When you enter Nancy Gilboy's office at the International Visitors Council of Philadelphia, a big poster reminds you of something that's easy to forget in our increasingly electronic universe: "Face-to-face is better than fax-to-fax." This operational value is an important element of IVC's work: to "welcome a stranger, send home a friend." Building trust is implicit in IVC's mission.

When you think about ways to build trust for your brand, three best practices, among others, come to mind:

1. Being reliable. Consumers want to know what to expect, to be able to count on your brand to deliver in a consistent way. If that means that you constantly innovate (think Apple) or constantly introduce new products, services or programs (think Trader Joe's), that's OK, as long as consumers kno...