Whom do we increasingly trust less? Us

The forthcoming April 2010 issue of The Information Advisor examines the issue of trust, word of mouth, and social networks, and as part of this, we were fortunate enough to have a chance to conduct an email interview with  Matthew Harrington, President & CEO, Edelman U.S. to ask some clarifying questions on the survey.

Below is a lightly edited and summary of our email based discussion:

Q.  Despite the reported drop, is trust in friends still the most trusted of all traditionally measured sources (eg broadcast news, newspapers, etc.)

A. Actually it is industry analyst or stock reports and articles in business magazines that held strong as the most trusted sources of information about a company.

When considering how credible each of the following is as a source of information about a company, the 20-country global total results for ages 25-64 are as follows:

• Stock or industry analyst reports is #1 with 49%
• Articles in business magazines is #2 with 44%
• Conversations with company employees is #3 with 41%
• News coverage on the radio is #4 with 38%
• Conversations with your friends and peers is #5 with 37%

The U.S. results for ages 25-64 are as follows:

• Articles in business magazines is #1 with 49%
• Stock or industry analyst reports is #2 with 48%
• Conversations with company employees is #3 with 38%
• Articles in newspapers is #4 with 32%
• News coverage on the radio is #5 with 31%
• Conversations with your friends and peers is #6 with 27% (tied with “Online search engines e.g. Google news, YouTube” and “Corporate communications such as press releases, reports and emails”)

Q.  Do you feel that this drop is an anomaly, or represents a significant shift? If the latter, what are the key reasons you think the drop may be occurring?

A. The events of the last 18 months have been traumatic for many people.  It’s possibly just a sign of the times, with consumers likely just rebelling against the noise and reflecting the effects of uncertain times.  In a year characterized by economic confusion and uncertainty, trust in expert/credentialed/experienced information sources has prevailed.  Also, as social media has grown, there’s been an explosion of “friend”/social networks  as well as marketing efforts centered around them (which may make these networks seem less organic – making it harder for people to know whom to trust and thus more skeptical of “peer” recommendations). In a volatile year, people have also valued guidance from credentialed experts over a “person like me,” which lost ground as a credible voice of information for a company (from 47% in 2009 to 44% in 2010 for the 20-country global results among ages 25-64; and from 62% in 2008 to 40% in 2010 for the U.S. among ages 25-64).

Q.  This poll specifically seemed to focus on how much trust one puts in friends regarding their “trust in companies“.  Do you feel this also carries over to trust in products, services, features etc?

A. The Edelman Trust Barometer measures trust in business, government, media and NGOs.  We can only point to data that the findings indicate.  Re: services/products being attributes that influence reputation, globally (22-country total of ages 25-64), “offers high quality products or services” was #1 with 68%, followed by “has transparent and honest business practices”  with 67%, and “is a company I can trust” with 66%.

For the U.S. (ages 25-64), “has transparent and honest business practices” is #1 with 82%, followed by “is a company I can trust” with 80%,  and “offers high quality products or services” with 79%.

Q.  Do you feel that the respondents of this poll are broadly representative of all consumers, or a specified slice or demographic?

A.   The 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer survey sampled 4,875 informed publics in two age groups (25-34 and 35-64) in 22 countries. As “ informed publics” they meet specific  criteria that differentiates them from broad-based consumes. The specific  criteria encompasses college-educated; household income in the top quartile for their age in their country; read or watch business/news media at least several times a week; AND follow public policy issues in the news at least several times a week

Q.  If in fact, people are trusting their friends’ recommendations less, what might be some of the practical implications for marketers and market researchers?

A. People have to see and hear a message in different places and from different people (in fact, in 3-5 different places, per the 2009 Trust Barometer) before they believe it.  This simply points to the skeptical nature of the time.  So if companies are looking at peer-to-peer and “friend” marketing as part of a larger whole (including experts, company employees, etc), that’s good.  But it’s not a magic bullet or single-source solution and points to the importance of a multi-channel/multi-spokesperson approach.  In short, companies and marketers must build a mosaic of trust by cultivating a wide circle of expert spokespeople, communicating through a variety of channels (inclusive of, but not exclusive to, friends/peers), and partnering with organizations (such as NGOs) to advance the common good.

Q. Given the change in what a “friend” means in the last few days, do you think that perhaps the word “friend” is no longer as clear as it once was, and that future studies should be more specific, and break down the elements in that word, something along the lines of, say: social contacts you know/don’t know offline; colleagues at work, etc.?

A. There are consumers who still only trust the people they see every day as their “friends” or only a core group of friends on Facebook/another social network.  There are also those who trust all of their “social networked”/casual acquaintance “friends.”  With the growth/extension of casual circles and acquaintances via peer networks, it can indeed be harder for some to know whom to trust – thus diluting trust levels in “friends.” But with both groups, there are opportunities for brands. There is still a core group of influencers that can change how people trust and influence the actions of others; and consumers, whether they are close to them or not, will follow their lead. If marketers can find consumers that we refer to as “action consumers,” they can build campaigns that work through and within their parameters and still produce very good results.

]]> http://www.ia-blog.com/2010/03/17/trusting-our-friends-less-edelman-ceo-answers-questions/feed/ 0 http://www.ia-blog.com/2010/02/16/on-the-matter-of-google-and-search-neutrality/ http://www.ia-blog.com/2010/02/16/on-the-matter-of-google-and-search-neutrality/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:52:20 +0000 Robert Berkman http://www.ia-blog.com/?p=172 This posting was also published as an editorial in the February issue of The Information Advisor. Please let me know your reaction and thoughts:

In an Op-ed piece published in December 28th 2009 issue of the New York Times, (www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28raff.html) Adam Raff argues that Google’s results are  biased towards promoting its own information services, and that concern, along with the search engine’s ability to “penalize” a firm’s  ranking in its search results, should make us all think about expanding the concept of  Internet access neutrality to “search neutrality” as well.  

While we are not convinced about the specific Google  bias argument, (in fact some of our tests seem to have disproven Raff’s allegations)  the author  does make an important larger point . That is, how do we all ensure that any private entity,  whether it’s today’ Google, a future Google with different ownership and priorities, or any other firm that captures the vast majority of the search market, does not limit or unfairly skew  our ability to fairly access information?

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame tried creating an “open source” search engine, called Wikia Search that relied to a large degree on user contributions. We reviewed Wikia Search in The Information Advisor in 2008 and found that it did not work very well at all, and in fact the experiment was ended in Spring 2009.

What led Wales to try this though was worth considering. He believed that this “future of Internet search”, as it sees it, needs to be guided by are four organizing principles:

Transparency – Openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, both in the form of open source licenses, and in open content and APIs

Community – The ability of everyone to contribute in some way (as individuals or entire organizations), along with a strong social and community focus

Quality – An effort to significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience

Privacy – The need to protect privacy and the commitment to not store or transmit any identifying data

Here’s another idea: what about the concept of some research towards the creation of a publicly funded search engine? An “NPR for search” could at least be one place we could all turn to and know that the organization’s primary goal is not to earn a profit

The answer to these questions about our reliance on privately owned search engines is not obvious, but recognition of the potential problem and a public discussion is the vital first step.

What do you think?

You can link and download the copy free here

Enjoy!

http://twtpoll.com/693nl6

Well worth reading, and ties in closely to the new Enterprise 2.0 supplement that I edit and that Information Today has just launched for readers of The Information Advisor.

The surprise is that the final decision here was to exempt firms from having to tag their narratives: eg the management discussions, executive compensation etc. From a researcher’s standpoint, that’s too bad, as this means less potential for precision searching. However the SEC says it may revisit this, and/or make this kind of tagging “optional”. We’re doing a full report on sources for searching both the EDGAR and XBRL tagged filings in the March and April issues of The Information Advisor.

A challenge to librarians now is, just how interesting is old [that is, archived, in databases, etc. ] knowledge these days?  Knowledge is being created at such a fast rate, that its value is expiring at a faster rate?   So librarians’ expertise in finding stuff that “WAS” is no longer as relevant or useful; BUT what is replacing this and what librarians need to focus on is the kind of information and connections being made in the Enterprise 2.0 organization.

Gil made several other insightful comments, as when we discussed how the economy is impacting how info pros should be thinking about their role in E 2.0. Gil said that as people are being laid off, the organization’s “connectors” are being lost–people will no longer be sure who knows what and who the go to person is, if their previous contacts have left the firm. Again, there’s an opportunity for the librarian to step in and help people surface,  identify and reach out to those connectors.

I’ll be including the entire interview in The Information Advisor’s March 2009 new quarterly supplement on Enterprise 2.0, which will also look at how to categorize and think about vendors that occupy the E 2.0 space

A survey of experts shows they expect major tech
advances as the phone becomes a primary device for
online access, voice-recognition improves, and the
structure of the Internet itself improves. They disagree
about whether this will lead to more social tolerance,
more forgiving human relations, or better home lives

Recommended reading for the day

You know when you are aware of something for awhile, but then a news story appears that confirms what you already know. Today that happened as I read today’s Times‘ article on “Medical Web Searches and Escalating Fears”: Microsoft Finds Top Results Lead to Anxiety.

I always brace myself when a family member or friend has some unexplained ailment and says they are going to try to figure out what’s wrong by checking online. If that person has the least bit of hypochondria or general prone to worry, they are bound to zero in on the worst possible potential causes, no matter how remote, as to why they are suffering from that sore throat, rash, tiredness etc.

Of course we all know that the Web is an unbelievably fantastic resource for all sorts of do it yourself kind of research and figuring out whatever you’re grappling with, including health and medical related information in general. And there are countless stories of discoveries made online that have empowered all of us with invaluable medical information. But when we are not feeling well, and add our fears, ignorance of probabilities, and a tendency to zero in on the most dramatic and sensational, then the Web is then not the best place to calmly assess the reasons why you are suffering from that ailment.

So remember–if you’re feeling out of sorts after your Thanksgiving meal, the most likely reasons are from eating too much, being tired from travel, family stresses, and so on– beware of self diagnosis by keying  your symptoms into a search engine!

Happy Thanksgiving….

While I don’t pretend to have anywhere near the influence of Jeff Jarvis, or that this post will have the impact of his famous “Dell Hell” “Dell Sucks” rant on his blog of several years ago, I do think I need to vent about an experience I had last evening while trying to get someone at HP to help me with a problem DeskJet printer. I can only hope that my experience will somehow be picked up by HP. (And after all, I just wrote a book called The Art of Strategic Listening (Paramount Market Press, 2008)  about how firms need to monitor consumer discussions on blogs and social media to track how they’re doing and identify trends)

The summary of my own HP Hell adventure is this: After I managed to find the correct customer contact number on the Web (no easy feat unto itself); the rest of the evening unfolded as follows:

Contact 1. 10pm: Reached HP’s “customer care”, and was told I would need to enter my credit card number and pay $34.95 up front in order for a technician to troubleshoot this with me. Not happy about this, but OK, at least if I’m paying—and paying upfront—at least I’d get some quick and effective help. The customer service person took down my problem (the printer icon disappeared from my printer folder and trying to reinstall drivers just gave me “fatal error” messages) gave me a confirmation number, ticket number and said “hold on I’m transferring you”.

ON HOLD…………………45 minutes…………….

Contact 2. 10:45pm. Man picks up the phone, hears my problem, apologies that “they transferred you to the wrong department”, and says “I’ll transfer you”…I say, OK, but I’ve been on hold for 45 minutes, so I hope that I can speak with someone quickly…

ON HOLD…………..10 minutes…………………

Contact 3: 10:55pm. Woman answers phone, asks me to repeat all my information again even though I give her my ticket number. She says “what department do you want?” I say I already told and paid for technical assistance. OK, “now I can refer you to a technician, she says “I’ll transfer you”. I say, “OK, so the next person will be able to help me, right, I’ve been waiting nearly an hour” She says yes…

ON HOLD……………20 minutes………………….

(I BEGIN TAKING NOTES NOW!)

Contact 4: 11:15 pm. I am sent to a voice mail menu where I am asked to press 1 for PCs; 2 for Printers and 3 to speak to a technician. (So should I hit 2 or 3?) I hit 3 for a technician.

ON HOLD………..5 minutes……………….

Contact 5: 11:20 pm I begin to hear very faint conversations in the background, and a distant, ethereal type of connection is made as I am on hold, but hear unintelligible background voices. A woman picks up and I know now I have been transferred to a call center in India. She tells me she will put me through to “technical support”. I am known for being a laid back and relaxed person, but I am getting agitated! I tell her I have talked to four or five people already. (And…Monday night means “Headlines” on Jay Leno at 11:45pm and I don’t want to miss it!) I am no longer very pleasant on the phone, but try to keep my cool. If I had not already paid for the service, and knew that starting over would be even worse, I would have hung up and called it a night

ON HOLD……..10 minutes….

Contact 6: 11:30 pm. Another woman at a call center in India. She asks me if I am calling for the “All in One” HP Printer. I say, no, I am calling for the Deskjet 1430. She says that she cannot help me and will need to transfer me to the department that handles that model. She then tells me to speak louder because she cannot hear me—our connection is terrible.

ON HOLD……10 minutes……….

Contact 7: 11:40 pm. A man in the India call center tells me that he is the technical support person and can help me. I explain my problem and he begins the troubleshooting process. He is friendly and responsive, but each time he asks me a simple question (e.g. “What icons do you see in your printer folder”), he needs to put me on hold for about 5 minutes to do, I don’t know what—look up what to do next in his technical manual?, assist other customers? After 30 minutes of this glacially slow conversation, we work together to power off the printer (his instructions to me were very strange but they worked—eg open and close the cover of your printer 4 times). At the end he asked me “Are you happy now?”

12:10 am. It’s now the next day! Leno’s Headlines is long over. Perhaps it wasn’t a funny one. But I didn’t have many laughs this evening.

• Total Time on Phone: 2 hours 10 minutes
• Total no. of Transfers: 7, to 6 humans; and one voice mail
• Level of Satisfaction: Zero

And how was your evening?

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