Your Friends Can’t Be Trusted

Guess we should have expected this

We live in an age when its hard to know who to trust.

Public officals lie about their military service. Respected news sources reveal stories have literally been invented. The biggest banks hide fees in legalese no one has the fortitude to read, and cheat taxpayers out of trillions of dollars. Marketing is…well, marketing, and Millenials just assume its all fallacious.

This is why social media was supposed to supplant advertising.

Since we no longer believe ads, even those we don’t zap through, social media was supposed to let us tap into the wisdom and buying experience of our “friends.”

Of course, once the number of friends and followers became a measure of popularity and status, and we started “friending” people we’ve never even met, that equation changed.

This article, from Advertising Age shows that “…the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company dropped by almost half…since 2008.”

Now what?

Maybe we should stop trying to scam everyone, and actually offer products that are great enough to warrant trust.

Yep, swear off bait and switch, eliminate small print, and stop hyping sales that aren’t really sales.

In other words, treat clients and customers with respect for their intelligence, and every interaction as a test of our personal honor and reputation. Because it is.

As John Lennon once sang, “People say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…”