With a trust crisis firmly in the public consciousness, Newsworks insight director Sorcha Garduce explores how nuance and context matter in evaluating what trust really means for consumers
As the news agenda continues to be dominated by trust and its betrayal by politicians, institutions and online misinformation, Garduce explains its importance in consumer behaviour and for brand health.
On how more trust increases a brand’s mental availability, she writes: “It can result in greater market share, greater advertising efficiency, increase the proven effect of greater share of voice on share of market and increase perceived brand differentiation.”
But she also emphasises how trust is “often over-simplified and poorly understood”, pointing out a lack of context in framing consumers’ trust that assumes a perception of sinister intention over a simple lack of familiarity.
To counteract this, Garduce introduces Newsworks’ upcoming research, which demonstrates that trust is formed of four interacting pillars — two based on how well a brand is known (fame and familiarity) and two based on potential “dangers” associated with it (competence and risk).
These pillars create a composite measure more nuanced than self-reporting and give a more accurate idea of how brands and agencies can drive greater trust among consumers.
Using this framework on two automotive brands (one established, another a new market entrant), the model shows the established brand is 1.6x more familiar and 1.1x more famous due to its longstanding market presence and reliability.
The new brand, still building familiarity and perhaps more technologically progressive, is seen as riskier by 1.5x compared to the established brand, bringing its trust score down.
Newsworks will launch the new model framework over the next couple of months for an initial group of 150 brands, before opening up the model to allow every agency and advertiser to understand where their trust level sits with consumers.
Read Sorcha Garduce’s full blog for Campaign here.
