does trust equal authenticity?

Reading a fantastic article about Trust in Business led to thoughts of brand authenticity. Is brand authenticity interchangeable for trust in a brand?

Brand authenticity can be defined as the degree to which the beliefs, values, communications and actions of an organisation are aligned. And continue to be so over time.
The most direct way that customers experience this is - do you act as you say you will?

According to Green, reliability, or doing what you say you will, is only part of the equation in creating trust. There are also the variables described as Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy, and Self-Orientation. It is suggested they inter-relate to create an overall level of trust as per the equation show.

The Trust Equation


Green explains each of the other variables:

Credibility has to do with the words we speak. In a sentence, we might say, “I can trust what she says about intellectual property; she is very credible on the subject.

Intimacy refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. We might say, “I can trust her with that information; she’s never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me.”

Self-orientation refers to the focus of the person in question. In particular, whether the person’s focus is primarily on himself or herself or on the other person. We might say, “I can’t trust him on this deal—I don’t think he cares enough about me, he’s focused on what he gets out of the deal.” Or—more commonly—“I don’t trust him—I think he was too concerned about how he was appearing, so he wasn’t really paying attention."

The most powerful variable is self-orientation, which has a negative impact on trust levels.This is most commonly gauged by how much someone feels they are being listened to. Or not.

Creating trust requires authenticity in what is said (credibility) and what is done (reliability). Adding in the additional variables of intimacy (= brand connection / emotional branding in brand speak) and self-orientation (= the level of customer-orientation, client centricity in brand speak) is a deeper way of understanding the relationship with customers, with the resultant feeling of trust I would suggest coming closer to the notion of brand loyalty (discounting habital purchases).

Authenticity does not = trust, but trust requires authenticity.

Some brands that have done this well include Zappos, Google and Apple. They are extremely customer-led, with true customer dialogue and have a degree of transparency in the their values, beliefs and actions.
A perfect example of the opposite is a company that operated much of Melbourne's transit system - Connex. Disliked intensely by the community due to their unreliability, lack of credibility and aparent lack of listening (a recent spokesperson recently blamed Australian culture for their tardy record!), they did not have the contract renewed to much community celebration. A snippet found in Social mention shown below.


A final point to note from Green's article is that ultimately people trust people, not organisations. It is their experience of an organisation's people that informs that trust.

How do your people evidence each of the trust parameters? Is there something that can be done to improve this, even if it is asking a simple question in every conversation - why?