Attention Vs. Trust
Attention Vs. Trust
More Time With The Brand Isn't Trust - It's Attention. Knowing What You're Asking For From Your Customer Is Critical.
It’s Monday, and it’s time for TCA’s LENS.
As we all squint our eyes just a little and argue with family members at how much Beyonce’s new Texas Hold ‘Em song sounds like the iconic Franklin the Turtle theme song - it’s time to get to work.
<quickly puts on sales hat>
Hey there - if you haven’t noticed - we’ve recently switched up our service model. We’re providing all kinds of new content and marketing services now. Simply said: we’re here to roll up our sleeves and help you with your marketing and/or content challenges as a fractional partner. We can not only help you roadmap your approach, but we can serve as a fractional member to get it implemented, managed and measured. Check this out if you want to learn a little more. Or, hey, send us a message and let’s set up a call. Spring has sprung and we’re ready for new clients.
<removes sales hat>
Okay… in today’s edition.
Trust Vs. Attention - Know Why You’re Creating Content
Air Canada Learns The Hard Way AI Can’t Be Trusted
Replay of Our Content Orchestration Event Is Now Available
Let’s roll….
ZOOM LENS: TRUST VS. ATTENTION
So if you had to pick the impact your content had on a potential customer, would you choose:
Deeper trust but quickly fading attention and recall or
Fixed attention and great recall but minimal, if any, trust?
Now, I know you want both, but in this exercise, you can have only one.
You may say you can’t have one without the other. You might argue, “If I don’t trust it, I’m not going to pay attention, and I’m not paying attention if it’s something I don’t trust.”
Yet, you do both independently all the time.
In 2019, as part of Edelman’s yearly research on trust in marketing, it found only one in three (34%) consumers say they trust most of the brands they buy or use. In other words, people always buy stuff from brands they don’t trust. This finding amazes me because of how important trust is to the modern purchasing decision.
It starts to make sense when you think about it. I can tell you about the last email I received from a credit card company that I use. It was this morning. I read the email and scoffed at their attempt to upsell me a new type of card. The brand had my attention, and I recalled the message, but I didn’t care or trust enough to even think about acting on the offer. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop using the credit card.
In comparison, I do my banking with USAA. I deeply trust that brand, but I can’t tell you the last marketing email I received from them. When I searched to find out, I realized I get one just about every day. I just don’t remember.
“May I have your attention?” and “Do I have your trust?” are two different questions — and yet many marketers still conflate and correlate one with the other.
If you read the rest of the article, I provide a four attribute framework for you to consider when creating your next round of marketing content.
WIDE ANGLE LENS: MARKETING SNAPS
Let’s get it all in frame. Shall we?
💸 $10 Billion+ - The amount of investment Apple has reportedly spend on developing the Apple Car - only to kill the project this last week. But just to put that into perspective - that’s about 8$ of one quarter’s revenue for the company. Sooooo - I think they’ll be okay.
💰 $650 - The total that Air Canada must reimburse a passenger who used the company’s AI Chatbot to ask about the policy regarding bereavement fares. The chatbot decided to, you know, make some stuff up. I covered this on this week’s news.
👎 Well This is awkward: Google has taken Gemini’s AI image creation tool offline while it promises to make it better. The tool generated some - well - not so great images of diverse groups of people in historical context.
👍 This is stupid AND not stupid: Wendy’s has announced that they are looking at dynamic pricing as a means of driving real-time discounts in their stores. The strategy is wonderful. But the communication on it? Not so much. It does, however, come with the requisite social media ridicule. This one was pretty darn good.
LENS FLARE: - TCA Events & Happenings For You
Our Replay of Our Content Orchestration Event
If you missed our live webinar this month - the replay is now up and ready for you. TCA’s Cathy McKnight has an awesome in-depth interview with Liana Cave, Hilton’s Director of Content Orchestration. They talked about how Hilton has pivoted their content strategy over the last few years, and some of the key lessons learned for you to build greater speed, consistency and a seamless content supply chain in your business. Check It Out
Don’t Miss Our Upcoming Webinar
We’re going to be talking about the new ways you might engage with temporary strategic content and marketing talent (yeah, we know it’s kinda meta). This month’s webinar is: Unlocking Immediate Expertise and Boosting Long-term Team Talent with Fractional Expertise. We’ll have some best practices and perhaps even a surprise guest or two.
LENS CAP: Let’s Finish With A Flourish
If you had to answer that impact question I posed at the beginning, I now suspect you would pick trust as the more important objective.
But I get it. I really do. As marketers, we really do need to try and do both: Grab someone’s attention with something that demonstrates our trustworthiness. But I want you to think about the many tradeoffs made when you decide how to present your ideas to your audiences. Weighing your content one way or the other is one of the bigger debates I see among marketing teams.
In other words, that amazing article you wrote demonstrating leadership, delivering extraordinary value, and deepening trust in your brand may be relatively forgotten months later. But months later, when that customer sees an ad for your company and is ready to buy, that influence remains.
It's an incredibly hard thing to show on a spreadsheet. But it’s still extraordinarily valuable. You can measure it’s value but I understand it can be a battle. Still, I say fight on. It’s worth it.
Again, if you need some help - we can help you sort that out - let us know.
Our aim is to help you build YOUR internal capabilities, not have you rely solely on ours. Talent. Training & Trusted Insight.
See you next week.
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