Brand Trust manifests itself across many dimensions. Recommendation, loyalty and corporate social responsibility being just a few.

Edelman significantly thickened PRWeek with a chunk of it's 2005 Annual Trust Barometer. Some of the highlights included:-

• U.S. trust in corporations is high; equivalent to China and Brazil
• There is a significant “trust discount” for major U.S. brands operating in Europe and Canada, but not in Brazil and China
• UK trust in major U.S. companies is the lowest in Europe
• Problem most acute for iconic American brands
• Problem can be repaired
• No “trust discount” for Asian or European brands operating anywhere in the world.
• Technology companies seem to have a halo effect compared to other industry sectors.

Edelman deserves Kudos for a) doing marketing and thought-leadership, something that most PR agencies seem to be asleep at the wheel on; and b) for a really timely piece of research. One quote really captured my attention:

"Sacrifice control and perfection of a message for speed and free-flowing discussion. The paradox of transparency holds that companies benefit more when they disclose fully what they know - bad or good - as soon as they know it. This is truer than ever."

This is also the paradox-trap brand marketers are stuck in. All but a few are trained to the max in completeness. Completeness of thinking. Completeness of research. Completeness in creativity. Completeness in everything. The phenomenon of social networking technology and behavior plays to incompleteness. It's all about dialogue. Conversation. It's about discovering the brand rather than presenting it as final. The new priority for brand marketers will be maximizing time-to-conversation and incompleteness.

Andy Spade hits on this - kind-of - in the most recent issue of FastCompany. Amongst a few of his rules:

"BRAND CONSISTENCY IS OVERRATED. The brand doesn't have to look the same, but it has to feel the same. An element of newness and surprise if important for every brand.

BRANDS SHOULD HAVE SOME MYSTERY. Customers should never understand the whole picture of a brand"

Edelman's Trust Barometer hits on another key point:

"Employees and "an average employee like me" are more credible than CEOs."

Brand Communicators are still way over-vectored on the c-suite as a vehicle for brand building. This is a subject for a much longer blog - which I'm working on - but the role of the c-suite in informing and building the brand is clearly being undercut by Blogs which are a revolutionary force in this respect. They run against what communicators have so long fought to do - keep the voice of the employee under wraps, driving market attention towards a select few senior spokespeople.

As blogs liberate the voice of the company they'll, somewhat ironically, become the most potent force for restoring the credibility of corporations as brands. Look no further than Scoble at Microsoft to see this in action...

The survey also found that Television and Newspapers were more trusted sources of news in the US while in China, the Internet is more than doubly trusted than newspapers. Will be interesting to see where Blogs factor in this in future surveys.

Either way, Brand Trust needs to be entirely rethought in the context of social networking technologies. But it's not just about applying the technology to marketing campaigns. It's about rethinking the act of branding. The context in which brand communication takes place has changed forever.