Is Your Brand Friend or Foe...?

Trust. It’s the bedrock on which brands are built. After all, who keeps buying a brand they can’t trust to deliver on its promises?

We assume a brand earns our trust over time by keeping its promises. However, a brand has first to pass our snap judgement of whether it’s friend or foe. And this has little to do with the core benefits on offer.

When we form relationships, there’s a strong body of research that shows we judge people primarily along two dimensions: whether they have good intentions (warmth) and are capable of delivering on those intentions (competence).

But when we first meet someone, we make an instant and unconscious judgement based only on their intentions: are they friend or foe? After all, for our ancestors this could be the difference between life and death. Only then do we follow up by assessing their ability to carry those intentions out.

Research has also shown that we form relations with brands in the same way: first assessing their warmth and then their competence. If a brand can pass this initial friend or foe judgement, then we are more likely to be receptive to its main promises.

How can a brand build warmth?

The concept of warmth is broad, embracing both sociability and morality. I find it helpful to break it down into three potential approaches.

Do you get us?

One way is to demonstrate that you deeply understand our interests and needs. Of course, there’s barely a company today that doesn’t claim to be customer centric. But what we’re talking about here is empathy. The brand gets where we’re coming from and validates our feelings.

It’s one thing to analyze and understand customers, but quite another to feel what people are really feeling.

Dove’s Real Beauty is a classic example of this. It acknowledged what women really felt, that they don’t all look like supermodels, and it celebrated their unique differences as a source of confidence rather than anxiety. There were no product benefits being pushed, just empathy. 

Do you share our values?

A second route is to demonstrate you have a strong set of values. We feel natural affinity with people who share our values, and the same is true with brands. 

Ben & Jerry’s, Starbucks, Patagonia are all examples of brands that wear their values on their sleeves. If we share those values, we warm to them (even if it’s ice cream!).

There’s always the risk of alienating people who have alternative values. For example, some upset customers famously resorted to burning their Nike shoes after it featured Colin Kaepernick in a values led campaign. But this also demonstrated the strength of the connection that can be forged with like-minded people. Nike sales surged, even though no product benefits were mentioned in the campaign. 

Do you really mean it?

A third is to show us you’re honest. We warm to businesses that treat customers, employees, and suppliers fairly, and are responsible members of society. If you do what you say, and say what you do, we’ll see you as authentic.

This is different to leading with values. A majority of people expect brands to behave ethically and to help improve the lives of customers and communities. This was true of the Edelman Trust Barometer back in 2009, and it’s only been getting stronger since.

An approach to business

Passing the friend or foe test may make us predisposed to the core promises of the brand, but it’s not a one time deal. Our unconscious minds constantly learn from our latest experiences. If a brand behaves in a way that contradicts our initial judgment, we will quickly reassess that it’s not to be trusted after all.

This is the problem that Anheuser-Busch has got itself into with Bud Light, over its apparent support for transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. On the one hand, a group of loyal customers clearly feel that it no longer gets them. On the other, its rather unclear response in not supporting or defending its original decision leaves the business looking inauthentic and not to be trusted.

Rather than marketing, building trust must be an approach to business, grounded in core values and lived by the entire organization. That way, the brand stays authentic.

None of this is to say competence doesn’t matter. A brand that consistently delivers on its promises will build stronger trust. Indeed, there are brands that have been built on competence with little warmth, Walmart and Mercedes being examples. Ensuring that the brand exudes warmth is not a must-do for success.

However, we always give our friends more leeway. So, why start as a foe…?