Brands Are the New Politicians And Your Clients Are Voting Every Day

Clients behave less like consumers and more like voting constituents.  Where every purchase is a vote. Every renewal is an endorsement. Every referral is a mandate.

Many brands are losing the marketplace election.

Why is this?

We are living in a loyalty crisis. Skepticism is high. Clients can change brands with zero friction across a wide range of channels. The belief that a good or provocative marketing campaign will fix it” is as outdated in business as it is in politics. Campaigns don’t solve trust deficits.

They expose them.

What’s Changed?


Brands aren’t judged by the stories they tell, they’re judged by their behaviors through every interaction with customers. Marketing is now just one touchpoint in a much larger system of interactions: conversations at point of purchase, exchanges with client service teams, emails, texts, and AI-driven chats

These moments function like policy decisions. They’re where trust is built, or broken.

Marketing should reinforce experience, not compensate for it. When promise and behavior diverge, clients don’t debate it. They vote accordingly.

So, where are brands losing the mandate?


1. Great message, inconsistent delivery.


2. Reacting instead of anticipating.


3. Trying to expand services without earning permission.


4. No structured approach to client interaction.



Additionally, many brands “campaign their customers” without a strategy or on-the-ground plan for governing or continue to govern the same way year after year. Governing requires a shared sense of mission and values that are distilled into actionable on-the-ground actions. It could be the ability for employees to know a brand’s history in relation to its annual goals, or it could be as simple as understanding what to say in an email that imbues the brand’s ethos.

But this isn’t easy to achieve. For large companies, it’s hard to keep the mandate clear across thousands of employees spanning large geographical areas. For small companies, it may be an issue of being spread thin and large workloads for a small workforce.

That’s why we created TrustAQ™


TrustAQ is a strategic behavioral system developed exclusively by The Consort. It provides brands with a consistent, repeatable method to build trust across every client interaction, no matter the size of a brand. It produces reliability clients can feel, insights that deepen relationships, trust signals that reinforce loyalty, and permission-based expansion that deepen trust. 

TrustAQ™ is how brands win the mandate and sustain it.

The mandate goes to the brands that govern well. If your brand is in a constant “election cycle” fighting for relevance, differentiation, or retention, the issue isn’t your marketing or your most recent campaign. It’s an issue of trust belied by a faulty system.

The Consort works with brands to implement a fully customized TrustAQ™ for your organization.  Our goal is that every interaction in your brand becomes a moment of deepening loyalty, value, and growth.

In today’s climate, the brands that win the mandate aren’t the loudest or most provocative; they are brands that have earned and sustained their customer’s trust.