In Age of Friending, Consumers Trust Their Friends Less
Edelman Study Shows That Only 25% of People Find Peers Credible, Flying in Face of Social-Media Wisdom
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Whom do we increasingly trust less? Us.
It's a finding that strikes at the foundation of many a social-media marketing philosophy: Tapping into peer-to-peer networks is a way for marketers to tell authentic, credible stories to consumers whose confidence in corporate CEOs, news outlets, government officials and industry analysts has taken a beating. But according to Edelman's latest Trust Barometer, the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company dropped by almost half, from 45% to 25%, since 2008.
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WHOM DO YOU TRUST? Edelman's barometer
"The events of the last 18 months have scarred people," Mr. Edelman said. "People have to see messages in different places and from different people. That means experts as well as peers or company employees. It's a more-skeptical time. So if companies are looking at peer-to-peer marketing as another arrow in the quiver, that's good, but they need to understand it's not a single-source solution. It's a piece of the solution."
Consumers are a distrustful bunch in general -- the credibility of TV dropped 23 points and radio news and newspapers were down 20 points between 2008 and 2010.
CEOs up
And when asked how credible they deemed the information they get about a company when a "person like yourself" serves as a spokesperson the numbers again dropped. This year 39% of those surveyed felt the messages conveyed by consumer spokespeople was credible compared to 45% in 2009, the biggest drop-off among all categories.
Conversely, CEOs -- who have of late been trotted out as public faces of their companies in times of stress, such as General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre -- saw the biggest year-over-year increase from 17% in 2009 to 26% this year. Other groups seeing increases in the level of consumer trust were government officials (22% vs. 27%), a financial/industry analyst (46% vs. 52%), NGO representative (42% vs. 44%) and academic experts (61% vs. 64%). The only other group to see the credibility of their word diminish was company employees, which saw a drop of three points (31% vs. 28%).
If consumers stop believing what their friends and the "average Joes" appearing in testimonials say about a product or company, the implications could be significant not just for marketers but for the social networks and word-of-mouth platforms selling themselves as solutions to communicating in a jaded world. The influence of peers has been considered the leading rationale for brands' shifting marketing dollars to social media.
In some cases, social networks themselves may be contributing to the decline in trust. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have allowed people to maintain larger circles of casual associates, which may be diluting the credibility of peer-to-peer networks. In short, the more acquaintances a person has, the harder it can be to trust him or her. Mr. Edelman believes the Facebook component has "absolutely" played a role in diluting trust levels.
A changed game
"When you're seeing so much noise, it's very easy to dismiss a lot of it, and that's a problem marketing messages have had for a while now," said David Berkowitz, director-emerging media for 360i. "Facebook really exemplifies this with the live-feed and news-feed options," he said. "If you use the live feed and have a few hundred friends, some kind of peer recommendation, whether it's explicit or not, appears every couple of minutes and sometimes they come in a matter of seconds. If you're seeing all of that come in, it can be overwhelming."
Not surprisingly, Paul Rand, president-CEO of Omnicom Group's Zocalo Group and president of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association, said word-of-mouth is more effective than ever. But he does concede the game has changed.
"The mind-set is no longer 'I can just trust it because it's somebody's opinion,'" he said. "It's, 'I can trust that specific opinion because it's someone I know.'"
Another potential reason? People have caught on to the fact marketers are increasingly behind that influential blog post or tweet. Despite regulations regarding disclosure of marketer-driven efforts, consumers may feel that whatever it is these people are receiving from companies positively influences their endorsements.
Christina Smedley, global head of Edelman's consumer practice, said there is still a core group of influencers that can change how people trust and influence the actions of others. And consumers, whether they are close to them or not, will follow their lead.
"There are ... consumers who still only trust the people they see every day or their 120 friends on Facebook," Ms. Smedley said. "But there are those that trust all 380 of their friends on Facebook. And there's opportunity for brands with both groups. If marketers can find those action consumers, they can build campaigns that work through their parameters and get some very good results."
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I think a lot of these comments, thoughts and ideas are somewhat generalized and maybe assumed. There is a vast ocean of people, thoughts, opinions and ideas all around in the channels of social media and the digital world. I do see the numbers towards the top with TV and the news paper, but here's the problem. If you think you as a business, you as a brand, you as a company, you as an organization and you as a marketer have control, your wrong. Your whatever is what "the people" say it is. You can't control it, you can't stop it and you should use what you hear from them, "the people."
Dallas J. Moore
Director of Business Development and Social Media
Social Republick
@mrdallasjmoore
@SocialRepublick
@jeffreygroks
When trying to reach out to the Boomers and Gen-Xers in selling your product or service to them, you are dealing with generations that have very little trust in advertising messages.
For branding and public relations social media has it's place in their present form, when trying to reach Generation-Y. However, when trying to reach the Boomer remember when they were in their 20's one of their slogans was "Don't trust anybody over 30." Doing call to action advertising to get them to buy from you is next to impossible unless you reach out to them and talk their language.
This also applies to the international market as well as the United States and Canada. To understand this subject better go to www.genergraphics.com and go to the Social Media link.
Users *discover* products, services, and content from their connections. Our http://pop.to product helps consumers spread the word socially. Influencer analytics reveal who has the biggest impact. Worth checking out!
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/global-advertising-consumers-trust-real-friends-and-virtual-strangers-the-most/
kp
@FFcommunicator
Fame Foundry
http://www.famefoundry.com
As to tnilson's comment: Huh?
Edelman, sponsor of the Trust Barometer study, is hardly and "old school ad firm." Edelman is THE pioneer of PR and marketing in the social media space. The firm has much to lose if SM's influence fades.
As for methodology, check it out before you criticize. The folks at Edelman know how to do research, and they're transparent enough not to fudge the results. Also, I gotta believe an "old school ad firm" wouldn't share the results.
As with so much research I would really like to see the actual questions used in the study. Did they differentiate between close personal friends who we see, talk to, and have trusted for years -- from online peers?
Doug Pruden
Customer Experience Partners
Shiv
@shivsingh
What does a "person like myself" mean to a given respondent? How do I know whether the respondent means a TV spokesperson, or a friend? A real 'friend,' or a Facebook friend? And how do I know they meant the same thing this year as they did last year?
When asking questions about trust, you have to have a predicate: trust with respect to what? I trust my dog with my life--but not with my ham sandwich. Which question are respondents answering? I might trust a consumer spokesperson 'like me' about a new piece of software--but I'd never trust someone like me about chemical additives. A spokesperson for what? It makes a difference.
None of this has to do with statistical significance; Edelman is a professional outfit, and I fully assume the numbers pass the numbers test.
My accounting prof told me the only valid definition of "profit" was "the bottom line of an income statement." In some ways, trust is similar: it is an extremely contextual term. Longitudinal measures make sense, over a long enough time frame; I'm much more sceptical about horizontal questions (one group vs. another), short-term questions, or questions without a predicate.
Charles H. Green
CEO Trusted Advisor Associates
I noticed the people are more receptive to people that don't try to sell them anything. So the solution of Marketeers is to seek out trust agents that are willing to try their products/services and give an honest feedback about it. Followers of that trusted source will believe him!
So I strongly believe that companies need to be more and more transparent since consumers are becoming more and more doubtful!
The social media space is going through what all media have gone through: initial excitement, followed by a blitz of incredibly narrow, selfish, fast-buck driven forces, seeking to profit through the latest medium.
Sooner or later, a very old lesson emerges. You trust people who actually seem to care a little bit about you, e.g. Brogan. They understand good marketing is about giving to get.
If there is a decline in trust in social media channels, it is very likely as a result of an inundation of marketers trying to make a quick buck on the latest channel.
I believe that the trust of the American people is eroding (or should that be has eroded?), partly as a result of our faith being shaken during this economic downturn, and partly due to the onslaught of marketing we all face each and every day. How do we know that what we read is true when tomorrow there can be confirmation of an exact opposite finding?
Most importantly, I feel strongly that the meaning of "friend" has been so diluted that it no longer represents what I, and many others, believe it once did. And, the trick is going to be to reach a person's "real friends" if we have any hope of gaining our customer's trust through word-of-mouth exposure. In a world where people can now have hundreds, or even thousands of "friends," what makes a "friend" special and worth investing effort into?
john moore
WOMMA
Perhaps next year's survey needs to create some new definitions for "friend" - to establish the influence of people we interact with on a regular basis versus the ever-growing tribe of casual contacts?
http://pivotpointsolutions.net/
Do you trust your friends and family 42% less? Do you trust 42% fewer of the people you trusted in 2008?
The Edelman study merely points out that the rush of ad dollars and marketing resources into social media produced a fad - and fads don't last.
Is the converse true? Ask local businesses, many of whom get 80+% of their new customers from referrals, if they are now getting close to half of that.
Bottom line - social media is another media. It can never fabricate trust. And it will never create friends - even though, when used well, it can help you build relationships.
And relationships is where the trust is - and will stay.
As with anything, as something gets more popular, more 'noise' appears - but that doesn't mean it's value is diminished at all.
People won't trust *all* of their peers opinions online - but they will trust *some* - their particular influencers. Understanding this is at the heart of Social Media.
I do agree that there's no 'single source' marketing solution, though - social media should be part of the mix, just like advertising and other forms of digital and offline marketing.
Too many marketers are passing up a genuine and real opportunity to engage customers like never before in favor of simply broadcasting standardized marketing speak in a new medium. No wonder trust is eroding.
Michael Borowiecki
President, Formulis
In both the offline and online world, I trust people who are authentic to me and am leery of those who are not.
-Kristina, @ion_interactive
So, given Edelman's track record of deception (sending unsolicited free laptops to bloggers for Microsoft, and then there's the fake Walmart blog fiasco) you really should trust this study data either.
I've not figured out Edelman's hidden agenda here, but it's lurking somewhere is this study assessment.
What does that say about marketers?
Each consumer has a probability of rewarding a company in "trust dollars." And consumers positively respond to PR, marketing, and advertising stimuli if they're targeted and influenced correctly. However, increasing the probability that your current and prospective customer base not only trust you, but consume your products, necessitates a multi-pronged approach. If good customer service, frequent and honest communication, as well as constant listening and conversing via social media each increase the likelihood that your consumers trust you and your brand promise, albeit marginally, then employing such strategies and tactics in tandem will maximize the impact on trust. What's important, however, is to be able to weed out the strategies and tactics that will have the greatest impact and devise an optimal mix, but that necessitates empirical work.
-Milos Sugovic, Research Analyst, Peppercom
This points directly to recent findings done in SIM (Social Influence Marketing) research, which show the nuances and intricacies in mapping communities as well as evaluating direct attribution. Ultimately, all of these insights suggest that trust can be engendered through the appropriate use of content and channels, not so much a phenomenon in which people trust their friends any less.
I would add that this also indicative of a consumptive environment that now suffers from content fragmentation, not so much media fragmentation. Clearly we are witnessing a profound shift in the way people consume information by way of editorial influence (or a lack thereof), and you can see these ripple effects in virtually every area of media - from investigative journalism, to news syndication and of course, social content sharing, all of which are inexorably linked.
So in sum: aside from understanding how information is disseminated in relation to behavioral and attitudinal attribution, and then in understanding like personas and behaviors, it seems that we must correlate trust to credibility in sources, and the influence they have have influencing behavior.
Gunther Sonnenfeld
@goonth
Trust in the online world can be difficult. If consumers do not trust that the information coming to them is unbiased and credible then naturally their confidence will erode.
As a marketer myself, I am not saying that we shouldn't use the online world as a way to reach our target audience. It's a very viable tool. I think we must realize that it is natural for trust to erode as more and more companies use social networks as a marketing vehicle.
Trust in the online world can be difficult. If consumers do not trust that the information coming to them is unbiased and credible then naturally their confidence will erode.
As a marketer myself, I am not saying that we shouldn't use the online world as a way to reach our target audience. It's a very viable tool. I think we must realize that it is natural for trust to erode as more and more companies use social networks as a marketing vehicle.
See: http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2006/10/16/walmart-edelman-flogged-for-blog.
http://www.edelman.com/trust/2010/
But I think the issue is bigger than social media and its viability. I believe the whole advertising model has been upended over the past 30 years.
Old advertising's mission was to 'sell' and it faced the challenge head on. But the wide availability data and proliferation of product has swamped buyers in a tsunami of information, and a monster job of deciding among alternatives. New advertising's job is not to sell, but to help consumers make choices.
A new attitude, new tone of voice, new media, they're inevitable. What works will continue to be up for grabs. But this is NOT a fad.
Today, as companies try to become more like our friends, some of our "friends" are also becoming more like companies...
Perhaps another blurring of the boundaries here as friendship becomes commodified?
This does speak to the other point raised about getting a clearer definition of what we specifically mean when we use the word friend today. As Neil Postman used to point out, a dictionary definition does not settle an argument, but helps begin the discussion.