Meet The TrustMakers with 5S Diversity’s Antonio Lucio

Good morning Richard and great to be here with you today. I think trust will become the new brand equity within the marketing and communication fields. We already have data from the Edelman Trust Barometer that actually shows the significant level of correlation between trust and long-term growth. The consumers that we're facing today, particularly younger millennials and Generation Z, expect to know the values and mission and character of the companies they buy products from. And that is research after research has proven that. So more and more companies are going to need to take a more purposeful and intentional stand in defining what they do, why they do it and what are the values that the company embraces.

Well, the big change is that normally in times where you and I grew up, that was the subject matter of the corporate communications and it was mainly aimed at elite. The big difference now is that reputation and trust matters to consumer in their buying decisions more than brand equity. Brand equity is a brand value within the context of the category. Brand trust is that plus doing it within the societal context that is relevant to the consumers and or citizens that you serve. That immediately changes the game because comms and marketing and policy and even HR need to be working closer together so that there is consistency in the narrative related to the what and the why a company operates. So in that sense it is a very different game. The corporate brand needs to behave like a consumer brand. Consumers need to know the product brands need to link back into the corporate values or consumers are not going to want to purchase your products. And then you're going to have to do this in an integrated way through employees, elites, clients, consumers, and opinion leaders. That's what's different.

Absolutely. And again I've had the privilege of working in companies that have been around for 100 years as well as companies that have been around for 17 which is the case of the Facebook company and all its apps. If you looked at tech today, it's a reflection of what the rest of the world will be tomorrow, which is the bulk of your population are going to be young millennials and Generation Z. They expect, your employees expect to have a voice in everything and anything that you do and they expect to have the space to actually voice their feelings. That's not going to change. There are the tools available through technology to actually allow that. So the first order of the day is that you have to finally focus on your employees as your number one priority in terms of stakeholders because without those company and or brand ambassadors nothing else really matters. They're going to call it as it is more so than any other stakeholder.

I don't think it changes by categories. To me the first thing is you need to be very clear and intentional about what you do and why you do it and what your values are. That is your north star. That is what should drive every single action that you do. Number two, just like you said, you have to be intentional in the application of those principles across every single interaction and across every single stakeholder. And then when you mess up, because you will mess up like every single company that I've worked for and every single company that I have read through, if they're blessed enough to stand the test of time, you're gonna mess up. That means that you stand up, you acknowledge and then you work hard to fix those issues. For some companies is as simple as fixing a cap. For other companies is going to take years to actually be able to fix, you know, artificial intelligence to drive new dimensions of technology. And then you have to be able to every time that you are implementing these actions to be able to enter into conversation with all your different stakeholders so that they understand your point of view and the why of the actions that you're taking. So that playbook is consistent regardless of where you are. Unfortunately, as you know, it is not consistently applied in most categories and in most companies.

Number one, as your Trust Barometer has indicated, Richard, and it's a global phenomenon, is that we don't trust the institutions that usually were the lighthouses of good and purpose in the world, whether that is government or even the bastions of the press. It has become polarized. It has become geared to follow very specific agendas. And the same holds true I would say about NGOs in general. So within that context the fact that corporations that have stood the test of time are raising their level of profile is not surprising to me and it's an opportunity that I think the business world needs to tackle and take advantage of. Going to your second question which is a very important question indeed is I think that it is important for corporations to take a stand in issues that are relevant to citizens but corporations have to be very purposeful and they have to make very tough strategic choices as to the issues that they're going to embrace and lead, the issues in which they are going to collaborate with the industry and then the issues that they're going to just react to. To me it is important that every corporation looks at two filters: relevance within the context of the business and values to be able to then select what are the societal issues that they're going to drive because it's important for the business and it's important for their values, which are the ones in which they will fly as a flock if you will with the rest of the industries and the ones that are going to be reacted to. What a company should not do is to stand up every single week on every single issue. Whether that issue is one day race, the other one is health, the other one sustainability, the other one is gun control, the other one is the borders and so on and so forth. I think corporations have to make that strategic choice so that they can actually earn credibility within the space and that people really understand what they stand for.