Building and Maintaining Trust

Last week I had the opportunity to participate on a media panel for Farm Credit employees in marketing, communications, and public relations for their individual associations across the country. The Farm Credit Reputation Management Program, Senior VP Communications Leigh Picchetti says this annual conference is important to participants.

Picchetti: “I think the value of idea share for its attendees is to understand from peers across the network, what allows them to be successful.

Farm Credit System continues to have strong earnings, reflecting the strong ag economy that benefits their borrow-owners, however, it isn’t resting on its laurels. A system focus is the importance of reputation and brand management in the today’s environment where more and more of the public and elected officials understand less and less about agriculture and the organizations that serve the industry like Farm Credit.

Picchetti: “I think one of the biggest challenges for Farm Credit is that we are involved in the business of agriculture and at our core we are lenders. And right now there is not a lot of consumer and public trust in the banking industry. It is important for us to help our borrow-owners and a lot of the other stakeholders who have an impact on our success to understand just what makes us a little different from a commercial banking industry. To know we are here to serve agriculture through thick and thin, we don’t exit the market when things get tough. And we are not here to make Wall Street investors wealthy, we are here to return value to the borrow-owners who are really are our governance, our foundation and our purpose.”