At a time when there are more places to connect with consumers than ever, it's harder than ever to connect in meaningful ways.

Standing apart from the clutter demands brand recognition, respect, credibility and trust. As Brandweek puts it, "Brands are the express checkout for people living their lives at ever increasing speed." Trust drives the economy. It fuels business and it's at the very heart of all your relationships. Yet brands that exemplify trust are in short supply. 

 Honesty and trust are more important to consumers than the quality of the product or service, according to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual trust and credibility survey now in its tenth year. The same study made something else clear: Seventy-seven percent of consumers simply will not buy products from a company they do not trust.

At the same time, 91% of the people surveyed would buy a product from a company they trusted, while 77% would refuse to buy products from a company they distrusted. Also worth noting: Fifty-five percent would pay a premium for products or services when trust is present. This data provides clear indication that trust translates into tangible value.

Do people trust business? Almost half the population does not trust business to do what's right. Fifty-four percent still have faith, but that leaves a big chunk with doubts. Keep in mind, that's better than last year's historic lows, when only 35% believed business would do what is right. So there's been a rise. But Edelman warns that "the overall rise in trust is tenuous, with nearly 70% saying business and financial companies will revert to old habits when the financial crisis is over."

Therefore, trust drives business but many people do not trust business-so what do you do? You win it back. One of the ways you do that is with a comprehensive service and communications effort designed to leverage your brand equity around core trust and credibility values. Nowhere is this more important, and perhaps more challenging, than in the financial services industry.

The Financial Elite
The contest for the financial elite has never been greater. A complicating factor is that the number of very wealthy people and the aggregate wealth they control have shrunk from a few years ago. Defining the financial elite as those having a net worth of $20 million or more, we find an 18% drop in their numbers worldwide as well as a 14% decrease in their aggregate wealth (Figure 1). Meanwhile, the number of financial firms and advisors interested in these individuals continues to multiply.

Another complicating factor is the fact that the integrity and credibility of many financial institutions and advisors catering to high-net-worth clients have been called into question. There's been a tremendous increase in negative attitudes among the affluent-a product of everything from the credit crisis to the bailouts to the Ponzi schemes to the simple loss of private wealth.

Firms and advisors need to address the financial elite's concerns and anxieties over their providers. There are a plethora of potentially effective strategies and methodologies to accomplish this. One core strategy is to skillfully leverage a brand that strongly resonates with the wealthy. This might require recharging or enhancing or even extending an existing powerful brand. It might even entail "creating or re-creating" a brand. However, it's clear that there are few financial institutions and advisors doing a top-notch job of leveraging their brand-whether it's the institutional brand or an advisor's personal brand.

What's important to realize is that a well-focused brand can prove to be a very effective means of business development and client maintenance. Marketers extensively preach this proposition. However, in practice, there is considerable evidence that firms and advisors are doing a less-than-stellar job of adroitly building and managing their brands. This is the case even though there are a number of very powerful institutional brands in the financial services arena. Individual advisors can benefit from constantly reinforcing and using their personal brands.

The intricate interplay of extending a brand while enhancing it can be especially potent for firms and advisors. This is particularly true in the current competitive environment and it's going to become increasingly important if the objective is to source and maintain the financial elite. We're going to consider the Forbes brand in this exercise because it's renowned and has meticulously expanded beyond the flagship magazine.

Segmentation
To better understand how to leverage the value of the brand, it's critical to think of the process as an interconnected analytic approach. It often starts with recognizing who best responds to the brand as well as what circumstances result in the greatest positive responses. In effect, we often begin with the development of a segmentation scheme. In considering the Forbes brand, we see that when it comes to various segments, it's seen as a premier source of high-quality business information among its media peers (Figure 2).

Decisions to extend the Forbes brand into other services and products would take this into account. For instance, the ability to leverage the Forbes brand among private business owners and the wealthy within the United States is clearly enormous. The brand is also very viable with these same segments outside the United States. Consequently, there are various ways Forbes can capitalize on its dominant position as an information provider with these segments based on desired goals and available resources.

Along the same lines, financial firms and advisors often talk about the segments they are targeting. What we often see, however, are "wants" as opposed to reality. For instance, more than 85% of financial advisors identify "middle-class millionaires" (with a net worth between $1 million and $10 million) as their "ideal clients" (Figure 3). These advisors see themselves as well-positioned in the minds of middle-class millionaires (i.e., their brand). However, when we dig deeper, we find that for these financial advisors, the middle-class millionaire is much more of a goal-in many cases a stretch-as opposed to a reality.

Understanding where a brand has impact is critical. It's important to realize that, while it's very possible to redirect a brand, it's much easier to leverage or extend an established dominant brand. It's just good business to exploit opportunities and judiciously expand by taking advantage of carefully selected situations.

For advisors in the trenches, this often translates into a career based first on natural markets. Once a base is established, they usually look to ratchet up their practice by working with wealthier clients. The norm is to approach this process haphazardly. One way to expedite this transitional process is to adjust personal brands through incremental steps. Along the same lines, financial institutions need to critically ascertain how they're perceived by the wealthy. This sets the stage for determining how to use brands to cultivate the wealthy. Concurrently, it's crucial to understand-as precisely as possible-how various target segments perceive their brand.

Defining The Brand
Another aspect of the analytic approach is to identify the "what." It's crucial to understand what it is about the brand that various segments positively and negatively perceive. Even when the brand is very well received and is highly influential, it's critical to know the various aspects, features and factors that are generating different reactions. By understanding these "levers," it's possible to use them to intensify the positioning as well as expand the offerings.

Returning to Forbes, using the statistical technique of factor analysis, we find that the wealthy as well as small- and medium-sized business owners are attracted to key qualities of the brand (Figure 4). It's evident that the foundation qualities of the brand strongly connect with these segments.

What's important to recognize is that we're not talking about mission or vision statements or anything of the sort. While such "statements" are very nice, what we're concerned about is the clients' perspective. In contrast to intent, we're focused on current quantifiable perceptions. With great regularity, we empirically find that the views of the financial firms and advisors are not matched by the views of the target segments. What's needed is to determine how the client segments perceive them and then work to modify those perceptions and/or adjust their actions to better work with these perceptions. The alternative is to focus on a different segment.

Getting Results
Forbes is first and foremost a source of insights into the world-especially the business world. However, it's possible to leverage the Forbes brand to be much more and to some extent the company has taken steps-albeit small ones-in that direction. However, there's always the option to do a great deal more. Forbes can readily monetize its brand in a variety of ways.

When evaluating the research findings, we quickly see that one example of this is for Forbes to provide meaningful personal/professional development processes, methodologies and tools to select segments (Figure 5). We're not talking about investment or tax advice per se. The most attractive solutions around the topic of wealth deal with the actions a person needs to take to become meaningfully rich.

Extensive research with U.S. small- and midsize business owners shows that they would be very interested in ways to dramatically increase their ability to become personally wealthier. Moreover, about 60% of them identify Forbes as a viable source for these methodologies. At the same time, about a quarter of the wealthy also identify Forbes as a viable source for these actionable strategies. This finding dovetails nicely with the way the segments view the Forbes brand (Figure 2).

What's important to recognize is that the type of knowledge we're talking about is in tremendous demand by these and many more segments. However, as we're looking at the issue of leveraging the Forbes brand, it's critical to recognize how receptive people are to the brand as the source of these solutions.

When it comes to financial firms and advisors, there are only a few that have taken the steps to develop the same levels of insight into their brands as Forbes has done. It's not only essential to develop this understanding, it's equally important to consistently update this information. It doesn't matter if the objective is to just go deeper with select segments, such as the worldwide wealthy, or to expand offerings, as in the case of "know-how solutions." What is essential is to be able to make well-reasoned decisions. Without doing the needed homework, the decisions made are probably not very insightful.

Bruce H. Rogers is the chief brand officer for Forbes Media and a veteran of the print and digital publishing industries. He is a well-established expert on brand building, media measurement and advertising accountability.

Russ Alan Prince is executive editor of Private Wealth magazine.

We would like to thank Megan Womack, director of business development at Forbes Media, for her assistance with this article.