By Jay Bemis | Advertising Systems Inc.
Building trust in your brand is among the many top goals of any marketer, but when you learn what brand is the “most trusted” in America right now, you might skeptically think that this is some sort of cover-up.
That’s because the most trusted brand in America is Band-Aid, according to a recently released report, Most Trusted Brands 2022. The finding is from the folks at Morning Consult, a research company that surveys brands daily on a global basis to help brands and their leaders make business decisions.
“This list of established brands,” says the report, “shows that it’s hard to beat companies that have near-total brand awareness and high favorability built through decades of investment, while delivering the most of-the-moment products to consumers.”
Other Reasons Band-Aid’s Ranking Not a Boo-Boo
Kids are one key factor in Band-Aid being determined as the most trusted brand in America.
“Although the brand’s net promoter scores are quite high across generations, those of Gen Xers and millennials are slightly higher — likely due to Band-Aid’s indirect but most common customer: children,” the report notes. It adds that millennials account for two-thirds of parents with children under 13 years of age.
But the COVID-19 pandemic is a key factor in Band-Aid’s most-trusted ranking, too.
“As the pandemic heads into its third year,” the Morning Consult report says, “Americans continue to place their trust in brands that have contributed to their personal well-being or living conditions, with Band-Aid, Lysol and Clorox taking the top three spots in the United States.”
Band-Aid rolled up 57.73 “net trust” points to top the U.S. list, followed by Lysol and Clorox with 55.54 and 55.26 net trust points, respectively. Others rounding out the top 10 also benefited from what was termed as a “pandemic throughline”: UPS was fourth in the rankings, followed, in order, by CVS Pharmacy, Visa, Cheerios, The Weather Channel, Colgate and Home Depot.
The Weather Channel, you say?
“Last year was a record weather year in the United States, with roughly 20 major weather disasters,” the report notes.
Which Brands Are Most Trusted Globally?
The most-trusted brands research was based on surveys taken April 8-14, which included representative samples of 2,200 U.S. adults, 1,299 South Korean residents and 1,000 residents each in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan and the U.K.
In China, Alipay, a payment-method platform founded there and akin to America’s PayPal and Venmo, was the most trusted brand.
Other countries and their most trusted brands, according to the Morning Consult research, are Japan, with Toyota cruising into the top spot, along with Germany (PayPal), India (Google), the UK (Boots), France (Lidl), Italy (WhatsApp), Canada (Tim Hortons) and South Korea (Samsung).
“One pattern that sticks out is just how much local origins help build trust, even among multinational, billion-dollar companies,” Morning Consult says.
“The No. 1 Most Trusted Brand in six of the 10 countries we surveyed was established in that country. Proximity helps, too: France’s most trusted brand is German retailer Lidl. (Lidl falls to No. 3 among Germans, behind PayPal and Aldi.)”
Key Takeaways in the Most-Trusted Rankings
Morning Consult lists these key takeaways from its research on most-trusted brands:
- Household names with local roots help boost consumer trust (as we just noted in the global rankings).
- Small businesses are well-trusted — for the most part. “Across North America and Europe, trust in small businesses is quite high, but there’s a sizable trust gap in the Asian countries surveyed.”
- Good value and products are crucial to building trust.
- Poor customer service is a main driver in breaking trust. “A bad customer service experience and deteriorating product quality were among the top reasons that global consumers lost trust in brands.”
Like Band-Aid, companies on the Most Trusted Brands list mostly tend to be established, household names that have worked for decades to build consumer trust and loyalty.
“Trust is not something that can be earned overnight,” Morning Consult concluded.
However, even long-established brands, and today’s marketers particularly, “need to be mindful of the next, more skeptical generation coming of age,” the researchers warned.
“Gen Zers are much less likely than their older counterparts to trust any of these brands, creating obstacles for these mainstays and opportunities for newcomers in the market.”
