Earlier this week, I delivered a presentation for the Swiss chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). My intention was to speak “from the heart”, and talk from an insider’s perspective around what I feel banks can do to restore confidence and get out of the vicious circle of trust erosion that we are currently experiencing.

My overall view is that the resolution will come only through thorough and holistic change that tackles the core of the problem, and integrates different elements into an all-encompassing solution.

Simplistic “solutions” that only take into account a specific piece of the puzzle will not have lasting impact. Put shortly, an industry PR-campaign to polish up the banking industry’s reputation will not suffice: the problem needs to be tackled at the roots, and will require a concerted effort from all involved stakeholders, including the banking industry, (trans)national government bodies and the media.

After wondering whether “bankers are the new lawyers“, I attempted to illustrate the complexity of the issue by highlighting some of the conflicts of interest managers, shareholders and lawmakers face in their day-to-day efforts. As managers, we have an obligation to protect the bottom-line (short-term) whilst at the same time ensuring customer needs are continuing to be met towards the future. All too often, this translates as “doing more with less”.

With shareholder activism on the rise and analysts increasingly making a strong statement for including “soft” things like corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a “hard” metric for predicting companies’ future earnings, the singular short-term focus on ROI seems to be increasingly on its way out.

Finally, as evidenced by a string of well-published bailout efforts around the world, governments demonstrate growing concern about the long-term survival of banks, whilst at the same time passing laws to govern their role in society. In their efforts, they need to reconcile their regulatory objectives with a clear and present need to maintain stability in the global banking system, and the interests of their constituency. Recent events around Swiss banking secrecy can give a taste of the complexity of the issue.

At the end of my presentation, I listed five things that banks could do to prevent brand erosion during the recession. The claim I made was that these five things are simple, but not easy. In other words, whilst they appear to be relatively straightforward at first, actually achieving them takes hard work and significant change on several key levels within the organisation.

Find out what customers value

In any industry, correctly assessing what consumers value is key to success. Whilst apparently simple enough, experience has taught me it takes hard work and constant adaptation: people are not easily put in boxes in order to be analysed. Only through a rigorous segmentation and needs analysis process can marketers hope to understand what it is their clients are really after.

This takes time, effort and money.

Provide great service

Anyone working for an organisation of any significant size will tell you achieving a high level of customer service is one of the hardest things to do, because it touches upon three core elements in any organisation: people, processes and systems. To ensure customers experience levels of service that will make your organisation stand out from the crowd, all three need to be aligned and work towards one common goal: ensuring the customer is delighted.

Admit your mistakes

As human nature goes, admitting our mistakes can be hard – especially when responsibility is shared. For the banking industry, as someone recently succinctly put it to me, “(saying) sorry is not enough”. In order to regain trust with consumers, banks will need to adapt their business practices and adopt a strong code of conduct in order to demonstrate their willingness to “right their wrongs”. Initiating change through industry self-regulation will certainly make a much stronger signal than lawmakers stepping in and forcing banks to comply.

Be authentic

In conjunction with the previous point, if you want to come across as believable, you need to “say it like you mean it”. True authenticity is one of the basic tenets of great leadership, whether applied to individuals or companies. A carefully crafted PR-campaign aimed at polishing up the industry image will fail miserably unless accompanied by a true tone of authenticity by those speaking the words.

And keep your promises. Period.

“A brand is a promise”. Branding is about discovering the essence of an organisation, what stands at its core, and then voicing that to the world.

Anything and everything we do either adds to or detracts from that initial brand promise. Restoring consumer trust in the long-term will depend on our ability to keep that promise, as an industry and as individual companies.

In spite of the unprecedented economic cataclysm we are currently experiencing, one thing is for certain: this too shall pass. I am convinced there is a branding opportunity of tremendous proportions out there for industry players that can win back consumers’ trust, and differentiatie themselves “from the pack”. As evidenced by the recent success of smaller, pure-play private banks in many countries (most notably Switzerland), making sure people feel safe again about where they put their money is key.

For those firms desiring to lead the way into the new era of banking, perhaps “the difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas, but in escaping from old ones” (John Maynard Keynes).