A name you can rely on…

Trust, reliability, dependability. These are descriptions long considered to be “table-stakes” in the branding business. They seem almost quaint and old-fashioned. Like advertising from the 1930s. With exception of bleeding edge start-ups or high-risk industries (say oxygen masks) most businesses and consumers weren’t all that worried about dependability. That is until now. Most of us watched with a mixture of shock and awe as seemingly invincible giants like Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, AIG and Wachovia either collapsed or were rescued from the brink. It is still hard to understand how hard and fast these companies failed. Inevitably this leads us to wonder: who’s next? There is a lot of speculation about how branding specifically and marketing in general will be impacted by the current economic situation but one thing we can predict with certainty. Old quaint descriptions like trust, reliability and dependability will move from being table-stakes to words to survive by.