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Episode 160
The Business Case for Brand Trust
Trust isn't just a feel-good metric. According to a new IPA Effectiveness Data Bank analysis of over 800 campaigns, 93% of campaigns that drive very large trust gains also deliver at least one major business effect.
This week, Elena and Rob are joined by Catrina McAuliffe, SVP of Brand Strategy at Marketing Architects, to dig into what brand trust really means, how to measure it without turning your brand tracker into a "vibes recital," and what marketers get wrong when they try to advertise their way out of a trust deficit.
Topics Covered
• [01:45] IPA data: trust-building campaigns and business impact
• [03:00] What a genuinely good brand measurement system looks like
• [06:00] Why brand health trackers become "vibes recitals"
• [09:00] How to measure trust in two layers
• [13:00] How newer brands vs. comeback brands should approach trust differently
• [18:00] TV as a trust legitimizer and amplifier
• [21:00] Can you advertise your way to trust?
Resources:
2024 MarketingWeek Article
Today's Hosts
Elena Jasper
CMO
Rob DeMars
Chief Product Architect
Catrina McAuliffe
SVP Brand Strategy
Transcript
Rob: It's a little like that used car salesman we've heard about all the time. You start building campaigns that are designed for trust. Doesn't mean you're gonna get it. You actually have to earn it. Branding executed in a TV commercial is a promise you are making to consumers, and as in life, you gotta deliver on it to be trusted.
Elena: I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host, Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect at Misfits and Machines.
Rob: Hey Elena.
Elena: We're joined by Catrina McAuliffe, our SVP of Brand Strategy at Marketing Architects.
Catrina: Thanks for having me.
Elena: Thanks for joining us. We are back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research, and what drives business results. Before we jump in today, I wanted to mention that Marketing Architects is gonna be at the POSSIBLE event in Miami at the end of the month. We're gonna have a fully stocked popcorn booth, as always, and if you're going, we'd love to meet you.
Today we're talking about brand trust, what it really means, how it's measured, how it's built and lost, and why it's a metric marketers should care about. But I'll kick us off as I always do with some research. This episode is actually inspired by a Marketing Week article, which is titled "Campaigns That Drive Trust are More Likely to Deliver Business Impact."
It's based on a new analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Data Bank, which has over 800 for-profit campaigns spanning from 1998 to 2024. And it makes the case that trust isn't just a brand health metric, it's a business metric. And here's what the data shows: 93% of campaigns that deliver very large increases in brand trust also record at least one very large business effect.
Things like sales growth, market share gains, or profit. Compare that to 66% of all campaigns in the data bank. So that means that trust-building campaigns are 41% more likely to drive meaningful business results than the average campaign. Trust-driving campaigns are also more than twice as likely as the data bank average to deliver very large improvements in perceived brand quality and brand loyalty.
They're also more likely to reduce price sensitivity. 11% of trust-building campaigns delivered that outcome versus just 6% across the full data bank, and the trend is moving in the right direction. Since 2012, the most effective trust-building campaigns have seen a 56% increase in the number of very large business effects they deliver. But before we get into trust specifically, Catrina, I wanna take advantage of having you here on the pod because you have a very deep expertise in brand measurement broadly, which is always a big topic on the show. In your opinion, what does a genuinely good brand measurement system look like? If a senior marketer came to you and said, "We really wanna do this right from the jump," where do you start?
Catrina: Yeah, I could go on for hours about this — and it's one of my favorite subjects, as you well know. But I think, bottom line, a good measurement system is multifaceted, and it should be based on beliefs about what brands are and how they grow. Bottom line, a good brand measurement system should tell you whether more buyers are likely to think of you, whether they can easily buy you, and whether those perceptions are turning into penetration and profit.
One element — and only one element — of that measurement system should probably be a brand tracker that can be continuous or point-in-time. But the results need to be put in the context of category spend and overall business performance. You need to look at it holistically over time to understand the impact of brand development on your business.
I want mental availability, which is much more than simple awareness. It incorporates context and buying situations. And I wanna look at that alongside physical availability and penetration. And those three measures, for me, do the heavy lifting. Trust sits alongside them with some measure of value — the kind of "worth paying more for."
As useful friction metrics, but they do not replace those core three. Trust matters to me, but it's not the be-all and end-all. And actually, very often, it's an outcome of some other things. It's not the message in itself. Does that make sense?
Elena: Yeah, that does. I'm curious — how often, when you meet a brand for the first time, do they actually have a system that matches this? And what are some of the mistakes that you might see when you're evaluating how they measure their brand health?
Catrina: I think increasingly amongst our clients, we see some sort of brand metric system along the way. I think unfortunately, though, it often sits in isolation with the research department rather than necessarily with the performance team or the brand team. Everybody is in silos. I think one of the most important things to avoid is that brand living in isolation. But I think often the biggest mistake that particularly market researchers make is brand health turning into kind of a vibes recital. A vibes recital.
But it's not really answering the grown-up question in the room, which is: what should or could we do differently on Monday — next month — to drive better business results?
And really feeding those results into that multi-silo organizational information and dashboard. One of the things, for instance, is that bigger brands naturally look healthier on many attitude scores anyway. It comes with the territory, as it were. So if you stare at something like trust as a metric in isolation, you can confuse being large with being loved more. And so you've gotta look at the holistic message that you're getting out of that tracker. And the real question becomes: what are the signals that are driving metrics up or down and how do we correct for them? For example, simply telling someone you're trustworthy or better doesn't mean you are — the proof is in the brand experience.
It's a little like that used car salesman we've heard about all the time. You start building campaigns that are designed for trust. Doesn't mean you're gonna get it. You actually have to earn it. Branding executed in a TV commercial is a promise you are making to consumers, and as in life, you gotta deliver on it to be trusted.
Elena: You mentioned that one of the mistakes is if the brand tracker lives in isolation and it's not connected to the business — I think that's where tension can come up. 'Cause brand teams might be measuring one thing, and if they're not connecting it, then finance and leadership might not see the value.
So how do you bridge that gap between marketers and senior leadership when you're measuring brand?
Catrina: I think it's really trying to encourage that collaboration across those different groups. And with senior leadership in particular, we try to translate brand language into economic language. Not simply saying to them "trust is up," but really talking about the consequences of what is, or what might happen, as a result of that trust going up. And looking at it again — it goes back to the context. Frequently, attitude changes happen together and they follow experience. They don't lead it. And I think if you understand that, then what you can say is: what we hope we're gonna look for when we see the holistic picture of this data is that we're gonna see something like trust is up, familiarity and consideration is also up, which means acquisition is improving, repeat buying and loyalty is looking better.
And we hope to see that translated into revenue. And we also hope to see signals that price sensitivity looks better, and in turn, we're gonna be driving revenue. Now, it depends on the category as to whether or not that will be leading or lagging, but in general, you're gonna see those pre-engagement signals happening sooner. The attitude shifts happening later. And the revenue following along with those attitude shifts.
I think that the really great thing about the latest IPA work is it's super useful because it gives that argument some backbone. Campaigns with very large trust gains are far more likely to deliver major business effect. But it's like the chicken and the egg. Which one actually came first?
Barclays Bank is a good example. It's one of the ones that's often quoted, 'cause after its trust problems, they developed purpose-led work that drove over five times as much trust and consideration as earlier product-focused campaigns — with the profits that came along. But it's not necessarily that trust going up is leading everything else.
It's like you've gotta look at those leading and lagging indicators. Make sense?
Elena: Yeah. The chicken or the egg is a good point. Is it the campaign driving the trust, or is brand trust just going up and then your campaigns are performing better as a result? I wanted to talk about trust measurement in particular — how do you actually measure brand trust and track it over time and make that actionable for a marketer?
Catrina: Again, it goes back to not looking at it in isolation. Personally, I like to measure trust in two layers. There's what people see — what people say. So yes, it's worth asking, you know, "How much do you trust this brand?" or "This brand is trustworthy" — however you care to term that in your tracker. But secondly, it's like: what are they willing to forgive?
And actually looking at those behavioral metrics. So if you pair that trust metric along with a review of complaints, returns, service recovery — you review social media sentiment over time, and then you pair that with repeat purchase and willingness to pay a little bit more — you're gonna end up with that more holistic picture.
I think Domino's is an example I like because they did rebuild trust by being transparent. They got themselves into a lot of problems. They needed to save their brand. They made their criticism very public. They changed their pizza, they supported that with a campaign — it actually drove same-store sales up by about 9.9, 10%.
That's my kind of trust metric. It's a belief that shows up in behavior. It doesn't move by itself. I think it's interesting if you actually look at what Burger King's just done. We'll see what happens now. You know, they've dethroned the king.
They're doing this huge revamp of their burgers, the inside of their restaurants. It's going to really be interesting to see — as they publicly acknowledge their mistakes — what happens with that brand moving forward?
Elena: That's good advice — not to just ask "is this brand trustworthy" on its own, but how do we pair that with other metrics? And I would think that the business would appreciate that as well. Rob, one thing I was curious about is: for brands that maybe don't have a large-scale tracker set up yet, or maybe they don't have enough data — have you ever seen signals in creative testing, or maybe in how audiences respond to a certain spot, that could give you a read on whether something is helping to build trust?
Rob: Yeah, I mean there's definitely a lot — and I know Catrina knows a ton about this as well — but earlier Catrina picked on used car salespeople and so I'm gonna double down on that. Sorry. But when you look at used car people, one of their tactics is that they just bombard you with information. They do what's called cognitive friction, right? And people don't trust that. People don't trust brands that they have to translate. So trust comes from clarity. So how are you looking at your message strategy? Just making sure it's really clear.
So you're not making your customer nervous, you're not repelling them with too much sales jargon, 'cause they're just not gonna trust that at the end of the day. But that's a high-level example. But I also think there are very tactical ones. If you look at simple data metrics like bounce rate on your website.
If you have a message out there where you're making a lot of lofty creative promises — you're promising the moon — and then you get to the landing page and it's a lead gen form, you just broke the trust. You broke the contract that you started to have with the consumer: "Here's this great experience, here's what we're gonna do."
And then you don't pay it off on the back end. I think you also said that, Catrina, earlier. I think it's a brilliant point. Trust is very outcome-based, and so there are just so many of these things that we do along the way that are gonna ultimately pay off that trust at the end of the day.
Elena: Yeah, it's funny. It's almost like how you tell if a human is trustworthy — if someone's going on and on about how great they are, you're like, "Something's a little fishy here." So Catrina, you mentioned Burger King, and I was wondering: for brands that feel like maybe they're a little behind on trust — they might be a challenger brand, maybe they're a newer brand, maybe they've had some public missteps —
where would you advise they start with building trust?
Catrina: I think the real challenge is diagnosis. I think you have to diagnose the source and the scale of the issues. Like for a newer brand, they may not have any — it's just that some people simply don't know one thing about them. So that's a very different brand from one where you actually had trust and you lost it.
So I think you've gotta diagnose it. I think for newer brands, I definitely begin with: where are the category entry points, the category white space, and how does that all align with the brand strengths and the vision of what that brand wants to do? That to me is a little more straightforward — you gotta position it right, you've gotta be distinctive, you gotta do all those other things. But brands making a comeback, I think it's a lot more of a challenge because I think there's this careful balancing act. Brand strengths remain important, but you have to be aware of the pain points. To Rob's point earlier, if you protest too much about those pain points, and you promise the earth and you don't deliver it, you're not gonna win that trust back.
So it is this careful balancing act. Where do you start and what do you lean into? And in some cases you're gonna lean into the things that got customers upset in the first place. On the other hand, you're gonna smooth those out if it wasn't too major. And you're gonna talk about the brand strengths.
Get people to retry the brand and they're actually gonna come back to it. If the trust issues stem from a really bad misstep — or series of them — they're not gonna be solved by a manifesto-type approach full of good intentions but no material proof of change. People aren't that dumb.
Tesco had a great line, which I think so many other people have echoed, which is: you can't advertise your way out of problems you've behaved your way into.
Elena: ...
Rob: Wow.
Catrina: Isn't that great? I love it.
It's just not gonna happen. KFC's FCK apology during the chicken shortage worked for the same reason. They owned the mistake — in the same way that Burger King have just done. They pointed people to real store updates and they sat alongside a very unsexy, unglamorous operational fix. Humor helps. You can get people to laugh about it, but humor can't repair what's just a well — shrug — and kind of like put up with it. And certainly telling people to just "trust me," going back to the used car salesman, isn't gonna help if the underlying issues are not solved. That's putting lipstick on the proverbial pig.
Elena: This might be a bad question, but I feel like when you bring up brand trust, marketers are generally like, "Yes. That's so important." Do you ever think trust is overrated in a certain category, or is there a case where it's maybe not as important for one brand versus another?
Catrina: I think trust can be miscast. It's a little word that covers a whole lot of stuff, and I think you have to understand what it means within the category and to the brand. In a low-risk category, it's hygiene rather than hero. Nobody holds a candlelit vigil over their chewing gum. It really, it's not that important. I'm sorry, Wrigley's, but it's really not. But even there, if you think about it, if you know the name and you trust it — it removes hesitation, it supports pricing, and it makes broad-reach advertising work harder. Regardless of category, it is important, and there are definitely some categories where trust is definitively more important than others.
But then it's interesting, 'cause generally if you think about financial services or OTC drugs — it's a cost of entry more than a distinctive or differentiating asset. You can't really say "trust us more" than another brand that's been around for just as long. It's not to say that building trust in any category is not important.
It is. I think you just have to recognize it means very different things and you build it in very different ways. I do think that IPA report is a very good corrective because the strongest trust-building campaigns — and I think it's a misnomer to just call them trust campaigns, 'cause I'm not sure that's what their intent was.
That's what they got. They built trust. But I think they definitely outperform on a number of really practical things like acquisition, sales, share, and profit. So super important. But it is important to remember that the strongest trust-building campaigns are not actually talking about trust. They're addressing very real human truths.
They're making emotional connections, and they're building or rebuilding brand misperceptions. It's not like the brief is "build trust." The brief is "fix the problem, connect with the people, tell them about us" — whatever it is. So I think it just covers a multitude of sins, and I think if anything, it might make marketers lazy going, "Oh, just build me a trust-building campaign."
Elena: Yeah, that's a good point. It'd be interesting to look at the campaigns they used for that study — and yeah, I bet none of them are saying, "Trust us, please."
Catrina: That creative brief does not go out for the most part and say, "Build trust."
Elena: Yeah. So we are a television agency, so I have to ask this. I was reviewing some Edelman data. Edelman posts this every year, and they were pointing to how earned media and independent voices are among the most credible sources for building trust in a brand. So Catrina, where do you think paid advertising — like specifically television — fits in the trust-building ecosystem?
Is there that inherent credibility that comes with showing up in a media environment like television?
Catrina: I think there definitely is. I would put TV in the legitimizer and amplifier bucket. TV's a microphone, but it's not a morality transplant. It does not grant you morality or purity. Which is a strong point — just 'cause it says so on TV doesn't mean it's going to work.
It does make a brand feel more established 'cause the context is regulated and professionally produced. Customers also know that TV's expensive, and it legitimizes those companies who can afford the investment, without a doubt. And Thinkbox reports ads in that kind of environment are seen as 44% more trustworthy than those in user-generated or unregulated environments.
So that's a huge advantage. And from our experience, we see trust scores rise almost universally across almost all our brands who start running TV for the first time, when we start seeing the upper-funnel metrics increase. Now that does take time, and it happens after we see other mid-funnel brand pre-engagement signals.
So yes. Amplifier, not moral compass, as it were.
Rob: No, that makes total sense. It is, at the end of the day, a flex, though, for sure. That's why people buy Super Bowl spots — and if you've seen a brand that's been on television versus a brand that has a small banner ad, you're probably gonna go, okay, the TV brand had to go through some hoops and some level of success to be there.
But I also wonder if that's a bit of a biased perspective coming from my generation, which really grew up with TV being the end-all-be-all. And it's still this magnificent platform, but there's so many other options now to establish trust as well.
But it's also one of the best platforms for building mental availability. And in order to establish trust, you need to establish mental availability and be consistent with all of your assets and whatnot. And it's harder to do that with any other channel other than TV. That's where it really shines.
Catrina: What's really funny though, Rob — you say that — and it's even amongst this generation: the Super Bowl is still super effective. I was just going over the CES data and it's incredible, the legitimacy that those spots carry with them still — because of the price tag, I have a feeling.
Elena: Yeah, so you're saying, Catrina, even the younger generation still sees something like the Super Bowl as a legitimizer. Here's the big question of this episode: do we think you can advertise your way to trust? Does advertising only amplify trust that's already been earned through something like experience and behavior?
Catrina: Well, I'll be the spoiler here. My view is that advertising is an accelerant — if, and this is a big if — the business has genuinely changed. It helps the market notice faster. Domino's is a positive case. The advertising was believable 'cause the pizza had changed first. Volkswagen is a cautionary tale — and once regulators found about 590,000 US diesel vehicles fitted with defective and deceptive devices,
no amount of lovely film craft was gonna make that trust gap look imaginary. You can advertise your way to fame, but trust is a little less gullible, as they say. And I think it was Bill Bernbach, of DDB fame, who said a great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster — it'll get more people to know it's bad.
And the same is definitely true for a trust score. So I believe trust must be earned. Advertising is a megaphone, which can help or hinder depending on whether or not you've earned it.
Elena: Did Catrina steal your line, Rob?
Rob: Well, here's what's so funny — I always quote David Ogilvy on this. 'Cause you know, he is just the OG, right? He said something along the lines of, "A great ad can sell a bad product once." That was his point.
And I'm like, I quote David Ogilvy way too much. So I went online to find a better one, and sure enough it was Bill Bernbach. Like, oh — that's a mic dropper. I'm just going to use that one. "A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster." Dang. All right. You know, as a tribute to DDB going away, I thought it'd be a good final salute.
Hey, great minds think alike.
Elena: That's exactly what I was gonna say. It sounds a lot better coming from you anyway. Catrina, one thing I'm curious about is familiarity. 'Cause advertising can help build familiarity — and doesn't that build trust? If I'm more familiar with someone — something — I'm more likely to trust it. Do you think there's a loose connection there?
Catrina: Yes, it does build familiarity. The more familiar — as long as it's good — you build trust. But the more familiar you become with all the problems, not so much.
Elena: So it feels like the right strategy is: if you have a trust issue, first address and solve why did this happen — diagnose it — and then advertising can be a very effective way to amplify and build up your trust. But if you don't have the core experience addressed — whatever happened — if you don't address that, then you're not gonna be able to advertise your way to trust. Alright, to wrap us up here, thinking about our personal lives: what is one brand, product, or service that has never let you down — one that you trust completely — and what do you think they've done to earn it? And Catrina, let's start with you.
Catrina: You know, this one was super tough for me 'cause I think it's changed. I'll steal Rob's thunder, but it's like — it used to be Apple, but then, you know — not anymore.
Just saying. But anyway, so I was actually thinking — for me, I think it's Jeep. We have always had Jeeps as a family.
We run 'em and run 'em until they die. They don't let us down. They're pretty basic — it's really not a flamboyant answer. But I think the point is, trust is a little — I don't know — neutral, beige, in the best possible way. Jeep starts, works, keeps on working. Doesn't make my life harder. And in branding terms, it's not really boring — it's the safety moat around the brand.
Rob: But as a Wrangler lover, wouldn't you also just say the brand of Jeep is also not embarrassing to say, "I have a Jeep"? Jeeps are cool. Jeep's a good brand. So the brand plays into that kind of durability.
Catrina: Oh, definitely. Definitely. I mean, I don't feel awful — and it's not like saying "I have a BMW," for instance, which is kind of a little more status driven. But it's just like, right — this is functional, this is useful.
It's like, yeah. Jeep. Yeah.
Elena: What about you?
Rob: Gosh. For me — I've brought it up on this podcast before — I have so much love and trust for Mr. Car Wash. I am a Mr. Car Wash die-hard. I have been a loyal customer for decades. They're consistent. And they're experienced. We could be on a road trip going through Denver and the Mr. Car Wash delivers. I know their employees are like part owners, but you can tell — they feel great, they're happy.
The only thing that hasn't been consistent is they got rid of their coffee during COVID and it never came back. And I miss getting my cup of coffee as part of my experience. But I just love them.
Elena: They're probably like, "We saved a lot of money not doing this. We're not bringing it back."
This one was hard. I honestly feel like a lot of brands have kind of let me down in some way, so it's hard to pick what is the most trustworthy — but for me it's Sleep Number.
Catrina: I love Sleep Number. I've had a Sleep Number bed my whole life, and the store experience is great. I've always had very consistent delivery from Sleep Number. They've even helped me when I moved — like, how do you break down the bed and move it? And yeah, that's a brand that I don't know why I would ever buy from another one. And I think a lot of it comes down to trust in the product. Yeah, and good delivery. Like you sleep well at night.
Elena: There you go.
Rob: You can see how important that is in the mattress category right now, because it has been one that's been disruptive over the last 15 years by very price-sensitive, quick-delivery products that are supposedly as good as all of the premium brands. So Sleep Number's done a great job in continuing to differentiate themselves both in quality and in technology — and, like you said, customer experience.
Catrina: Definitely.
Elena: Well, Catrina, this was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us.
Catrina: Oh, thank you for having me. It was fun.
Rob: Great stuff.
Episode 160
The Business Case for Brand Trust
Trust isn't just a feel-good metric. According to a new IPA Effectiveness Data Bank analysis of over 800 campaigns, 93% of campaigns that drive very large trust gains also deliver at least one major business effect.
This week, Elena and Rob are joined by Catrina McAuliffe, SVP of Brand Strategy at Marketing Architects, to dig into what brand trust really means, how to measure it without turning your brand tracker into a "vibes recital," and what marketers get wrong when they try to advertise their way out of a trust deficit.
Topics Covered
• [01:45] IPA data: trust-building campaigns and business impact
• [03:00] What a genuinely good brand measurement system looks like
• [06:00] Why brand health trackers become "vibes recitals"
• [09:00] How to measure trust in two layers
• [13:00] How newer brands vs. comeback brands should approach trust differently
• [18:00] TV as a trust legitimizer and amplifier
• [21:00] Can you advertise your way to trust?
Resources:
2024 MarketingWeek Article
Today's Hosts
Elena Jasper
CMO
Rob DeMars
Chief Product Architect
Catrina McAuliffe
SVP Brand Strategy
Subscribe on
Enjoy this episode? Leave us a review.
Transcript
Rob: It's a little like that used car salesman we've heard about all the time. You start building campaigns that are designed for trust. Doesn't mean you're gonna get it. You actually have to earn it. Branding executed in a TV commercial is a promise you are making to consumers, and as in life, you gotta deliver on it to be trusted.
Elena: I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host, Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect at Misfits and Machines.
Rob: Hey Elena.
Elena: We're joined by Catrina McAuliffe, our SVP of Brand Strategy at Marketing Architects.
Catrina: Thanks for having me.
Elena: Thanks for joining us. We are back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research, and what drives business results. Before we jump in today, I wanted to mention that Marketing Architects is gonna be at the POSSIBLE event in Miami at the end of the month. We're gonna have a fully stocked popcorn booth, as always, and if you're going, we'd love to meet you.
Today we're talking about brand trust, what it really means, how it's measured, how it's built and lost, and why it's a metric marketers should care about. But I'll kick us off as I always do with some research. This episode is actually inspired by a Marketing Week article, which is titled "Campaigns That Drive Trust are More Likely to Deliver Business Impact."
It's based on a new analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Data Bank, which has over 800 for-profit campaigns spanning from 1998 to 2024. And it makes the case that trust isn't just a brand health metric, it's a business metric. And here's what the data shows: 93% of campaigns that deliver very large increases in brand trust also record at least one very large business effect.
Things like sales growth, market share gains, or profit. Compare that to 66% of all campaigns in the data bank. So that means that trust-building campaigns are 41% more likely to drive meaningful business results than the average campaign. Trust-driving campaigns are also more than twice as likely as the data bank average to deliver very large improvements in perceived brand quality and brand loyalty.
They're also more likely to reduce price sensitivity. 11% of trust-building campaigns delivered that outcome versus just 6% across the full data bank, and the trend is moving in the right direction. Since 2012, the most effective trust-building campaigns have seen a 56% increase in the number of very large business effects they deliver. But before we get into trust specifically, Catrina, I wanna take advantage of having you here on the pod because you have a very deep expertise in brand measurement broadly, which is always a big topic on the show. In your opinion, what does a genuinely good brand measurement system look like? If a senior marketer came to you and said, "We really wanna do this right from the jump," where do you start?
Catrina: Yeah, I could go on for hours about this — and it's one of my favorite subjects, as you well know. But I think, bottom line, a good measurement system is multifaceted, and it should be based on beliefs about what brands are and how they grow. Bottom line, a good brand measurement system should tell you whether more buyers are likely to think of you, whether they can easily buy you, and whether those perceptions are turning into penetration and profit.
One element — and only one element — of that measurement system should probably be a brand tracker that can be continuous or point-in-time. But the results need to be put in the context of category spend and overall business performance. You need to look at it holistically over time to understand the impact of brand development on your business.
I want mental availability, which is much more than simple awareness. It incorporates context and buying situations. And I wanna look at that alongside physical availability and penetration. And those three measures, for me, do the heavy lifting. Trust sits alongside them with some measure of value — the kind of "worth paying more for."
As useful friction metrics, but they do not replace those core three. Trust matters to me, but it's not the be-all and end-all. And actually, very often, it's an outcome of some other things. It's not the message in itself. Does that make sense?
Elena: Yeah, that does. I'm curious — how often, when you meet a brand for the first time, do they actually have a system that matches this? And what are some of the mistakes that you might see when you're evaluating how they measure their brand health?
Catrina: I think increasingly amongst our clients, we see some sort of brand metric system along the way. I think unfortunately, though, it often sits in isolation with the research department rather than necessarily with the performance team or the brand team. Everybody is in silos. I think one of the most important things to avoid is that brand living in isolation. But I think often the biggest mistake that particularly market researchers make is brand health turning into kind of a vibes recital. A vibes recital.
But it's not really answering the grown-up question in the room, which is: what should or could we do differently on Monday — next month — to drive better business results?
And really feeding those results into that multi-silo organizational information and dashboard. One of the things, for instance, is that bigger brands naturally look healthier on many attitude scores anyway. It comes with the territory, as it were. So if you stare at something like trust as a metric in isolation, you can confuse being large with being loved more. And so you've gotta look at the holistic message that you're getting out of that tracker. And the real question becomes: what are the signals that are driving metrics up or down and how do we correct for them? For example, simply telling someone you're trustworthy or better doesn't mean you are — the proof is in the brand experience.
It's a little like that used car salesman we've heard about all the time. You start building campaigns that are designed for trust. Doesn't mean you're gonna get it. You actually have to earn it. Branding executed in a TV commercial is a promise you are making to consumers, and as in life, you gotta deliver on it to be trusted.
Elena: You mentioned that one of the mistakes is if the brand tracker lives in isolation and it's not connected to the business — I think that's where tension can come up. 'Cause brand teams might be measuring one thing, and if they're not connecting it, then finance and leadership might not see the value.
So how do you bridge that gap between marketers and senior leadership when you're measuring brand?
Catrina: I think it's really trying to encourage that collaboration across those different groups. And with senior leadership in particular, we try to translate brand language into economic language. Not simply saying to them "trust is up," but really talking about the consequences of what is, or what might happen, as a result of that trust going up. And looking at it again — it goes back to the context. Frequently, attitude changes happen together and they follow experience. They don't lead it. And I think if you understand that, then what you can say is: what we hope we're gonna look for when we see the holistic picture of this data is that we're gonna see something like trust is up, familiarity and consideration is also up, which means acquisition is improving, repeat buying and loyalty is looking better.
And we hope to see that translated into revenue. And we also hope to see signals that price sensitivity looks better, and in turn, we're gonna be driving revenue. Now, it depends on the category as to whether or not that will be leading or lagging, but in general, you're gonna see those pre-engagement signals happening sooner. The attitude shifts happening later. And the revenue following along with those attitude shifts.
I think that the really great thing about the latest IPA work is it's super useful because it gives that argument some backbone. Campaigns with very large trust gains are far more likely to deliver major business effect. But it's like the chicken and the egg. Which one actually came first?
Barclays Bank is a good example. It's one of the ones that's often quoted, 'cause after its trust problems, they developed purpose-led work that drove over five times as much trust and consideration as earlier product-focused campaigns — with the profits that came along. But it's not necessarily that trust going up is leading everything else.
It's like you've gotta look at those leading and lagging indicators. Make sense?
Elena: Yeah. The chicken or the egg is a good point. Is it the campaign driving the trust, or is brand trust just going up and then your campaigns are performing better as a result? I wanted to talk about trust measurement in particular — how do you actually measure brand trust and track it over time and make that actionable for a marketer?
Catrina: Again, it goes back to not looking at it in isolation. Personally, I like to measure trust in two layers. There's what people see — what people say. So yes, it's worth asking, you know, "How much do you trust this brand?" or "This brand is trustworthy" — however you care to term that in your tracker. But secondly, it's like: what are they willing to forgive?
And actually looking at those behavioral metrics. So if you pair that trust metric along with a review of complaints, returns, service recovery — you review social media sentiment over time, and then you pair that with repeat purchase and willingness to pay a little bit more — you're gonna end up with that more holistic picture.
I think Domino's is an example I like because they did rebuild trust by being transparent. They got themselves into a lot of problems. They needed to save their brand. They made their criticism very public. They changed their pizza, they supported that with a campaign — it actually drove same-store sales up by about 9.9, 10%.
That's my kind of trust metric. It's a belief that shows up in behavior. It doesn't move by itself. I think it's interesting if you actually look at what Burger King's just done. We'll see what happens now. You know, they've dethroned the king.
They're doing this huge revamp of their burgers, the inside of their restaurants. It's going to really be interesting to see — as they publicly acknowledge their mistakes — what happens with that brand moving forward?
Elena: That's good advice — not to just ask "is this brand trustworthy" on its own, but how do we pair that with other metrics? And I would think that the business would appreciate that as well. Rob, one thing I was curious about is: for brands that maybe don't have a large-scale tracker set up yet, or maybe they don't have enough data — have you ever seen signals in creative testing, or maybe in how audiences respond to a certain spot, that could give you a read on whether something is helping to build trust?
Rob: Yeah, I mean there's definitely a lot — and I know Catrina knows a ton about this as well — but earlier Catrina picked on used car salespeople and so I'm gonna double down on that. Sorry. But when you look at used car people, one of their tactics is that they just bombard you with information. They do what's called cognitive friction, right? And people don't trust that. People don't trust brands that they have to translate. So trust comes from clarity. So how are you looking at your message strategy? Just making sure it's really clear.
So you're not making your customer nervous, you're not repelling them with too much sales jargon, 'cause they're just not gonna trust that at the end of the day. But that's a high-level example. But I also think there are very tactical ones. If you look at simple data metrics like bounce rate on your website.
If you have a message out there where you're making a lot of lofty creative promises — you're promising the moon — and then you get to the landing page and it's a lead gen form, you just broke the trust. You broke the contract that you started to have with the consumer: "Here's this great experience, here's what we're gonna do."
And then you don't pay it off on the back end. I think you also said that, Catrina, earlier. I think it's a brilliant point. Trust is very outcome-based, and so there are just so many of these things that we do along the way that are gonna ultimately pay off that trust at the end of the day.
Elena: Yeah, it's funny. It's almost like how you tell if a human is trustworthy — if someone's going on and on about how great they are, you're like, "Something's a little fishy here." So Catrina, you mentioned Burger King, and I was wondering: for brands that feel like maybe they're a little behind on trust — they might be a challenger brand, maybe they're a newer brand, maybe they've had some public missteps —
where would you advise they start with building trust?
Catrina: I think the real challenge is diagnosis. I think you have to diagnose the source and the scale of the issues. Like for a newer brand, they may not have any — it's just that some people simply don't know one thing about them. So that's a very different brand from one where you actually had trust and you lost it.
So I think you've gotta diagnose it. I think for newer brands, I definitely begin with: where are the category entry points, the category white space, and how does that all align with the brand strengths and the vision of what that brand wants to do? That to me is a little more straightforward — you gotta position it right, you've gotta be distinctive, you gotta do all those other things. But brands making a comeback, I think it's a lot more of a challenge because I think there's this careful balancing act. Brand strengths remain important, but you have to be aware of the pain points. To Rob's point earlier, if you protest too much about those pain points, and you promise the earth and you don't deliver it, you're not gonna win that trust back.
So it is this careful balancing act. Where do you start and what do you lean into? And in some cases you're gonna lean into the things that got customers upset in the first place. On the other hand, you're gonna smooth those out if it wasn't too major. And you're gonna talk about the brand strengths.
Get people to retry the brand and they're actually gonna come back to it. If the trust issues stem from a really bad misstep — or series of them — they're not gonna be solved by a manifesto-type approach full of good intentions but no material proof of change. People aren't that dumb.
Tesco had a great line, which I think so many other people have echoed, which is: you can't advertise your way out of problems you've behaved your way into.
Elena: ...
Rob: Wow.
Catrina: Isn't that great? I love it.
It's just not gonna happen. KFC's FCK apology during the chicken shortage worked for the same reason. They owned the mistake — in the same way that Burger King have just done. They pointed people to real store updates and they sat alongside a very unsexy, unglamorous operational fix. Humor helps. You can get people to laugh about it, but humor can't repair what's just a well — shrug — and kind of like put up with it. And certainly telling people to just "trust me," going back to the used car salesman, isn't gonna help if the underlying issues are not solved. That's putting lipstick on the proverbial pig.
Elena: This might be a bad question, but I feel like when you bring up brand trust, marketers are generally like, "Yes. That's so important." Do you ever think trust is overrated in a certain category, or is there a case where it's maybe not as important for one brand versus another?
Catrina: I think trust can be miscast. It's a little word that covers a whole lot of stuff, and I think you have to understand what it means within the category and to the brand. In a low-risk category, it's hygiene rather than hero. Nobody holds a candlelit vigil over their chewing gum. It really, it's not that important. I'm sorry, Wrigley's, but it's really not. But even there, if you think about it, if you know the name and you trust it — it removes hesitation, it supports pricing, and it makes broad-reach advertising work harder. Regardless of category, it is important, and there are definitely some categories where trust is definitively more important than others.
But then it's interesting, 'cause generally if you think about financial services or OTC drugs — it's a cost of entry more than a distinctive or differentiating asset. You can't really say "trust us more" than another brand that's been around for just as long. It's not to say that building trust in any category is not important.
It is. I think you just have to recognize it means very different things and you build it in very different ways. I do think that IPA report is a very good corrective because the strongest trust-building campaigns — and I think it's a misnomer to just call them trust campaigns, 'cause I'm not sure that's what their intent was.
That's what they got. They built trust. But I think they definitely outperform on a number of really practical things like acquisition, sales, share, and profit. So super important. But it is important to remember that the strongest trust-building campaigns are not actually talking about trust. They're addressing very real human truths.
They're making emotional connections, and they're building or rebuilding brand misperceptions. It's not like the brief is "build trust." The brief is "fix the problem, connect with the people, tell them about us" — whatever it is. So I think it just covers a multitude of sins, and I think if anything, it might make marketers lazy going, "Oh, just build me a trust-building campaign."
Elena: Yeah, that's a good point. It'd be interesting to look at the campaigns they used for that study — and yeah, I bet none of them are saying, "Trust us, please."
Catrina: That creative brief does not go out for the most part and say, "Build trust."
Elena: Yeah. So we are a television agency, so I have to ask this. I was reviewing some Edelman data. Edelman posts this every year, and they were pointing to how earned media and independent voices are among the most credible sources for building trust in a brand. So Catrina, where do you think paid advertising — like specifically television — fits in the trust-building ecosystem?
Is there that inherent credibility that comes with showing up in a media environment like television?
Catrina: I think there definitely is. I would put TV in the legitimizer and amplifier bucket. TV's a microphone, but it's not a morality transplant. It does not grant you morality or purity. Which is a strong point — just 'cause it says so on TV doesn't mean it's going to work.
It does make a brand feel more established 'cause the context is regulated and professionally produced. Customers also know that TV's expensive, and it legitimizes those companies who can afford the investment, without a doubt. And Thinkbox reports ads in that kind of environment are seen as 44% more trustworthy than those in user-generated or unregulated environments.
So that's a huge advantage. And from our experience, we see trust scores rise almost universally across almost all our brands who start running TV for the first time, when we start seeing the upper-funnel metrics increase. Now that does take time, and it happens after we see other mid-funnel brand pre-engagement signals.
So yes. Amplifier, not moral compass, as it were.
Rob: No, that makes total sense. It is, at the end of the day, a flex, though, for sure. That's why people buy Super Bowl spots — and if you've seen a brand that's been on television versus a brand that has a small banner ad, you're probably gonna go, okay, the TV brand had to go through some hoops and some level of success to be there.
But I also wonder if that's a bit of a biased perspective coming from my generation, which really grew up with TV being the end-all-be-all. And it's still this magnificent platform, but there's so many other options now to establish trust as well.
But it's also one of the best platforms for building mental availability. And in order to establish trust, you need to establish mental availability and be consistent with all of your assets and whatnot. And it's harder to do that with any other channel other than TV. That's where it really shines.
Catrina: What's really funny though, Rob — you say that — and it's even amongst this generation: the Super Bowl is still super effective. I was just going over the CES data and it's incredible, the legitimacy that those spots carry with them still — because of the price tag, I have a feeling.
Elena: Yeah, so you're saying, Catrina, even the younger generation still sees something like the Super Bowl as a legitimizer. Here's the big question of this episode: do we think you can advertise your way to trust? Does advertising only amplify trust that's already been earned through something like experience and behavior?
Catrina: Well, I'll be the spoiler here. My view is that advertising is an accelerant — if, and this is a big if — the business has genuinely changed. It helps the market notice faster. Domino's is a positive case. The advertising was believable 'cause the pizza had changed first. Volkswagen is a cautionary tale — and once regulators found about 590,000 US diesel vehicles fitted with defective and deceptive devices,
no amount of lovely film craft was gonna make that trust gap look imaginary. You can advertise your way to fame, but trust is a little less gullible, as they say. And I think it was Bill Bernbach, of DDB fame, who said a great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster — it'll get more people to know it's bad.
And the same is definitely true for a trust score. So I believe trust must be earned. Advertising is a megaphone, which can help or hinder depending on whether or not you've earned it.
Elena: Did Catrina steal your line, Rob?
Rob: Well, here's what's so funny — I always quote David Ogilvy on this. 'Cause you know, he is just the OG, right? He said something along the lines of, "A great ad can sell a bad product once." That was his point.
And I'm like, I quote David Ogilvy way too much. So I went online to find a better one, and sure enough it was Bill Bernbach. Like, oh — that's a mic dropper. I'm just going to use that one. "A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster." Dang. All right. You know, as a tribute to DDB going away, I thought it'd be a good final salute.
Hey, great minds think alike.
Elena: That's exactly what I was gonna say. It sounds a lot better coming from you anyway. Catrina, one thing I'm curious about is familiarity. 'Cause advertising can help build familiarity — and doesn't that build trust? If I'm more familiar with someone — something — I'm more likely to trust it. Do you think there's a loose connection there?
Catrina: Yes, it does build familiarity. The more familiar — as long as it's good — you build trust. But the more familiar you become with all the problems, not so much.
Elena: So it feels like the right strategy is: if you have a trust issue, first address and solve why did this happen — diagnose it — and then advertising can be a very effective way to amplify and build up your trust. But if you don't have the core experience addressed — whatever happened — if you don't address that, then you're not gonna be able to advertise your way to trust. Alright, to wrap us up here, thinking about our personal lives: what is one brand, product, or service that has never let you down — one that you trust completely — and what do you think they've done to earn it? And Catrina, let's start with you.
Catrina: You know, this one was super tough for me 'cause I think it's changed. I'll steal Rob's thunder, but it's like — it used to be Apple, but then, you know — not anymore.
Just saying. But anyway, so I was actually thinking — for me, I think it's Jeep. We have always had Jeeps as a family.
We run 'em and run 'em until they die. They don't let us down. They're pretty basic — it's really not a flamboyant answer. But I think the point is, trust is a little — I don't know — neutral, beige, in the best possible way. Jeep starts, works, keeps on working. Doesn't make my life harder. And in branding terms, it's not really boring — it's the safety moat around the brand.
Rob: But as a Wrangler lover, wouldn't you also just say the brand of Jeep is also not embarrassing to say, "I have a Jeep"? Jeeps are cool. Jeep's a good brand. So the brand plays into that kind of durability.
Catrina: Oh, definitely. Definitely. I mean, I don't feel awful — and it's not like saying "I have a BMW," for instance, which is kind of a little more status driven. But it's just like, right — this is functional, this is useful.
It's like, yeah. Jeep. Yeah.
Elena: What about you?
Rob: Gosh. For me — I've brought it up on this podcast before — I have so much love and trust for Mr. Car Wash. I am a Mr. Car Wash die-hard. I have been a loyal customer for decades. They're consistent. And they're experienced. We could be on a road trip going through Denver and the Mr. Car Wash delivers. I know their employees are like part owners, but you can tell — they feel great, they're happy.
The only thing that hasn't been consistent is they got rid of their coffee during COVID and it never came back. And I miss getting my cup of coffee as part of my experience. But I just love them.
Elena: They're probably like, "We saved a lot of money not doing this. We're not bringing it back."
This one was hard. I honestly feel like a lot of brands have kind of let me down in some way, so it's hard to pick what is the most trustworthy — but for me it's Sleep Number.
Catrina: I love Sleep Number. I've had a Sleep Number bed my whole life, and the store experience is great. I've always had very consistent delivery from Sleep Number. They've even helped me when I moved — like, how do you break down the bed and move it? And yeah, that's a brand that I don't know why I would ever buy from another one. And I think a lot of it comes down to trust in the product. Yeah, and good delivery. Like you sleep well at night.
Elena: There you go.
Rob: You can see how important that is in the mattress category right now, because it has been one that's been disruptive over the last 15 years by very price-sensitive, quick-delivery products that are supposedly as good as all of the premium brands. So Sleep Number's done a great job in continuing to differentiate themselves both in quality and in technology — and, like you said, customer experience.
Catrina: Definitely.
Elena: Well, Catrina, this was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us.
Catrina: Oh, thank you for having me. It was fun.
Rob: Great stuff.