Photo by Jordan Small

I had the most fascinating meeting yesterday. It was with four men in the auto industry. One of them, an existing client, is more savvy than the other three. The other three were what I would have considered typical dinosaurs in the business. I know this because I had met with the same three men a year earlier. At the time I shared our agency’s belief that traditional advertising was becoming more and more ineffective, and that the poor quality of creative messages being delivered by most of the auto industry were only making things worse.

I made suggestions to move them toward more trust-based communications with car buyers, and noted that putting a little respect back into the selling process wouldn’t be a bad idea either. But my message fell on deaf ears. It was obvious to them that I didn’t know what I was talking about. They said this economic crisis was just causing a temporary hiccup in the automotive world. Things would get better, as they always did.

That was a year ago.

Fast forward 12 months, one humongous recession, a national Cash for Clunkers campaign, and a few million less car sales. I was invited back to “re-address” the situation. This time they listened, better yet, embraced what they heard. With God as my witness, I said the exact same things I had before. The only difference was a little more focus on TRUST. I referred to Chris Brogan and Julien Smith‘s book, Trust Agents, and walked them through how changes in media, marketing and creative will only succeed in today’s world if they have this foundation of truth, transparency and trust. They ate it up.

What’s the takeaway here? Some dinosaurs can evolve without becoming extinct. Make TRUST the goal of every marketing program and you might speed up the evolution process.