NewsLine Column: A Nation Of Cynics?

With research revealing that a significant number of the UK’s leading brands are less trusted than in previous years, Media Planning Group’s Denise Turner asks whether the growth of advertising and marketing is to blame for creating a nation of cynics…

In last week’s Marketing magazine a summary of the Reader’s Digest annual survey of Britain’s most trusted brands was published. The survey covers a wide range of categories and brands as well as the media and Government institutions. To be trusted is something to which brands and institutions aspire to – the logical assumption is that if people trust a brand then they are more likely to buy that one or at the very least put it higher on their consideration scale than others that they feel less strongly about.

A cursory glance down the summary table of categories and brands that were listed provided an interesting insight into the mindset of today’s British consumer. The scores were given for a range of categories and the top three brands in each and these were then compared to the scores from a year before. For all bar a very few the comparison with last year was negative. This leads us to the conclusion that a significant number of leading brands are less trusted than before.

But why is this? There are a number of possible explanations. It may be that the rise of own-label and less well-known brands in major categories has reduced people’s reliance on branded goods. This could well be the case where product quality is equal to or better than branded equivalents and that quality no longer comes at a premium. Similarly it could be the result of products that promise much but fail to deliver. A key communication point between brands and consumers is the product experience itself. If that does meet expectations then no amount of marketing will restore trust.

I suspect that consumer expectations have risen in any case, which raises the bar for product delivery in the 21st Century. Consumers today are exposed to a far greater abundance of marketing and advertising than their parents were a generation previously – and that very marketing makes promises about quality, convenience and a whole host of other brand properties. Brands are always claiming to be better, less expensive, more satisfying and to give a completely superior experience than their competitors. So it may be that has not always been the case for today’s consumer. And if the product experience has not lived up to expectations then the image of the brand becomes tarnished. Of course that could also have happened for other reasons, which can also reduce the level of trust.

Of course there may well be a very simple explanation for the diminishing trust. Are we just becoming a cynical nation? Is the fact that we are exposed to so much more communications from brands making us inherently disbelieving of the claims that are made? Are we just so advertising and marketing-literate that we take everything that we are told with a pinch of salt?

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