My former employers, Edelman, have started publishing mid-year updates to their tradtitonal annual Trust Barometer.
I was pitched some of the key findings by their NY office which contained mainly key US or global insights. The main take-out for me was that trust in business was on the up – which I find frankly amazing given the near utter collapse of industries and household names which were the bedrock of the US economy.
Discussing this with Edelman UK’s marketing manager (@belautel) brought up the subject of the Obama bounce. Perhaps, but even so Obama hasn’t fully delivered on all the great promises he made prior to being elected. Maybe here’s a lag in the survey data – or maybe Americans are just generally a lot more optimistic!
Anyway... to the UK results which, unsurprisingly, demonstrate that an up-lift in trust for business has not materialised.
What is interesting – although equally unsurprising – is that trust in politicians remains awful across the board:
- 71% distrust government vs 12% trust
- 71% distrust MPs in general vs 10% trust
- 71% distrust Gordon Brown vs 16% trust
- 51% distrust David Cameron vs 29% trust
- 52% distrust Nick Clegg vs 16% trust (16% don't know)
- 49% distrust their local MP vs 25% trust
Frankly, that’s damning.
But what I wanted to pull out of this data was a wider point related to the Internet and democracy.
Jump back a couple of weeks: I went to see the Spanish academic, Manuel Castells, speak last month at the launch of his new book, Communciation Power (hopefully, a more detailed write-up on this soon). I won't serve up the background on Castells; Wikipedia has it here.
In a nutshell Castells in the forefather of the concept of the ‘Networked Society’. Importantly, he was saying a long time ago that changes to the structure of organisations, society, space, power and communcation were causing (among other things) a crisis of legitimacy for politics, government and the state.
His latest book brings these themes up-to-date and in-line with social media – an even more powerful communications shift removing power from insititiotions and ceding more to the public.
Castell’s would probably argue that Edelman’s results reinforce this shift. But I think that would be an over-simplification of a number of wider issues.
For example, if people distrust politicians so much why do people continue to vote? Admitttedly, turn-out figures decrease election-on-election but there is no mass revolt or attempts to create a new system in its place.
Maybe this is because we are generally apathetic. But there's a body of research (shortcut here to a PDF with a good round-up) has indicated that distrust in politics can go two ways.
Firstly it can cause people to become disillusioned with the politics and stop engaging with the ‘democratic’ system. This would seem to indicate that as more and more politicians are exposed as untrustworthy; fraudulent; all-round generally unpleasant people(!) more and more people will dis-engage from democracy?
Well, perhaps, but the second trait of falling trust in politicians is this: as more politicians are exposed as untrustworthy, the average voter starts to make more relative, value-based judgements about democracy.
Rather than not voting because a politician is untrustworthy, they decide that out of all the untrustworthy politicians, they'll vote for the least untrustworthy.
So, rather than a catastrophic failure of democracy which will lead to a radical, internet-based, fully participatory democracy we might end up with a middle-ground: a terminally broken system where the least worst option is the best.
Of course we may find that the reforms currently propsoed to deal with corupt, untrustworthy politicians solve all our problems.
Happy weekend!
Tags: Edelman, Trust, politics, Manuel Castells
George
I am moved by your candid argument to respond - and we should acknowledge the Guardian for giving you the space - and yet for the first time in many threads I am, frankly, quite perplexed by the commercial paradox you identify.
There are some alternatives, but none of them are entirely satisfactory or perhaps commercially practical. Some are not consistent with the ethical requirements you describe and with which I broadly agree. But in the first place, let us enjoy for a moment the irony of taking money from the airlines, the automotive industry and their ilk, in order to sponsor an MSN outlet that consistently criticises them and pays for people like you to do so. It does sweeten the pill a little, but perhaps not enough.
Some suggestions then - not so much as things I think can be done, but as catalysts that might lead to constructive discussion and better solutions than I can offer:
1) Recent news suggests that some quality MSN websites will attempt to institute subscriptions. If the Guardian moved in that direction but limited advertising according to content that met published ethical standards, it would make subscription more meaningful. I would pay to support a news site that placed ethical behaviour at the core of its business model, because that is exactly what I find is virtually absent from commercial concerns, and much to our detriment both as consumers and members of society.
2) Try such a scheme as an alternative site and trial it for a reduced sub in the first year. If it took off, move the enterprise in that direction and reward those early supporters with a discount on the second year - or something.
3) Ban only the ads that meet the ethical standard. This is not a moral exercise but a commercial one, but where virtue is rewarded. Ethical standards should be applied to products or services, not companies per se, and when certain products enjoy more ad space than their counterparts, their importance to the companies that produce them shifts in their favour, simply because they sell more. Advertising usually targets the consumer, attempting to modify their behaviour; here advertising could target the companies and do the same. It is in the boardroom that this message needs to be understood - the market is changing and ethical behaviour will be rewarded by consumers. (And when it's all hat and no cattle, you have new fodder for the column).
4) Develop more flexible price strategies and find more innovative ways to deliver the adverts. Perhaps a rate card with weighted price bands depending on gross revenue, where smaller and more ethical concerns can also take some space in the paper or the site, thus increasing opportunities for ad sales. I suggest this because I think taking the ethical stance will cost the Guardian some revenue. Quite how much it loses is in part dependant on the ad sales team, because there is also a strong marketing advantage in the ethical stance, especially if the Guardian is the first to adopt is. Very newsworthy, and worth trumpeting in any ad campaign. It must also be true that properly exploited, there may be some additional market share to be gained through it, so it's not all downside.
5) Keep discussing the option of going completely digital. I'm sure this is discussed and the Guardian management understand this much better than I, but there are important implications for the environment as well as the economics. It must include a subscription, but that has benefits since it would probably be annual or semi-annual, which is more reliable income than variable sales of print copies. (I'd like to see the management's thoughts on this. Things change, as the Guardian demonstrates with this very site. Where are they now on this?)
Prudence would dictate money will be lost, so the Guardian must ask the same question it does over page 3 girls: what is it prepared to do in service of Mammon rather than its founders like Scott? Tits are out of bounds, yet they would bring in more money, as would the sex trade ads, but the Guardian has taken a moral stance at the expense of profit. Morality cannot be parcelled out or striated by expediency. Either the Guardian is wholly responsible and doesn't want to assist in destroying civilisation, or it may as well start looking for busty women and brainless men to leer at them, since that readership will always put their hands in their pockets - if you know what I mean.