By David Jenkin

The presentation took place at the Melrose Arch Protea Hotel Fire and Ice on Wednesday, 30 November, with many of Eighty20’s clients in attendance. The topic was large and multi-faceted, but pertinent, particularly in the context of technology and data.

Director Andrew Fulton demonstrated that when he kicked off the event by having the audience turn to the person beside them and introduce themselves. Then he asked that everyone take out their phones, open their browser history, and hand it over to the stranger beside them. The nervous laughter that followed demonstrated his point.

In her presentation, Melzer began by contrasting currencies of trust, comparing the formal and informal sectors. In the formal sector, she explained, contracts form the basis of trust, even though they are often poorly understood by the customer. Advertising, especially expensive campaigns, has been demonstrated as an effective way to create trust in brands, as it indicates market success.

Knowing that effective recourse is at hand should things go wrong, in the form of an ombudsman or even via a review platform like Hello Peter, also gives consumers confidence. This is less defined in the informal sector, where trust is leveraged off the formal sector and personal relationships play a larger role.

Melzer cited AirBnB and Uber as examples of companies that use their own customer ratings system to offer a degree of accountability, technology platforms which she described as “giving consumers permission to trust”, through the knowledge that poor service will have tangible consequences.

Concluding, she addressed the notion of a “post-trust” society in which trust is negated by information. “While we talk about technology and data as something that takes us post-trust, I think in many ways it actually takes us back to trust in the most profound way, and I think Andrew demonstrated that by asking you to hand your phone to someone.”

She emphasised how consumers are far more willing to provide huge volumes of personal data to corporations through smartphone apps than they ever would be face-to-face, in the ‘real world’, effectively relinquishing their privacy in a very trusting way.

For more information, visit www.eighty20.co.za.