On this 241st episode of “Marketing Today,” I speak with Ashley Reichheld, principal at Deloitte. Reichheld discusses the findings of Deloitte’s 2021 Global Marketing Trends Report and dives deep into a few of its seven trends.

We start our conversation with Reichheld’s background of traveling. She talks about her experiences living and working in over 40 countries across six continents and how it helped her gain insight and perspective into different cultures. From there, we dive into the meat of the interview, Deloitte’s 2021 Global Marketing Trends Report. With this report, Deloitte aimed to dispel some of the uncertainty that this past year has brought to marketing.

Reichheld then discusses her favorite trend category, trust, and how “overall, trustworthy companies outperform their competitors by 2 ½ times.” For a long time, public trust in corporations and governments has been on the decline and presents both a threat and opportunity to marketing departments worldwide. Deloitte uses its metric, HX Trust ID, which measures trust drivers: humanity, transparency, capability, and reliability. By measuring these four drivers, Deloitte can predict buying tendencies and motivations for consumers and employees.  Lastly, we talk about marketing effectiveness and how to know if your efforts are working or not.

Highlights from this week’s “Marketing Today”:

  • Ashley has lived and worked in over 40 countries, picking up an appreciation and empathy for cultural differences. 1:19
  • The level of uncertainty in 2020 fueled Deloitte’s 2021 Global Marketing Report. 2:23
  • Purpose, human experience, and fusion are the three trends that confused most people. 3:13
  • There has been a drop in confidence across the board in C-Suite executives from consumers during 2020. 4:52
  • Organizations have had to pivot to better serve their customers and that ability largely affects a customer’s continued loyalty. 6:40
  • Interpreting and acting on data is especially difficult for marketing departments because people are irrational creatures. 7:55
  • For a long time, trust in companies and the government has been on the decline and has only been exasperated by the pandemic. 8:50
  • Trust is the key to continued loyalty from both consumers and employees. 9:51
  • Deloitte uses its metric, HX Trust ID, which measures trust drivers: humanity, transparency, capability, and reliability. 10:37
  • By measuring these four drivers, Deloitte can predict buying tendencies and motivations to work for consumers and employees. 11:40
  • Deloitte’s Global Marketing Trends Report shows a direct link between employee trust and consumer trust. 12:34
  • Recent research suggests that governments and corporations can’t be both ethical and competent. 14:20
  • Being aligned around common goals and being driven by a purpose takes companies further than being driven by incentives. 15:38
  • The airlines are all dealing with the same problems, but the companies that have remained customer/employee-centric are gaining traction.16:08
  • Alan believes that the perfect storm exists when the purpose is aligned with business results. 17:28
  • Bringing in the right talent and preparing employees for C-Level positions is one of the biggest challenges in marketing today. 18:04
  • CMOs have an extensive range of responsibilities, making it hard for employees outside of marketing to transition. 19:23
  • Marketing isn’t finance, but a finance background isn’t useless in marketing. 20:44
  • The best way to measure your marketing’s effectiveness is to simply turn your marketing off for some time. 22:20
  • Because Ashley believes that we are the sum of all experiences, she can’t point to just one experience that has helped shape her. 23:04
  • If she could look back, Ashley would practice more mindfulness and take things slow. 23:49
  • Ashley has recently joined the board of The Center for Women & Enterprise to help underserved populations through these difficult times. 25:27
  • Trust, or brand promise, both represents the biggest opportunity and threat to marketers today. 26:27

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Alan B. Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on opportunities around brand, customer experience, innovation, and growth. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies, but he is an entrepreneur at his core, having founded or served as an executive for nine startups.