This may sound like a plug for IABC, but I have a Brand-related question. It grew out a session called “Restoring trust in a reality-show world” that I plan to sign up for at the IABCs international conference in June. I have been researching this topic for a year, and have a dilemma whether creating trust is more difficult than restoring trust. I am not sure if trust can be restored at all. Can Enron start over? Can Janet Jackson ever… you know!

Here’s my real question: How much importance do you give to a brand name when you are dealing with a company –say for your 401K, a car dealership, your child’s day care, even the grocery store? We make allowances for different levels of trust, depending on whether we are picking up milk, or dropping off our toddler. But does the ‘brand’ really matter?

To turn this question around, who is really in charge of the brand at these organizations? I make brand-conscious decisions every day, not based on the brochures, ads or the press releases, but based on the way the ‘barista’ treated me at you know where, the way the bread rack was stocked in aisle 23, and how many loops of the “your call is important to us” crap I am subject to when I call my service provider. So why is it we put more faith in the ad agency or the PR company than we do our employees? Who really is in charge of the day-to-day branding? When they do mess up, must we turn to the old tools for brand restoration? I think we communicators know the answer to that, but I have not still heard of a place where this happens.

Which is why I am going to be all ears at the trust-fest, which falls into an unexciting sounding track called ’employee communications.’ (I wish we could call employees ‘Internal Brand Guardians’ or some such thing.)

AND NOW A BLATANT PLUG FOR THIS SESSION:

In a world rife with communication spin and slant, it’s no wonder that employee trust has fallen by the wayside. Does that matter? You bet your brand it does! Drawing on Randstad’s research into employee attitudes, Joanne and Don Reichardt offer insightful recommendations for developing an internal communication program that will improve employee trust, loyalty and productivity; strategically align employee communication to support the brand; and raise the perceived value of employee communication at the highest levels of the business.

If you need more information on the sessions, jump off here.