Brands, Marketing, Trust and GenerationZ
The new podcast interview posted on the TrustTalk podcast is with Marketing professor Kent Grayson from the Kellogg School of Management and the Faculty Director and co-founder of The Trust Project at Evanston, IL (USA). The Trust Project aims to create a unique body of knowledge about Trust by connecting scholars and executives from diverse backgrounds to share ideas and research. Featuring academics from across Northwestern University and executives from across industries, the videos represent different perspectives on Trust and connect research findings to real-world scenarios.
In the podcast interview, Kent talks about the language barriers between academia and practitioners and how to overcome that by engaging business leaders to talk about trust. He explains why marketing is not just advertising and how important transparency and honesty are for a successful marketing strategy. As consumers become savvier and Generation Z expect companies not only to make a profit but to do well and show social responsibility.
What is marketing? It’s understanding a target customer sufficiently well, understanding their goals and their problems so that you can create a product or service that satisfies their needs. And trust is essential for that understanding. You have to trust the consumer. You have to find a way to trust what the consumer is telling you, so that you can be confident that your solution will, in fact, solve their needs.
Kent: “One thing to keep in mind is that for decades, people have been sceptical of marketing and advertising. Even at the turn of the last century, people were talking about how easy it is for people to be fooled by patent medicine, salespeople, people coming into the town and trying to sell all sorts of doodads in newspapers were just starting to become prominent and people were learning to be sceptical. Now, it may be that millennials and Generation Z, rather than, you know, 70 percent are sceptical, maybe 80 percent are sceptical. But I don’t know anybody who when you ask them, do you trust advertising, they’re like, yes, you know, I always trust advertising.”
“And people say, no, I don’t trust. Are you ever influenced by advertising? Very rarely or never. That’s what they say. (…) But if you follow up and ask them, are there any brands that you trust? Are there any businesses that you trust? And often we also hear this in politics. And you say, do you trust politicians? Many people say, no, I don’t trust them, especially in the US. But when you ask, do you trust your congressperson or do you trust your local representative, the story changes. Millennials and Generation Z have brands that they love and that they trust.”
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