According to new research from brand and customer loyalty and engagement research consultancy Brand Keys examining how “trust” contributes to brand engagement and market success, “media” ranked #1 in terms of contributing the most trust (34 percent) to consumer engagement.
Broadcast and cable news—independent of other media formats and platforms—was slightly higher, contributing 39 percent to network brand engagement. The remaining 61 percent is accounted for via attributes like quality of hosts, levels of commentary and insight, and credible and engaging guests.
Which media lead in trust?
The BBC led with a 90 percent rating of trust, followed by FOX News and PBS. Bloomberg and MSNBC were rated similarly. Broadcast news (CBS, NBC, and ABC) was relatively undifferentiated as regards viewer trust, with CNN being rated similarly. Sinclair was lowest rated as regards trust at 59 percent.
As President Trump has assailed news (of all varieties) as “Fake News,” and more recently, “the enemy of the people,” Brand Keys was interested to see how much “trust” viewers actually had in the President, versus the TV brands.
Mr. Trump was rated an overall 29 percent—less than a third of that attributed to the BBC, and half that of Sinclair. Examined by political affiliation, Democrats rated Mr. Trump 14 percent, Independents 22 percent, and Republicans 35 percent. Eighteen percent of the sample had “No Opinion.”
The results draw from the Brand Keys 2018 Customer Loyalty and Engagement Index, which examined 150 categories and 1,287 brands to determine.
The next wave of the Brand Keys Media Trust Tracker will measure “Newspapers.”
4,012 viewers rated broadcast and cable brands they watched regularly (3+ times a week) to determine how much trust the brands engendered, with the following results, with + 5% indicating significant differences at the 95 percent confidence level).
