Authenticity is what keeps customers coming back

The most trusted companies are ones founded by visionary entrepreneurs pursuing an authentic motive.

Trust in capitalism is at a low. PricewaterhouseCooper’s 2017 survey of Australian chief executives shows this issue is No 1 on their list of concerns for the future. Their unease about public trust has risen every year, having almost doubled in importance since 2013. PwC’s global chief executive survey shows the same incline.

Chief executives know what we all know: people don’t trust companies. There are several reasons for this. For too long, too many brands over-promised in advertising and PR, and underdelivered in the real world. Consumers are assailed by marketing hyperbole that we all treat as fiction because of our countless disappointments.

Too many companies present a consumer-friendly image to the buying public, only to contradict it by their behaviour, whether it’s a bank claiming our personal wealth management is its priority, then ripping us off with hidden fees, or an airline claiming our happiness is what drives its every decision, then throwing us off an overbooked plane.

This distrust has been growing steadily for generations, with the occasional spike when someone outs a car company for knowingly selling unsafe vehicles, when a cool sports shoe brand is found to be using slave labour or when an oil company fumbles its response to an environmental disaster.

You may be tempted to think that the bigger the corporation, the higher the distrust. But this is where it gets interesting. Last year, US branding company Brand Keys did a survey of 740 companies across 83 industries to find the most loyal customers in America. Who do you think made the top 10 in that list? GM? BP? Coca-Cola?

No, today’s most trusted companies are ones founded by visionary entrepreneurs pursuing an authentic motive. Amazon (three entries: online retail, streaming and tablets), Apple (two entries: smartphones and tablets), plus Google, Netflix, Samsung, Facebook and YouTube.

These companies are low on exaggeration and high on delivery. Amazon’s stated motive? To change the way people buy things. Its behaviour? New ways to search, buy and deliver. A service that delivers in 30 minutes. A marketplace to rival eBay. Deliveries by drone. Recyclable packaging.

Netflix’s stated motive to the world? To become the best global entertainment distribution service. Its behaviour? Faster streaming services. Intuitive menus that play video trailers when you hover your mouse over a film title. In-house film and TV production setting new standards in quality. New download-and-go functionality.

The key learning here is about the commercial viability of true purpose. These brands aren’t setting customer retention records in their respective industries simply because they’re more truthful.

Truth is not the attraction in and of itself. The appeal to consumers is what happens to a company’s products and services when they set out to prove they’re telling us the truth: improvements to products we already want, new products we never realised we needed, intuitive humanist interaction, new ways to be served.

In a world where people can expose the hyperbole behind an expensive brand image instantly and globally, truth is no longer just a fluffy cultural value. The bottom line is that authenticity is essential for a company to achieve long-term sustainable growth.

Mike Edmonds is co-founder of Meerkats and author of Truth Growth Repeat.