By Steve Rubel, Executive Vice President – Global Insights and StrategyI am not a spreadsheet wonk, but digging into the trove of raw data compiled for the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer a few stats in particular jump out. When correlated they point to the opportunity that the media has to increase their trust as they begin to give advertisers an official platform to tell their story in their own words – just as our CEO wrote earlier this month.
First, among
informed publics, between 2011 and 2013 Trust in corporate content globally
rose four percentage points (13 – 17 percent). This is nearly the same
rate that trust in social media climbed over the same period (8 – 13
percent). Trust in traditional media was flat at 29 percent.
Second, trust in
search engines actually declined 83 to 78 percent over the same period.
Finally,
between 2009 and 2013, a greater percentage of the informed public said
they need to hear things three to five times for it to be trustworthy. This
figure grew from 60 to 64 percent over the period.
Taken together
one could infer that more people are willing to go directly to an official
source of information like a corporate website than ever before, perhaps
eroding some searches. But there’s overlap here too. It’s possible that trust is
rising in social networks because, in part, it’s now a robust source for
corporate/product information since so many businesses have jumped in to
establish official presences.
There’s not
enough data here to clearly indicate the trustworthiness of new forms of
corporate/branded content that is increasingly being syndicated, integrated and co-created with media companies. However, I am encouraged that the data may
encourage the media to see that, by giving companies an official content
marketing platform, they can record gains in Trust in the years ahead as more
informed consumers express an interest in hearing all sides of a story. And
that’s exciting for all involved.
This piece was originally post in Edelman’s Global Practices
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