Trust begins with you and me

The Guerrilla Consulting blog just posted a link to Edelman's 2006 annual "Trust Barometer."  Here's a slightly altered version of the post I made in reply:

The findings verify much of what many of us already understand ("offer quality services, attend to clients' needs, price fairly, etc.").

But there's a nugget buried about 3/4 of the way through the report that should be of particular interest to professional service marketers. It's the graph about change in the relative importance in how people are influenced in their trust for a company: traditional media is becoming less influential than comments from "people like you and me."

It appears to me that professional service marketers are still overly focused on getting their firms' names favorably covered in the media; the majority have yet to clear their heads for some bandwidth about the tremendous importance of managing their messages in more informal networking situations.

I'm not talking here about PSFs beginning to utilize new "communication vehicles" like blogging and podcasting (which is appropriate, nevertheless). But I'd wager that PSFs' rush to embrace of these "new media" still leaves the question of TRUST too far off their radar screen.  Kudos to the folks at Edelman for finding a way to remind us that trust starts with the individual.