Okay, so let's get started. My name is Jean-Pierre Lacroix, and I'm president of SLD, a global leading brand consulting firm that specializes in inspiring the future of retail experiences. And
we've all witnessed a lot of anxiety and a lot of tension happening in the marketplace, not only with COVID, but the recent US elections, and a lot of what's happening now in media, on social media, regarding fake information. And so our firm decided to conduct a North American study on what is the impact of fake news. Is it having a negative impact on brands? And how can brands effectively respond to this emerging trend? And so let me walk you through some of the research insights, and also we'll share with you implications.
So what we found in this study is the definition of real is shifting in the marketplace, and it's shifting due to a variety of factors that we're going to share this with you.
So what we're going to share today is consumer perception of reality and how they define reality is changing. It's becoming harder to tell fake from real. If you look at some of the spoofs on animations of real actors being played by animated characters, it's really hard to tell the difference. Expertise and fact-based source of information play a critical role, but where do they play a critical role and which parts of that information are important? Is part of the study we looked at. Intuition and wisdom remain influencing factor. We were quite surprised to discover in the study the role that intuition and how important it remains in how people differentiate between fact and fiction. And brands have an opportunity really to leverage the insights in this report, because there's a mindset that was there before COVID, but it has been accelerated because of the COVID pandemic. So I'll just give you the context of the study.
First of all, the world has become a lot more stressful, challenging a lot of our values and beliefs. Part of that isn't just COVID. A lot of it has to do with the increased competition. If you're a brand marketer, you know what I'm talking about. New regulations, slimmer margins in the marketplace, increased customer expectations, and also the shift to online and non-conventional channels. All of these different trends, and we haven't even talked about AI and artificial intelligence and virtual reality. All of these different trends and factors are shaping how we absorb information and how we remain relevant and competitive in the marketplace.
We know that our study, COVID, that we conducted last year, we conducted four studies on the impact COVID had on different industries. We know that we've seen the impact on hoarding and pantry loading due to COVID. Outlook has a significant impact. So we've discovered that there are really two sides of COVID, optimistic and pessimistic consumers, and they have very different buying patterns and behaviors. And so it's really redefining how we identify target groups and personas. We've seen a huge shift online. Everything from groceries to conventional products to banking. Categories which were slow laggers in consumers adopting online, such as banking, have seen a huge acceleration to the platform due to COVID. We also noticed that brands' loyalty was on the decline, driven by out of stocks, but also the consumer wanting to discover and experiment a lot more since they were locked in their
homes, spending a lot more time in the kitchen cooking, wanting to experiment, discovering new types of foods and new flavors. In-stock was obviously a really key factor in safety in the stores, again, remained very relevant in how the company treated their employees from a standpoint of safety and social responsibility played an important role. So I wanted to give you this backdrop to the study, because obviously these play an important factor, one, an influence on how people see real and fake news.
Obviously, these things have all led to an increase in anxiety in the marketplace and really challenging how people absorb information and what they believe in. And we do a lot of strategic foresight. So we look at what are the early signals in the marketplace, and what are the major trends in the marketplace that are in fact impacting our behavior, our attitudes as shoppers, as marketers. And you've got the no filter factor happening in the marketplace. What gets posted now, 10 years ago would shock us all, and now it's become commonplace to overtly lie, to provide misinformation, to spread rumors and fake news. Obviously, the whole social platform is under attack. The authenticity of information, where it's sourced and how it's sourced. I mean, when you have the ex-president of the United States lying on a regular basis to Americans, it just trickles all the way down to the media and to other sources of information.
You've got the rise of anxiety, opioid crisis. This is driving a lot of tension. This is a reaction to the anxiety level in the marketplace. You've got the growing tolerance of bias. And we see that in Racial issues happening in the marketplace, the confrontation between the police and various movements happening. You've got the alternative community being created due to COVID, and obviously, you've got artificial intelligence, AR, and a variety of other platforms impacting on how we define real versus fake.
The other thing is that we need to understand is that we're very much influenced in our deep beliefs and values, and you'll see that in the study that we hold our values very dear to us, and we'll challenge facts. And we'll accept fiction as fact based on the value and beliefs that we have. And we saw that in the election in the US. We see that in how people absorb information about the pandemic, the vaccine, and we've all read information and misinformation about the vaccines. And this all leads to pointing to we still remain rooted in what we believe in, our personal beliefs.
So the study looked at what facts are driving our confusion about what is real. How do we justify and embrace falsehood? How does a shift away from reality impact how we behave as brands? How does a consumer perception of reality affect the brand preference? How do we respond to these changes in the marketplace? How do we remain relevant, authentic, and leverage the trust we've established over the years with consumers? So let's look at the consumer attitude. I think it's a great starting point. So we've been tracking for the last year consumers' optimism and pessimistic levels, and you can see here at the start, our first study was done last year, March 2020, for the banking industry. We saw that consumers were still very optimistic. Only 37% were pessimistic, and that shifted in April of last year. You can see the shift happening. And then it continues to grow. It grew all the way to July, actually July, September of last year was at
58%. And then there was a switch happening in January, where consumers became a lot more optimistic, and you can see now we've actually flipped from July of last year to February of this year. Consumers are a lot more optimistic about what's happening in the marketplace, optimistic about their jobs, their careers, their life savings. This is important because it's setting up kind of the context of the mindset of consumers.
And what was driving that optimism? Well, we basically had seen the light at the end of the tunnel. There is an end to this pandemic. We can see it. The stock market has been very robust, kind of, I shake my head to look at the stock market. It doesn't actually reflect what's happening in the marketplace. But the stock market has grown significantly since the beginning of COVID. Obviously, a lot of people, life savings have gone up. Their investments have done well, and obviously, the actual arrival of the vaccine has had a huge impact.
What we found out in the study is that not all optimists are equal. Levels shift depending on age and income, and actually, when you look at the chart on the right-hand side, you can see that lower-income consumers are a lot less optimistic, a lot more pessimistic of what the outcome is. And you can see why they were the ones that were the most impacted by the COVID pandemic. They also had less resources, ability to respond to the issues, keeping their jobs, keeping those families safe. Also, the younger consumers, you can see here, were a lot less optimistic than the total sample size, and that really talks to the fact of school interruptions. Their social connections were frayed. They were no longer able to connect with their friends. They were forced to remain in their homes and not go to university or go to schools. That had a very negative impact to those two segments.
We asked the question, "Does the truth matter?" And "How skeptical are you of the current information?" So obviously, consumers, the truth does matter. 73% identified that it mattered a lot. But 54% were skeptical of the information they're receiving in the marketplace. So that's a real context of
setting the tone for how they absorb the information.
If you look at signs of this fake news and the growth of it, in the UK, the growth of fake farms, you can see here that there is a backlash. There's this need by marketers to leverage topics, terms that are relevant to consumers but could be misunderstood. Natural is another one that is very misunderstood. And in the UK, they launched these products that were called "farm-fresh," "from the farm," when in reality, these products were not farm-fresh, and they weren't from local farmers. And there was a huge backlash for consumers because the consumer's being misled. So obviously, consumers do care about facts. And obviously, in poster, there's been a backlash on paid influencers. You look at most recent, some of the Chloe Sims and Bobby Norris on the Oral-B received a huge backlash on they don't represent the values of consumers. They are viewed as fake And consumers are very negative to that, and they're very negative
and are willing to share those negative comments on social media.
When you look at influencers, you have seen the previous slide, proceed with cautious. When you look at the growth of influencers, you can see it's a growing segment. Social marketing is growing. It is the new way of marketing to consumers. And so a lot of you are probably considering about, do I investigate influencers? Should that be something I undertake? And my recommendation would be tread very carefully with influencers. You're better off having earned media than paid media, and building a farm network of brand ambassadors who you're not paying for, who are legitimately excited about your brand.
When you look at good retailers, organizations that have done a great job, H&M has done a phenomenal job. They clearly identify where their products are sourced and manufactured and where these products are sourced all the way to where they're manufactured. And they stand behind their beliefs in the recent situation in China, where they've taken a stand on some of the issues happening there and huge backlash, but they really stand for specific values and are willing to fight for them. And so there's a great example of transparency by a retailer.
It's really important also that when you consider your messaging, that you don't overlook employee messaging. We found in our study that internal communication needs some attention, that employees are more skeptical and less trustworthy of the information organization are providing. And a backdrop to that is probably because, a lot of employees feel that the organization is not focused on supporting the employees during the pandemic or social causes. And that just sets the tone in the marketplace.
More importantly, it's hard to trust organizations when people are losing their jobs. When you look at the employees, this was an Edelman study when they talk about trust. Trust levels with employees is now low. Financial services and retail have dropped significantly. And that's due to a lot of it driven by the fear of job losses. And that continues today in the marketplace. So we ask, where does trust come from? And it comes from reliable sources, science, experts, and the internet. Brands should really look at providing reliable, third-party endorsed sources of information when sharing facts with consumers.
You can see here we studied a variety of different elements, from intuition to community members, to main news. You can see experts here. Internet, Google, and science studies play a really important role. And you can see actually that this is also influenced by income levels, that the lower income levels rely much more of word of mouth, family support, traditional media than people with higher income. Maybe because they don't have access to the same level of information, or maybe they're more skeptical of the information they're receiving from these other forms of media.
So how do we define real?
So we ask, what is impacting your perception of real? What is shaping how you perceive reality, fake and real news? And pandemic has had a huge impact. 44% the pandemic anxiety has created a shift on how they perceive or able to distinguish between fake and real news. Obviously, fake news itself, the amount of it and growth of it and use of it has had a negative impact on how people discern fake from real. And then also on the positive side, social movements like the Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter, these activities that have brought to the forefront these social issues, have changed the way we see real and fake. And obviously they've highlighted misinformation in the marketplace on a lot of fronts.
When you
peel the level below this idea of the pandemic and fake news and social movements, you can see that the rising cost of living and income disparity play an important role also. So there's a lot of anxiety being created by the rising cost of living and the income disparity. And these are having trigger impact on how we discern fake and real news, real information. I said before, real is defined by proven facts and less on feeling and perceptions. And what was interesting is the next slide. A couple of slides from now. When you look at reliable sources, obviously we said experts, intuition, and wisdom. When the information is coming from a source that's not reliable, that they're not sure that source is actual, they will actually rely on their intuition, which is a flip to the previous slide. So if the information is coming from a reliable source, it's about facts, about expertise But if it's coming from unknown sources, consumers still
use their intuition and wisdom in making those decisions. And you can see here on the chart, these are the factors that play an important role. And there's slightly difference of depending on gender between those when it comes to check information within my community, obviously less important for women than it is for men versus the general population based on our study.
What does that lead to? If we know that a certain segment of the population is open to leveraging wisdom and intuition, it leaves these markers open to an opportunity to use behavioral economics, because we know that too much information is one of the reasons why they rely on their intuition and their wisdom, which we call heuristic. And heuristic is all about the shortcut of connecting the
decision-making process in what we call the blink factor, in the blink of the eye, this ability of connecting very quickly in the blink of the eye, the decision we're trying to make with the product. And so there's a real opportunity to leveraging the blink factor in building these shortcuts in the decision-making process. But it's also an opportunity to look at how do we influence behavior through filtering their biases, decisions that they typically make, their comfort level with existing brands, and how do we disrupt that. A lot of it is about being able to manage this unpredictable, irrational consumer through behavioral economics.
And we can use techniques like nudge and choice complexity to help the consumer select your brand versus the competition. And there is a wealth of information online about behavioral economics. I recommend highly that you look at those. They are playing a much more critical role today in how marketers go to market and influence purchase decision for their brands.
When we look at this bias happening in the marketplace, I, again, go back to look at the UK. There's been this huge movement, and we can see it globally on this farm-fresh, from the farm, locally produced. And it's interesting to note that consumers are willing to forgive brands like Aldi and Tesco, who are non-British brands. These are German brands who are wrapping their brand with the British flag. And this really leads to this bias of patriotism, this protectionism that is happening around the world. This is a bias that we're better than them. We need to protect ourselves. And you can see here how consumers are willing to overcome the fact that these brands are not from the UK if they wrap themselves with the British flag. So another fact, online product rating. So we ask, where do you get factual information? Where do you find that information the most reliable? Online product rating and reviews is number one.
It's followed by statements from industry leaders. It could be healthcare, it could be nutritionists, it could be government officials, and claims on packaging and news media. These are the key areas where consumers now trust that the information we're receiving is factual. Obviously, you can see here back to our influencers, celebrity endorsements, social media influencers scored very low, including salespeople and claims in advertising. So again, when you look at your marketing mix and where you put your emphasis is where you put your dollars, understand that if you're trying to connect with them with factual information, that there are channels where that information is seen much more trustworthy than others.
So other tools you can look at when it comes to creating these credibility on packaging, is the idea of age, the history of the brand. So you look at Heinz 1869, Hellmann's. Or accreditation. We see that a lot in the coffee category, fair trade, organically grown. These are third-party accreditation of a claim on the packaging, and these have a lot of credibility with the consumer when they make their buying decision.
Social influencer works well when it's earned media, and this was a TikTok event that happened for Centrefold in the UK. This young gentleman, his name is Hyram Yarbro, and he really thought the product worked well, and he had a huge following, 6.8 million followers on his TikTok, and he talked about it, and it drove their sales right through the roof. So you can see that earned media does drive sales and has huge impact. It'll be interesting to see what happens here because L'Oreal has actually entered into an agreement in sponsoring this gentleman, and we'll see if his credibility remains. So other areas, some of the individuals on the call are from financial institutions. So third-party claim rates, the idea of awards, and that includes CPG brands. The idea that third party, J.D. Powers, these third-party recognition awards say a lot about the brand. We should celebrate those in product innovation
awards, product of the year awards. These are all things that consumers look for when they're doing their search online. And obviously, this idea of third-party validation. This is from third-party sources. They build a lot of credibility for brands. And so think about that as part of your toolbox of strategies In building trust and driving factual information and credibility for your customers. So I was just looking at one of our clients, US Bank, and you can see here they're doing extremely well. Their net promoter score is three, and 18 is the average in the industry, so they're outperforming the industry. On the element trust, they scored fifth, which is phenomenal, and they're the 10th world's most admired company. If you look at their stock and what they're telling me they're doing extremely well because they have a lot of these third-party factual information. Ask yourself, do you have these third-party endorsed
factual information that you can leverage on your website, can leverage on your packaging?
Now we looked at which channels were the most authentic. Obviously, supermarkets, drugstores did extremely well during the pandemic. In our COVID study, supermarkets, drugstores did extremely well. Credit unions are seen as most authentic and then followed by the brands. These are bank brands, then specialty retailers, packaged good brands, and then big box retailers, and insurance being at the bottom. So it's interesting to see supermarkets and drugstores have done really well, credit union, and bank brands.
So when you want to talk about being authentic, if you want to build trust with your consumers and you want to drive authenticity for your brand, we asked the consumers, they told us focus on local community is really important. Source locally, show competitive price comparison, support local causes, support diversity, real people in advertising, those scored extremely well. This is a ranking of importance. Paid celebrity endorsement was last, identified paid influencers, validate third-party reviews, non-commissioned salespeople, those rank lower. So this tells you that as you look at building your brand, it's really important to support the local community, to source locally, and to show competitive price, and to support local causes and diversity. And we can see that supporting diversity is becoming a big issue in how consumers evaluate brands, and you can see how it scores here.
And in our COVID study, it just reiterates what we already know, which is the fact that companies who supported their employees, their community during the pandemic, had a higher preference from a brand loyalty standpoint. This demonstrates that there is this continuity, probably driven by COVID, to reconnect with the community, for brands, but it's now being accelerated.
So brands that have done that well is this Chocolonely in the UK. And this is a journalist that was doing an article on chocolate and discovered that chocolate was grown in markets where there's a lot of slavery and underpaid people producing their products. And so he launched this brand that really fought against slavery. And if you look at the shape of the chocolate, if you break it off, there's this inconsistency of shape. So it talked about this inequality metaphor right at the product level. And you can see in the inner wrapping, it can tell the entire story, social responsibility. This is a great example of being socially responsible. In the banking category, you can see here, the banks have done a really good job of talking about diversity. So my question to you, if you're not a bank, what's your diversity statement on your website? How do you stand with diversity and the link to the
community? I think it's really important to look at how are you portraying your brand in the community, and how is your marketing and your digital marketing and your corporate marketing communicating effectively?
Key opportunities here to look at to the new normal. Let's start with understanding 86% of people are open to new opinions. By the way, there's a poll here. Let's take a look at the poll. How would you rate your ability to detect false information online? Love to get your input in here. We'll just pause for a minute.
While the survey's going on, let's continue here. Being truthful is important to 73% of people, but 54% are skeptical of whether the information is true. And so what you have here is a very skeptical segment of the population. So no matter what your claim is, it really needs to be supported. 76% of people trust information validated by other sources. So if they're going to be skeptical, you better make sure. So the answer here is how would you rate your ability to detect false information online? Your ability. So good, 58%, excellent, eight, and then poor was eight, and average was 25. So close to 30% of you felt that it was poor to average, your ability to differentiate, to detect what's false and real online. So obviously, this reflects this study here at 54%. 51% of people believe online reviews are trustworthy. And not having a verified source is an issue for 73% of people. So when you have information, make sure that you
validate the source.
So we grouped the insights in these buckets. So community is the foundation of trust. Real means fact. Reinforce optimism. Support claims. Rethink influencers. And internal alignment. And I want to walk you through some examples of these.
Support local and key social causes. TD has done a great job intently on the AIDS campaign. You've got Habitat for Humanity for FedEx. TD also tied it into taking a stand on this hate towards Asians because of COVID.
And then you have P&G doing a great job on recycling plastic from the oceans. We have US Bank that look at sustainability, social responsibility, strong platform. Again, the question is: What is your brand doing from a social movement standpoint? How are you tying to community or to a specific cause that is relevant to your target group?
Real means fact. A great way of communicating facts is an infographic. Are you leveraging infographics? Are you communicating the benefits of your brand, the benefits of your services? Are you celebrating your awards? Are you communicating, even on your packaging or on your print campaigns, are you communicating the awards that your organization is at? If you're the best new product of the year, where is that being featured in how you go to market? Is it being featured? And then using real people in your marketing communication like US Bank is doing. Really enforcing authenticity. One of the key ways is not to hire models, but to use real people. We look at COVID, there's been a lot of negativity, a huge impact in the marketplace with lost jobs, lost businesses. Brands have a responsibility to deliver an optimistic point of view. So strong positive messaging in your marketing communication, really important.
Having empathy for COVID, support the COVID movements. You see Pepsi and Kraft taking a strong stance on supporting during the COVID crisis, and obviously employee volunteerism, which is a great tool for recruitment and also a great tool to leverage the role the brand plays in the community.
Another thing is avoid confusion. Obviously, confusion is a big issue. You don't want to add fuel to the fire. So, look at third-party claims. Here's just a few of the third-party claims. There's so many. And have the third-party claims support on secondary packaging and on your website, really driving why these claims are support on your brands. Transparency in the banking industry, it's about security of your information, where that information being kept, and how secure it is. In the case of packaging, it's talking about where you source your plastic. Is it truly recyclable? And if it is recyclable, where is it recyclable? Is it sourced from ethical suppliers? These are really important. And again, real people play an important role.
Obviously, earn their trust when it comes to rethink influencers. I think avoid controversy. So if you're going to use influencers, you really need to make them bulletproof. We believe that the opportunity for you is to focus on earned media, create your brand ambassadors, create events that will create crowdsource support for your brand. And these could be in the case of US Bank, it could be about picture taking in Pinterest, sharing special moments. Again, what is influencer all about? It's really about using social media to drive more awareness for your brand and engagement for your brand. And there are many ways of doing it without having to pay for an influencer.
I think the last is start from the inside out. I think there's a real opportunity to gain alignment. We know that in our studies on COVID, that customers favored companies who supported their employees during the crisis through paid leave, sick leave, PPE and a variety of other support elements. And so it should start from the inside, what you believe in, and it should be celebrated. Leverage social causes in the community. Take an active role and obviously support diversity in your organization. Really important.
When you look at packaging and you look at the packaging journey, there's tools from demonstrative to interpretive, and these are them. Accreditation, age of the company, absolute statements is 100% or 90%, altruism, sponsorships, celebrity endorsements, yes, comparatives, materials. Your visual idea is really important and language on your packaging. So look at all of these elements as opportunities or risks in building trust with your customers.
So when you look at packaging language and visual identity, boldness of the font, consistency like the K consistency on the visual identity, that builds trust and confidence in the brand. And then the language you use, "Carefully smoked," "Taste the difference," these are all statements. World Farms, they really talk to the local, and they're supported by claims at the bottom of the packaging.
Here again, look at comparatives, statements like ultra. Be very careful on these bold statements. Consumers are skeptical of them. So if you're going to make a statement about ultra, is it truly ultra? And do you have claims that support that? Do you have facts that would support it? I love these claims that say, "Removes up to 100% of stains." Asterisks, please see back panel. And then there's a whole legal verbiage about what it does and where it does. Avoid those. You're better off not having 100% claim if you're going to have to have exceptions to what that could mean. Again, celebrity endorsements. It's interesting, in the UK, only 13% of Brits say celebrity endorsements affect what they buy. We saw the same thing, I think it was 12% in our study. But look at event sponsorships as an opportunity, especially social event sponsorships, supporting a specific event like Olympics or local
hockey teams or a national team. Again, altruism and absolute statements, be very careful how you use those. There's a lot of risk that they're going to be seen as not true. And we talked about this, but leverage history and obviously, the factual information supported by third-party claims. And I just want to end on this Co-op Value for Value story. This is a private label brand in the UK. It's a cooperative, but they built their entire premise on values. The value of values. And think of what are the values your organization has, what are the values your brand has, and how do you bring that to life across all of those moments of truth consumers have? Because it's in these values that you build trust and authenticity for your brand. It's how you overcome some of the challenges. You may not be the most price competitive in the marketplace. Values plays an important role in helping consumers select your brand over your competition.
Let's get into here. Keep it real. If I were to leave you one last parting thought, is really keep it real. Really work hard at building the leveraging and the trust your brand has with your consumers, and be very careful. It doesn't take much to destroy that trust through claims that are not substantiated. Making statements like farm fresh when it really isn't from the farm, or talking about local when it really isn't local, or natural when it really isn't natural. So be very careful on the claims. Ensure that if you're going to make a claim, that you have a third-party endorsement of that claim, that it's factual, that it can be supported, it can be bulletproof. Think of your influencer programs. Social marketing is so important to the success of brands. You can see the TikTok
case study where it drove significant growth for a given brand. Again, think of your role, supporting social causes and be part of the community, and also don't forget the role your employees play in engaging with the consumers and the relationship the brand and the consumer and the company have with each other. So I want to thank you, and I can open up now if you have any questions, you can type them into the chat box.
Question. "In store, how can you leverage technology while also respecting privacy and human interaction?" Yeah, that's a great question and definitely a bigger question with AI now and your camera is now being enabled with facial recognition.
Most apps you have the opportunity of opting in. And so the opportunity of leveraging augmented reality at the shelf level or receiving coupons. Most retailers are now, and Apple now has a whole security mechanism in place where you can opt in to receiving those messages or opt out and not receive them. But that is going to continue to be a big issue with social marketing and the fact that the data now is pervasive across all of the different channels that consumers shop. So it's going to be tough. Anybody else have a question from the...
How skeptical are you of, we saw the survey from here, but how skeptical are you? Or let me reframe that.
When you look at this study, how would you rate your company? How would you rate your brand based on the study we concluded? Would you rate yourself a 10? An eight? A seven? A five? A four? A three? How would you rate yourself on being authentic? There's always this urge to differentiate yourself with a claim, a consumer benefit. But is that consumer benefit truly effective? Has it been validated? Has it been supported by a third party? This rush to influencers, is it better off to have third-party claims validated than having an influencer program? We get more mileage out of that versus influencers. So how would you rate yourself across these channels, across these metrics? It'd be interesting to get your input.
Any other questions?
Here's another one from Pierre. "Where do you think trust will be in the mind of the consumer in the next three years? Or consumers will be more skeptical?" Actually, we asked that question. Thank you for asking. Yes. They're going to be significantly more skeptical of information. The b******t meter is on high alert, and it will continue to be on high alert. And
part of the skepticism is the fact that we're being inundated with more and more information. It's getting tougher and tougher for brands to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. And so you're going to see a lot more consumer skepticism across pretty all the brands and all the different categories.
Another question, will influencers taking a somewhat important role? How do you vet appropriately to avoid cancel culture?
Again, the first thing I would say is ask yourself the question, do you really need an influencer program?
Would you get more mileage if you had a third-party endorsed plan?
Would you get more mileage? And if you really are a brand that lives in very strongly in social marketing, then I would really pay attention to, do you really need to pay an influencer, or can you create your own, create ambassadors through your social programs where these ambassadors, influencers, bloggers talk about your brand because your brand stands for a lot. I truly believe that if you have a product that is well-designed, well-made, has strong consumer benefits, that delivers on its promise, you don't need influencers. The product is the influencer. The product, the brand, and what it stands for is your best influencer. And consumers are not stupid. They gravitate towards these brands that are authentic, that deliver on their promise, and they're the ones that are blogging and promoting it. So that would be my answer. Have a great brand. Put your money on building a great brand. Put your money on ensuring that your brand is delivering on your brand promise
and delivers on all of the added value benefits that you promote.
Are private labels will become more trustworthy in the future, and how so? That's a great question. Will private label brands be more trustworthy?
It depends on how they approach the market. It depends on, are they authentic? When they make these claims, you saw the private label programs in the UK, they were lying to the consumer or misrepresenting themselves to the consumer. Will these private label brands be authentic? Will they stand by their claims? Do they have a third-party endorsement of their claims? And if they have all of those, then my prediction will be the private label will continue to grow. It is growing now. The pandemic helped accelerate the growth of private label. But it will continue to grow because it's all about building trust with consumers, and building trust with consumers is about fact-based information and being trustworthy.
Any other questions? Hope I answered that correctly for you.
Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to participate in this webinar. I hope we shared some great insights. You can go to our website, where next week you'll be able to download the research papers we have, and we've separated those by industry. So we have a research paper focused on the CPG industry, one on banking, one on retail. So by all means, please download the information and reach out to us if you have any questions. Thank you very much for your time. Bye now. I'm Jean-Pierre Liquel, and thank you for participating today.
