Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Check out the
Speaker 1: definition of trust. You'll find firm belief in the reliability,
Speaker 1: truth ability, or strength of someone or something. And when
Speaker 1: it comes to consumers, trust has become key when it
Speaker 1: comes to how they look at brands. Let's get into this.
Speaker 1: Someone who keeps an eye on trust for the company's
Speaker 1: Trust Barometer is the founder and CE of the Global
Speaker 1: Communications from Edelman, Richard Edelman. He's back with us once
Speaker 1: again on the phone in New York City. How are you, Carol,
Speaker 1: happy summer? It feels good right, but hey, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little human that's for sure. Um. Talk to us
Speaker 1: about your latest findings about brand trust and the importance
Speaker 1: of being able to trust a brand versus just being
Speaker 1: in love with a brand. So, I think that the
Speaker 1: impact of the pandemic over the last year has been
Speaker 1: long lasting, and the people's values have change from about
Speaker 1: being about me to being more about we and things like,
Speaker 1: you know, meeting societal needs as opposed to just representing
Speaker 1: my lifestyle. And people are now doing what I call
Speaker 1: belief driven buying or they're exercising brand democracy in a
Speaker 1: certain way. That's the relationship that you can best control. Uh,
Speaker 1: immediately you go to the store, you know, order what
Speaker 1: you want and Carol. The most incredible thing is that
Speaker 1: it's always been that brands can change culture. You know,
Speaker 1: you and I grew up in a time of you know,
Speaker 1: me and Joe Green and Coca Cola and all that
Speaker 1: that was changing culture. But people actually now believe that
Speaker 1: they can change brands. That in fact, two thirds of
Speaker 1: people say they can force a brand to change them
Speaker 1: with anything about itself. That's stunning, but they can, right,
Speaker 1: especially if they're if they're voting with their dollars in
Speaker 1: terms of where they choose to spend money. I think
Speaker 1: that's right, that that that people have intuited that in
Speaker 1: this moment um, the brands they are going to buy
Speaker 1: or the brands are going to stand up and speak
Speaker 1: up for the better, and that they're going to speak up.
Speaker 1: Six percent of people told us one way or another,
Speaker 1: I want my brands to speak up about societal issues.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge change. So, you know, if you
Speaker 1: think about Dove and campaign for Real Beauty that started
Speaker 1: more than ten years ago, and you know, they were
Speaker 1: talking about how women should be comfortable with their body
Speaker 1: shapes and all this other. But but now Dove has
Speaker 1: morphed itself into talking about, you know, the necessity of
Speaker 1: looking at African men differently African American men is that
Speaker 1: that that they are um every bit, not just athletes,
Speaker 1: but also artists and politicians and all the rest of this.
Speaker 1: And they did that for Father's Day. And that's the
Speaker 1: kind of difference in brand marketing. You know. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I recently did a panel for the Milk and Health
Speaker 1: UH program, talking with the CEO of Kellogg, the president
Speaker 1: of Chobani, the CEO of Albertson's UH, and also a
Speaker 1: president of Union Lever, one of their global UH divisions,
Speaker 1: And it's interesting. We talked about really the evolving food system.
Speaker 1: But one of the things is how consumers are driving
Speaker 1: change within the food system and how they are increasingly
Speaker 1: they want local, they want transparency, and that is forcing
Speaker 1: a lot of companies within the food space to produce
Speaker 1: either locally and make sure that they are being you know,
Speaker 1: true about what's in their product or where it's made,
Speaker 1: where it's produced, because consumers they want to know, and
Speaker 1: that's how they're buying it just in what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Brand and cover reputation have completely merged, and things that
Speaker 1: were in the remit of the corporation like supply chain sustainability,
Speaker 1: diversity and inclusion, systemic racism were now being seen as
Speaker 1: within the power of the brand to change. And you
Speaker 1: have the people in our study said, look at the
Speaker 1: corporation is evil. I'm not going to buy the brand. Um.
Speaker 1: But by the same token, um, you have to have
Speaker 1: brands leading on sustainable packaging or on changing their sourcing
Speaker 1: such that the workers make a decent wage. Here this
Speaker 1: is amazing. The most important thing for brand to earn
Speaker 1: trust is paying a worker a fair wage and giving
Speaker 1: that person good working conditions. And I know you had
Speaker 1: begmanquins on last week for Manpower, and we were talking
Speaker 1: last week at lunch a about you, but also about
Speaker 1: the reality that it's not enough just to pay people.
Speaker 1: They want to have flexibility, They want to know that
Speaker 1: the company they work for is a decent company. So again,
Speaker 1: all of this is really coming together because business is
Speaker 1: now the most trust and institution, and brand is sort
Speaker 1: of the tip of the sphere, the thing that people
Speaker 1: can control. These a THESA corporations. What's interesting that you
Speaker 1: bring it up, and Becky and I talked about this
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk at another Bloomberg um event tomorrow. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, we're trying to get our hands around what
Speaker 1: does that mean? You talk about workers being paid, but
Speaker 1: workers want flexibility. You know, we're still trying to grasp
Speaker 1: what coming back to work is like after the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Secrety Financial they've got three different scenarios. You can work
Speaker 1: at home permanently. You can kind of um say you're
Speaker 1: gonna come in and I need a seat, you know
Speaker 1: for a little bit. I think hotelling is what they
Speaker 1: call it. Or you can decide that you're going to
Speaker 1: have a hybrid approach and so you'll have a permanent
Speaker 1: seat at works so that you have flexibility. But but
Speaker 1: we're hearing a lot of different scenarios. What are you
Speaker 1: hearing about that? Well, I think the financial services industry
Speaker 1: has taken the hardest line saying comes to the office
Speaker 1: period um our agency last week announcement, we're you know,
Speaker 1: three days in and two days out of office. And
Speaker 1: the hybrid is the invest approach UM and we're encouraging
Speaker 1: people to have vaccines, but those who don't, they're going
Speaker 1: to have to wear a mask. And you know that's
Speaker 1: a real kind of issue because it's you know, is
Speaker 1: that a scarlet letter? And you know, do I want
Speaker 1: to be in the elevator with the math person and
Speaker 1: you know, I do think the big point is employees
Speaker 1: are now activists and that they think that they can
Speaker 1: change company policy just the same way that consumers do. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's it's a you know, if you think about
Speaker 1: the power elite that's sitting at the top saying we
Speaker 1: have the decision making authority, not really, because you know,
Speaker 1: the people at the bottom are are now talking on
Speaker 1: social media and they're also acting and pushing corporations and brands. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Social media is given every individual consumer a soapbox and
Speaker 1: one that can be heard pretty loudly. But even if
Speaker 1: you have a celebrity, right Christiano Ronaldo pushing you know,
Speaker 1: the soda ware last week, want water? Yeah? Right, And
Speaker 1: that just says so much. Um, we ran out of time.
Speaker 1: I know we'll talk with you again soon because you
Speaker 1: always bring us some really smart inside about what's going on,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to consumers. Richard, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Richard Edelman, CEO AT Edelman, joining us on the phone
Speaker 1: in New York,