the features and requirements of individual territories or countries. Think about McDonald’s, for instance.
Generalization is never a good thing, because it tends to flatten diversity by not taking into account differences between cultures, groups and people. Instead, the way to build trust among the stakeholders is strongly related to local habits and customs.
Take, for example, the branding campaign Imille realized for ITAS Mutua, the oldest Italian mutual insurance company, localized for the bilingual area of Trentino Alto Adige. We had to communicate a pension program dedicated to insured members of the company, and we did it by making them the protagonists of the campaign. We called the program Mia (My in Italian) precisely because it puts the needs of the individual in dialogue with the values of an entire community. Thus, transmitting the sense of a mutual and the values of the entire Group: mutuality, solidity, community, proximity, quality and sustainability.
As a consequence, on one hand it’s crucial to have a consistent identity through all the platforms, both online and offline, where the company is present; but on the other, to adapt the main elements of the design system to the territory or the country where to work — and where to make business — is crucial too.
“At illimity, before making the project public, a community of 40,000 users has been created, whose needs have been analyzed with the utmost transparency. We started with Italian users but looking mainly at the Anglo-Saxon market, which is much more advanced” — says Montella. “National requirements have been therefore reconciled with excellence from other countries. A User Experience like that of Netflix, for example, with its simplicity, pushes the national language into the background, allowing us to immediately build a relationship of trust with customers.”
Designers as the new leaders
Once upon a time, designers were just designers, accustomed to starting with the specs. Today, especially if they want to be leaders, they should also be something else. They can lead towards a new way of conceiving products and services and, consequently, brands. They have to step outside their comfort zone and convene cross-functional teams made by smart veterans and young talent.
They have to know about budget, about marketing, about research, about IT, so as to help all the functions they interact with to always keep the User Experience at the core of the business.
After all, in today’s intensely competitive and continually evolving marketplace, CEOs and C-suite individuals, besides having management skills, need to be experts in design thinking and innovation. Two sets of knowledge that are in most cases heritage of the design departments.
Design’s impact on business can no longer be questioned. Companies that excel at design grow revenues and shareholder returns at nearly twice the rate of their industry peers. This suggests that good design always matters, whether your company focuses on physical goods, digital products, services, or some combination of these. — McKinsey & Company
For Google, Imille worked on a project to strengthen their brand reputation in Italy. A country rich in excellence, but with so much potential yet to be explored, especially in the digital field. Products, tools and technologies provided by Google ensure that this potential is expressed in all its strength and value. After having mapped all the best practices in UX research, Visual and Corporate Communication, we co-created the story with designers, copywriters and marketing managers. Design, in its purest essence, is a team work, where Imille and Google go at the same pace.
If you want to build trust, ultimately, let the designers sit down at the negotiating table and establish customers’ supremacy.
Enjoy the interview below with Giuseppe Montella, recorded during our Digital Heroes Talk (original audio in Italian, subtitles in English).
PS: A special thanks to Spaces Milan Isola for their gracious hospitality. And also thanks to Carlsberg for the beers.
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