The One Where JP Speaks Eloquently Regarding Trust

JP writes:

“Pretty much every serious argument we’re having, every conversation we need to continue, is about some form of Big versus some form of Small. Blefuscu versus Lilliput. And we use concepts like expertise and authenticity and reliability and affordability and freedom and choice to try and win the arguments. And the concepts we use land up polarising the debates. Which made me think….
…..It’s all about trust.

The Cluetrain markets-are-conversations-are-relationships is about trust.

Hugh’s microbrands are about trust.

Tara’s It’s-Not-An-Us-Versus-Them is about trust.

The journalist-versus-blogger debates are all about trust.

Trust used to be something that bound small groups together. Over time we tried to scale trust. It didn’t scale. And what happened instead was Big Everything. In an Assembly-Line meets Broadcast world.
Big Everything broke trust. Big Media lied. Big Content Producer reduced our choices. Big Pipe and Big Device reduced it further. Big Firm wrongsized away. And Big Government did what it liked.

Trust broke.

Now, with the web and with communities and with social software and with the inheritance of Moore and Metcalfe, we’ve had a chance to rebuild trust.”

Bingo. (Not the clown-o.)

This echoes what I’ve been saying for a long time. A while back, this came out of the keyboard, as part of an internal email thread here at Cerado:

“Problem #1: Customers have lost trust in traditional sales, marketing and service (CRM). “The most credible source of information about a company is now ‘a person like me,’ which has risen dramatically to surpass doctors and academic experts for the first time,” according to the seventh annual Edelman Trust Barometer. The survey relates that in the U.S., trust in “a person like me” increased from 20% in 2003 to 68% today.

Problem #2: Products, processes and infrastructure all commoditize. People and execution are the only ways to differentiate long-term.

Therefore: the foundation of trust is now in “people like me.” The foundation of differentiation is ALSO in people.

Now, there are a series of market forces at work, in the form of the various social technologies … blogs, wikis, and social networks. We’ve seen the changes the customer-driven / consumer generated forces have driven into the media industries, whether it be print, radio, or video. Now, these same social customer forces are coming to bear on sales, marketing and support.

What does this mean? This means that now, organizations now have these social tools to put the humanity back into business to solve the trust problem. In other words, the organizations that will win are the ones that most easily enable customers to build relationships and communities with people they trust.“

JP, in your post, you asked for flames.

Nope. Sorry, man. Not going to get any from this quarter.