A New Definition Of Trust: Why Its About More Than Ethics
How long has it been since you had anything? It may sound corny, but consumers are faced with some misinformation, even from the highest institutions in the country. Remember the public servant's famous "twisted truth" tweet? As a result, the claim of "a brand you can trust" is generally taken with a grain of salt, unless there is substantial evidence to back it up.
Since trust is hard to earn, therefore it is a valuable commodity. Brands that can claim credibility are more successful than smaller ones. Trust increases brand mental reach, market share, advertising effectiveness, and brand differentiation. And it is more important than ever.
Marketing effectiveness expert Peter Field explains: “The link between brand trust and business success has grown significantly over the past decade. Especially since 2016, high-profile events have begun to undermine their faith in the truth of what they read online."
But how do you know how much trust you have as a brand? And what do you do with this information? What is trust?
definition of trust
You can't measure what you can't define, and the word "trust" can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people. Working with research agencies Newsworks, Map The Territory and Tapestry Research, we recently explored the key elements that make up the concept of "trust", how it relates to advertising (specifically news brand advertising) and helping advertisers to accurately measure and understand consumer confidence. how you can use trust in your brands
The study identified four "pillars" of trust: perceived familiarity, reputation, experience, and risk. Assessing a brand against each of these pillars provides a more accurate measure of trust and, perhaps most importantly, reveals areas where brands need to work to increase trust levels.
“Trust is how you know something personally; product or brand. Trust is built over time and through repeated interactions. The more experience we have with something, the more confident we can be to trust it,” explains Sorcha Garduce, a partner at Newsworks Insights.
"Fame is all about social biases: to what extent does a brand know what it's doing, other people know? The more famous someone is for doing something, the more we trust them. We like to externalize our thinking. Fame makes us lets do that.
"Experience is what tells if a product or a brand is good. The risk is financial: will I get my money's worth? – or social or personal risk. You need to understand what they are to get a general idea of trust.
This more accurate measure of trust explains the current conundrum of why small brands that seem reputable and reputable can't stand up to big companies that don't seem so trustworthy.
“You don't buy from Amazon and trust them to save the planet. It's not their relationship with Amazon," explains Ian Wright, chief executive of research consultancy Tapestry. "I think they will buy me a product tomorrow."
Pull the right levers of trust
Research shows that familiarity and reputation generally enhance the brand, while perceived incompetence and purchase risk affect the brand. High-yield brands have high popularity and reputation, very low volatility, and relatively low risk.
That's why highly ethical brands, even reputable, low-risk ones, still can't handle it. While the 150 brands surveyed by Newsworks had an average trust score of 5.4, new brands with a very popular or low reputation scored just 0.7. Compare this to the brand's 3.3 rating, which is above average for disability, but also popular and highly rated.
Of course, trust can vary from category to category. High-value purchases, such as cars, will have a greater impact on risk than, say, stationery. Benchmarking is also important here.
“It is very important that brands compare themselves with their competitors. And you can see how your confidence level compares to those criteria. Then you can start to break down exactly what happened and develop a trust strategy,” explains Wright.
This strategy goes beyond trust and can affect all areas of the business, such as pricing. "[You wonder] why a competitor can charge so much more than you for a comparable product, but then you realize that their trust score is 20% higher than yours. Then you know you need to increase your trust score to compete on this pricing strategy," he said. yours.
The news boosts confidence
Big brands seem to have an advantage in trust scores, but smaller or lesser-known brands won't stay with low trust scores forever. Trust in the brand is not isolated. In particular, reputation and popularity are fueled by the relationships that brands establish with consumers through communication channels. It just matters where you advertise.
As Garduc explains, news brands in particular are key media partners for marketers. "News sources give you more confidence about misinformation. People want verified, authenticated sources that they know they will get from news brands because they know there will be consequences if they don't."
So it's no surprise that research found a direct link between advertising from trusted news brands and trust scores.
Established brands such as Tesco and Ben & Jerry's, where consumers already have an opinion about their credibility, experienced a 1.3x increase in brand trust when advertising on a trusted news brand site compared to a brand that is not news. However, for new brands, the growth is even higher, with a 1.8x increase in brand trust compared to a non-news site.
Essentially, increased trust not only affects reputation and reputation, but also helps improve experience and risk perception, reducing brand "resistance". Research shows that when consumers advertise in a news brand, they are 30% less likely to question the brand experience and 20% less likely to rate the brand as riskier than those who advertise in a news brand. non-news website.
Similarly, when it comes to perceived product quality, which is not a basis of confidence in and of itself, but which Peter Field identified as a key contributor to profitability, quality perception was 1.6 times higher when consumers saw brand ads. the non-news brand of the news brand.
"Over the last 10 years, trust has gone from the most important factor to the second most important factor after quality, and has become absolutely critical to profitability," Garduc said.
"People have become more skeptical. The message is simple. Brand trust reinforces the perception of quality and these are two things that drive earnings growth."
Additionally, research from the latest version of Field's IPA Database study highlights that one way brands can increase brand trust and quality is by leveraging new brands. Data shows that the business benefits advertisers derive from news brands are stronger than ever.
Download the full report from the Marketing Week knowledge base.
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