The essence of good branding lies with trust and credibility. Yet we are unfortunately living in a partisanship world that is characterized by levels of mendacity that has never been witnessed before. How can world leaders like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi in India or Recep Erdogan from Turkey continue to lie so frequently and blatantly, and still sustain strong loyalty for their personal brand among their core base of supporters? Does this have noteworthy implications for other brands?
This tendency to stretch the truth or simply express “alternative facts” has been magnified by social media. Almost anyone can get online and create disinformation that is shared instantaneously, and is often interpreted as factual. This exacerbates partisanship, and for many it solidifies their own perceptions of favored political and commercial brands. The obvious question is how can brands be trusted with such extensive disinformation today? Why aren’t more people losing faith in a brand when they are aware of such obvious mendacity?
The answer partially lies with the power of emotional engagement that people develop for a brand, whether it’s a person, company, product, or service. David Hume from the Scottish Enlightenment said in 1739 that “reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions”. More recently in 2001, Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at New York University published an article “The Emotional Dog and its rational Tail”, arguing that when people make moral decisions, they are influenced mainly by emotion and intuition. And neuroscientists have proven that behavior and decision making are influenced more by the limbic part of the brand that controls emotions, versus rational thinking.
However the impact of strong emotional engagement is being tested today by such pervasive lying we see every day from our leaders:
- Boris Johnson was fired from his newspaper for making up a quote early in his career
- According to fact checking by the Washington Post, President Trump has made 13,435 false or misleading statements while in office thru September 2019.
Then why isn’t lying more damaging? Voters often distinguish between telling falsehoods and honesty; they may believe in their leaders although they may not believe them. Boris Johnson is viewed favorably by one third of British voters, even though only a fifth believe he is honest. Trump’s approval rating averages around 41%, but this is 11 points higher than the share of people who trust him to tell the truth (source: The Economist 11/2/19).
There are other dynamics in play that might explain this quandary. One key explanation is that people tend to trust leaders for whom they have voted. A study by researchers at Brigham Young University examined whether voters are more loyal to an individual leader or whether they support leaders who represent the policies or views they themselves espouse. Trump has abandoned so many traditional Republican policies, but Republican voters support Trump because of who he is and not what he stands for. In short, personal loyalty trumps ideology, even if voters believe he doesn’t tell the truth.
Such tendencies reflect people’s emotional commitment, a form of “confirmation bias” where one seeks out and interprets information that confirms what they already think or feel. A Pew Research poll in 2018 found that 82% of Democrats thought the media performs a useful “watchdog” role of keeping politicians from doing things they shouldn’t, but only18% of Republicans agreed. However five years earlier when Obama was president, the figures were 67% and 69% respectively. Similarly 99% of scientists believe the earth is warming because of human actions, but people who doubt the reality of climate change listen to the other 1%.
Do these trends have implications for commercial brands? Credibility is so crucial for a brand’s integrity that lying or disinformation can never be justified. On the other hand, the surprising acceptance or at least toleration of mendacity by core political supporters today reinforces the power of emotional engagement, which leaders like Trump and Johnson have cultivated. Popular brands like Starbucks and Nike have been attacked by activists and have undergone severe criticism recently, but they both enjoy a solid base of loyal, enthusiastic supporters who have an emotional connection with these brands. All this confirms the significant importance of emotionally engaging with supporters for any form of branding.
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