"Trust is a persuasive advantage that your competitors cannot easily steal, because they must earn it for themselves." - Sally Hogshead
Welcome back to our Science of Event Marketing: Summer Sessions on fascination. After exploring Innovation, Passion, Power, and Prestige, we continue our journey through Sally Hogshead's framework for captivating audiences. As I've applied these principles from her book Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation to our marketing strategies, I've found this next trigger particularly powerful for creating lasting business relationships.
Trigger 5: Trust - The Language of Stability
- Core concept: Fascination through reliability, familiarity, and consistency over time
- Psychological effect: Reduces perceived risk and creates comfort in decision-making
- Brand examples: Volvo's safety legacy, Johnson & Johnson's family focus, Amazon's delivery reliability
- Warning sign: When your brand appears unpredictable, inconsistent, or fails to follow through on promises
Spotlight: Volvo's Trust-Based Brand Success
(Sources: Volve Website)
How does a car company turn safety—arguably the least exciting aspect of automotive design—into its most powerful brand asset?
Volvo demonstrates the remarkable persuasive power of trust as a fascination trigger by making reliability and protection the cornerstone of its brand identity:
- Safety Innovations and Transparency
- In 1959, Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point safety belt—an innovation estimated to have saved over one million lives worldwide
- In an extraordinary decision that prioritized public welfare over profit, Volvo made this patent freely available to all automakers rather than maintaining exclusivity
- More recently, Volvo's E.V.A. (Equal Vehicles for All) Initiative has shared over 50 years of crash research data publicly to help the entire industry design safer vehicles for everyone
- What makes this fascinating? By placing human welfare above competitive advantage, Volvo created a trust foundation that money simply cannot buy
- Consistent Safety Leadership
- Volvo vehicles consistently earn top safety ratings from independent organizations like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
- In 2022, Volvo earned more IIHS Top Safety Pick+ awards than any other brand in the U.S. market
- The company has publicly committed to eliminating all serious injuries and fatalities in new Volvos—a bold stance that puts measurable safety outcomes ahead of marketing claims
- The brand made the controversial decision to limit the top speed of all new vehicles to 112 mph starting in 2020—sacrificing performance bragging rights for safety principles
Genuine trust isn't built through claims but through consistent actions that demonstrate your priorities. When customers believe you value the same things they do—in this case, the safety of families—they develop a relationship that transcends traditional brand loyalty.
Practical Event Applications
- Ensure consistency: Create visual and experiential continuity across all touchpoints instead of constantly changing your approach, helping attendees know exactly what to expect
- Deliver on every promise: Set realistic expectations in pre-show communications and then systematically exceed them rather than making ambitious claims you might not fulfill
- Provide transparent information: Share honest product capabilities, clear pricing structures, and authentic customer testimonials instead of hiding limitations or complications
- Build reliability rituals: Implement systems that demonstrate attention to detail and follow-through, such as prompt follow-ups, detailed documentation, and consistent staff knowledge
- Show rather than tell: Focus on demonstrations, case studies, and tangible proof points rather than making claims about reliability and trustworthiness
Stay tuned for next week when we'll explore the Mystique trigger and how strategic information gaps can create compelling fascination in event marketing.
From my marketing library to yours,
Rhiannon Andersen
Chief Marketing Officer, Steelhead Productions