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You'd think that a new company with OpenAI's resources would have a straightforward path to building trust. It had no legacy brand issues to resolve, no historical scandals to deal with, and no CEO who was constantly putting his foot in it. Until recently.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, seems determined to avoid the direct route to trust. My goodness – it's almost like they're trying to sabotage the brand.
Here's the latest example: When the company unveiled new language models with GPT-4o last week, many people remarked on how much the model, named Sky, sounded like Scarlett Johansson, who voiced the AI assistant in the 2013 film “Her.” Ahead of the launch event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a one-word post on X that simply said “her.”
Scarlett Johansson revealed that OpenAI had asked to license her voice. She turned down the offer twice – once when she was first asked a year ago and again just days before the product's release. The company says it hired another actress. But the result is eerily reminiscent of Johansson's original performance. That means potential lawsuits and bad press for the OpenAI brand.
But that's just one unfortunate event. Or is it? See also: the departure of several high-ranking employees entrusted with protecting humanity, the restrictive clauses in OpenAI's employment contracts, and Altman's claim that he was unaware of these clauses despite signing some of the documents.
Declining returns from the attention economy
The dispute between OpenAI and Scarlett Johansson is just the latest example of the attention economy reaching its peak.
For years, marketers have tried many different ways to capture the attention of audiences and buyers. On one side of the spectrum is the art and science of manipulating algorithms to increase visibility in search and social media. On the other side is “rage-baiting” – a tactic that involves stirring up outrage to increase engagement with content.
Some people like it when a currency gets attention, but now it is losing value compared to a much more powerful rival: trust.
Brand trust is becoming increasingly important
As the old saying goes, trust is the hardest thing to find and the easiest to lose. And trust is in a deep crisis around the world.
The introduction to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer highlights the challenges facing OpenAI and other technology companies. The authors wrote:
“Rapid innovations promise a new era of prosperity, but risk exacerbating trust problems and thus leading to further social instability and political polarization.”
To put it simply, trust in business, media and government is eroding because politicians are putting attention above trust. Politicians in government are resorting to school-level insults, business leaders are saying outrageous things to stay in the press, and marketing departments are doing their utmost to get the short-term sugar rush of clicks.
Ignore this loss of trust at your peril. Building and demonstrating a trusting relationship with consumers is one of the most important tasks of marketers today.
And that's nothing new. But it's clear that people first lose trust and then become disappointed. The Edelman study points out that “most institutions are not trusted to introduce innovations into society.”
The media is actively distrusted. Governments and NGOs hardly trust the 50 percent mark when it comes to integrating innovations into society (50% and 54% respectively).
Yup. Mistrust is being democratized everywhere.
Yuck.
There is good news. Edelman found that companies enjoy the highest level of trust of all institutions (64%).
Side note: Your brand is probably more trusted than the media company you're paying to advertise on. This could be the strongest argument for an owned media strategy in 2024.
Attention is water, trust is the reservoir
What if your brand could become not only the most trusted brand among your competitors on a particular topic, but the most trusted brand overall?
If that were the goal, would you trade some attention (e.g. traffic or engagement) for fewer but more meaningful content interactions?
In the past, marketers would look at trusted information publishers and say, “There’s no way we can compete with that magazine (or that nonprofit, association, or government agency).”
And you were right – these publications and organizations attracted all the attention.
But if trust is the deciding factor, you can and must remain competitive now.
Trust as a benchmark
I worked with a B2B financial services company a few years ago that targeted investors and advisors. The company asked a sample of its target audience to rate the institution and its competition by trust level. We also asked them to rate a sample of the leading media companies in the space.
Back then, comparing trust in financial services brands to trust in media brands was like comparing apples to oranges. But to achieve its goal of “increasing brand trust,” the team set out to make its new portfolio one of the most trusted content brands for financial advisors and investors.
When the team repeated the ranking exercise a few years later, they found wonderful results. Trust in the brand had increased among both competitors and media companies. From a brand recall perspective, this is wonderful.
Even more interesting, however, were the results filtered out from the brand's subscribers. Many of the subscribers to the brand's content trusted the company more than all other competitors and media companies.
These results make a compelling case for the value of their content approach: they have built a deeper and more trusting relationship with audiences than even some of their media partners have been able to.
It was a slower build and potentially more expensive to acquire a subscriber than a lead. But it paid off in a more valuable customer relationship – loyalty.
The game of trust in the long term
In the trust economy, value is created when an audience trusts the brand and shares that trust, promoting it and attracting more people.
Playing with attention in the short term used to be the quickest way to show value in marketing. The goal was to spread the most innovative, the most differentiated opinion or the most catchy slogan in order to convince potential buyers at the exact moment when they needed something.
But this game can only be won if you start from a position of trust. Of course, you can't earn trust without first getting someone's attention. The need for attention hasn't gone away.
But now you have to earn trust (by providing value) in the first moments after you grab their attention.
Yep. Marketing is harder in a trust economy.
You need to demonstrate trustworthiness better, faster and more consistently. That is the short and long term goal of a modern marketing strategy.
Attracting attention just isn't enough anymore. Holding attention doesn't work so well either. You can hold a person's attention for a while and they won't care.
The opportunity is here. Democratizing distrust can change what's possible. Your content can make your brand the most exciting and trusted resource for your customers.
It is up to you to earn that trust and opportunity.
It's your story. Tell it well.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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