Brand Trust Profiles

Below are four profiles based upon the Somatica Online Brand Trust profiling methodology. They're "The Pretender", "The Sleeping Giant". "The Egotist" and "The Star". They are 4 out of 8 possible examples from the Brand Trust Cube. If you'd like us to carry out a Brand Trust profile analysis for your brand, please contact us.

The "Pretender" represents a brand being very vocal and also responsive across the social web. Which, on the surface is a good thing. However, they have problems with their product, service or offering and hence the content of conversation is typically complaint control and reactionary. Sentiment is negative and their focus should be on improving the quality of their offering before placing time, effort and resource in reaching more people across the social web. Ultimately this will compound their reputation management issues.

The "Sleeping Giant" profile represents a significant proportion of larger brands. This Brand Trust profile demonstrates a very high degree of advocacy and positive sentiment, ultimately they provide great products and services. However, they have not yet made themselves visible and accessible to people via the social web, and hence there is no real interaction taking place. This is a strong foundation upon which to build. The key considerations are understanding the risks and resource implications associated with a social web engagement approach; and which channels will best suit their customers and their brand.

The "Egotist" is an savvy online brand that typically has a good quality offering (And don't they know it!). They are visible and accessible, but only choose to interact with those that they want to. You know the ones, you follow them on Twitter and they don't follow you back. This profile can suit some very niche brand such as very high end fashion houses, but in the main, most brands should want to make themselves available to all customers. This typically requires a change in attitude and/or working out ways on how to manage the time and effort to provide good quality interaction.

Finally the "Star", very close to being the perfect online brand across all channels. This brand knows who it is; listens and understands the people who wish to engage with it and has opened up the relevant communications channels to help those who want a direct dialogue with them. These people also talk to each other very enthusiastically and positively about the brand and word spreads organically. This is not an easy thing to achieve, yet alone sustain. We have yet to come across a real brand that scores so highly...although we are working with some who are getting really close.