For more on our thinking on the new Content Marketing Framework and audience trust concept, please review the resources section of www.tca.inc
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Wrong. When functioning appropriately, they eliminate the need for trust.)
For example, if I invite you to fall backwards with the pledge that I will catch you, but you know that I am a robot programmed to unfailing catch falling humans, you don’t need to – and can’t – trust me.
And if there is no vulnerability – if the outcome is not in some way potentially harmful – then trust is irrelevant.
(If, should I fail to catch you, you land not on a hard floor but in a soft foam pit, then trust in me is not a factor.)
The trust researcher Rachel Botsman defines trust simply as “a confident relation to uncertainty” (which I’ve slightly modified in the graphic on the left). Trust allows you to bridge the gap between what I now say I’m going to do and the possibility that I may not do it.
Still, the question is,
where does this initial
trust come from? How can we increase the amount of trust?
Can You Build Love?
In other words, how can we build or rebuild trust? The answer, surprisingly, is that we cannot – and this follows from the fact that trust is an attitude that consumers have about you. As the philosopher Onora O’Neill** says:
"Trust is distinctive because it's given by other people. You can't rebuild what other people give you."