The Difference Between Personal Brand Trust And Product Trust

What inspires us to buy a particular product over its competitors?

Is it trust in the product itself? Or is it trust in the people behind the brand, whose personal brand gives us confidence in the products they put their name behind?

Personal brand and product trust are both important, but there are differences in how we assess and react to them.

With brand trust, a product earns loyalty from customers that is not tied directly to the founder or CEO. When we buy products such as Tide laundry detergent, Froot Loops cereal, or Adobe software, we don’t instantly associate an individual’s name with the brand. The product stands on its own.

With personal brand trust, people believe in the individual. We look for credibility, reliability, intimacy, and a lack of self-orientation. We also expect more value to be placed on the partnership than on self-interest. All of this makes a leader trustworthy.

In some cases, a personal brand and product brand that once were intertwined can separate—at least partly.

Think of someone such as Bill Gates, who came to prominence as the co-founder of Microsoft. Although people may still conjure images of Gates when they use Windows, he developed a persona separate from the product, having become known for philanthropy, authorship, and thought leadership.

Apple and Steve Jobs were another example of a product brand that seemed to be inextricably tied to a personal brand. If you thought Apple, you thought Jobs. And if you thought Jobs, you thought Apple.

Yet Apple continues to thrive today, and maybe part of Jobs’s legacy is that the company could continue without him more than a decade after his death.

When to Focus on Personal Brand Trust

So, where do you stand at the moment? Do you ignore your personal brand and let the corporate or product brand do all the work when it comes to establishing trust?

If so, you should rethink things.

Yes, the product brand is important, but your personal brand also has a key role to play in building trust. You can accomplish that through thought leadership. This, of course, will require you to step out from behind the desk and share with the world your perspective, your purpose, and your passion, all of which can tie back to the brand.

Thought leaders show up to teach and to deliver value, not to sell anything first and foremost. Still, thought leadership can serve as the onramp to your company. It allows you to reach people outside of the direct-buying funnel, the place where they’re expecting to be sold. With thought leadership, you are reaching them in a place––a keynote speech, a podcast, a media interview–where they’re far more open to learning about you and being influenced by your message.

When to Prioritize Product Trust

Even when you become a thought leader, though, you can’t ignore the importance of product trust—and neither can the company.

On occasion, it’s what you need to prioritize.

Why so? Brands sometimes need to grow beyond the personality of whoever founded them. This could be for several reasons. The visionary who starts a business isn’t always the right person to take the company to the next level. Or the founder’s reputation could take a hit, and in that case, some distance between the founder’s brand and the product brand could be helpful.

On occasion, the separation between the founder and the product brand happens naturally, and at that point, a healthy brand needs to be able to stand on its own. The previously mentioned situations of Bill Gates at Microsoft and Steve Jobs at Apple are good examples of this.

Even though there was a connection between the personal brands and the product brands, the trust in the products had developed to such an extent that they could survive when the connection ended.

Building Both Kinds of Trust

Both product trust and personal brand trust serve as on-ramps to your business, each complementing the other. When done right, the teaching element of thought leadership and the direct selling of the corporate brand or product can make an impact in their own ways at the right times in the buyer’s journey.

Clearly, Apple and Microsoft were cases where both kinds of trust were built.

How do you achieve that level of trust for your personal brand and product brand?

One way is to make sure the value proposition for both brands is consistent with each other. If the two aren’t in sync, you could have trouble.

Let’s say that your company’s brand is known for high-quality service, and your staff is taught to treat everyone with civility. But your leader is the opposite of that, acting arrogant in social settings and sending a completely different message. That disconnect will lead to problems because people expect the leader to embody the brand.

If the leader and the company live up to the same promise, though, then both brands will thrive and reinforce each other. Even when you use thought leadership to promote your personal brand separate from the product brand, the two are still going to overlap.

By keeping that in mind, you can bring value to both brands.