Commentary

Trust, Transparency And Meaningfulness: What Brands Need To Reconnect With Their Audiences

by Maria Garrido , January 21, 2016

Currently, people around the world wouldn’t care if 74% of brands disappeared. This startling statistic hasn’t changed much in five years, according to Havas’ Meaningful Brands study -- the latest edition of which interviewed over 300,000 people across 34 markets.

It has not improved for good reason. The relationship between …

brand image, brands, trust-based marketing

2 comments about "Trust, Transparency And Meaningfulness: What Brands Need To Reconnect With Their Audiences".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, January 21, 2016 at 9:37 a.m.
The real problem is that there has been an explosion of brand names for the consumer to "connect with", and this causes connection fragmentation, just as we see it with TV channels and programs where it's called rating fragmentation. In the good old days, a brand might be bought by 6-7% of the category's product users per buying occassion but, over time, upwards of 25-30% of the category user base might come into contact with it, via sampling, price-off shopping, and other reasons. But that was when a typical product category had, say, 5-8 brands in the first place. Today, with "line extenders" and "flankers" as well as the influx of totally new brand names, the same product class may have 15-20 brands for the consumer---the product user---to "connect with". So, naturally, the average connection rate as well as the average brand's share of market, has declined. How does one change this? Brilliant brand positioning, great ad campaigns, refined targeting...perhaps? But that's a tall order for many "me too" brands, who have no real reason for being.
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