ISSUE #04

Hey there - welcome if you're new and thanks everyone for reading!

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What does standing out look like when people have a low trust in marketing?

I was at a talk by Terry O’Reilly a number of years ago put on by Ad Club Edmonton. If you're not in Canada, you may not have heard of him, but he's a marketer that has hosted a couple great shows on CBC: first The Age of Persuasion, and now Under the Influence.

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In the talk he outlined a scenario: imagine you’re blindfolded at an airport and you are led from security through the airport to a random gate and finally into a seat on a plane.

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Would you be able to tell what airline you’re on?

The answer is likely not.

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His point (or my takeaway) was that in the modern industrialized, globalized, and consolidated age we live in, the products and services we encounter don't really stand out that much from one another.

This isn’t a new reality. We've been on this trend-line since the end of World War II (or even before?). So, how do we differentiate?

Early on, you could stand out by what you said. In the mad men era of the 50's, 60's, and 70's, good art and copy could sell. David Ogilvy could write you a new Rolls-Royce ad with a clever headline in a print ad, and you'd be different.

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Print still had authority and trust, and people mostly believed what they read and saw in a newspaper or magazine. The ad is catchy and does have panache, but if someone wrote "our car is the best in the world because of our patient attention to detail" now, would you believe it?

As the competition for our attention ramped up, you could stand out by what you showed. In the 80's and 90's you could use photos, graphic design, and and other media to stand out.

Then came the internet, and then social media, and now AI is here. We all know the story. Our ability to produce and publish content is at an all-time high. All through this time, strong branding has been critical to the marketing equation. Standing out and grabbing (or hopefully earning) a consumer’s attention has been job number one.

I think Capital-B Branding is facing a large problem in the coming years though. We're entering the age of peak cynicism.

The trust or authority we've banked on in the past is pretty low. Even with big brands who have have lots of earned authority, people are much less likely to believe what is told to them. Would you say Apple is a company that produces products that helps people Think Different? It's debatable.

My sense is that we’re going to see public trust in messaging erode even further as AI becomes the primary tool that creates more and more of the content that we experience as consumers.

It’s not that the content will be bad. It’s that we won’t trust it.

So what is a brand to do in the age of cynicism?

O'Reilly's idea was that companies need to focus on producing unique and personal experiences. Brands need to make people feel unique and special.

His example, if I recall, was a ski hill that has photographers on the hill taking photos of your family, and at the end of the day you get a really nice set of photos from your day on the hill.

I think that this sort of thing can be a part of the solution. But I also think tasteful and unique experiences are going to be expensive to pull off and quite hard to scale successfully.

Another effort out there now is to just ask people to trust other people.

User reviews and user generated content seemed to be the answer for authentic/realistic communication wth customers.

However "Don't trust our word, read these reviews from people just like you", or "just trust this influencer" can only go so far, especially for high-value or premium products. There's also an erosion of trust here too as more people find out (or even just start to question) that the reviews or recommendations aren't always authentic.

My current working theory is that brands (and I'm talking mostly consumer brands) are going to have to pivot towards offering more personal and direct access.

What do I mean by that? Well I think it starts with making company leaders or owners more available.

More than ever, I think successful branding and marketing comes from building a group or 'tribe' of people that follow, support, and shop with you because they share your values and believe in what you're doing. But a faceless brand can't build a tribe as easily - a tribe needs a real, living/breathing leader. Someone that can step up in reality and concretely show what they value and prove what they believe in.

I'm play guitar, and so I typically am researching pedals and effects from time to time. I really like what Josh Scott is doing with JHS Pedals on YouTube (and Instagram). What started as a simple YouTube channel to showcase and demo pedals JHS was building, over time the channel has turned into a gathering place for guitarists and pedal nerds to show up and talk about gear, tone, and the joy of making music.

As the owner of the company and the host of The JHS Show, Josh Scott demos and showcases products (often other company's pedals get more screen time than his own). He also does an incredible amount of research to talk about the history of different pedals and effects. The types of shows range from product category demos, to live shows with guests, to personal opinion pieces. He cares very much that people understand not only his own products, but that they feel cared for as an audience and as consumers. It's also an amazing opportunity to truly insert character and heart into the brand without it feeling forced our inauthentic.

Here's an article from guitar.com where Josh makes an effort to explain why pedal demos on youtube can be deceiving. The article also gives you a good sense of where he's coming from as a business owner and marketer.

I believe it's this sort of effort - where you go above and beyond to show the reality of your brand and business - is the kind of effort that has the ability to break through the cynicism to truly connect with people.