Why brand trust is at the heart of new FT/IPA research

At a free event on July 8, the FT and the IPA will unveil findings from ‘Bridging the Trust Gap’, a new piece of research into the nature and benefits of trust for organisations and brands.

Drawing on responses from an FT panel of business decision-makers, as well as academic research and insights from the IPA Effectiveness Databank, the report explores if and why the importance of trust has changed as a result of factors such as the growth of AI and other technologies. It identifies core pillars of trust among business leaders and gaps in trust across B2B sectors. Differences in levels of trust across media channels and media brands are also examined.

But it is also worth remembering some of the evidence from individual IPA Effectiveness Awards cases where advertising has effectively increased trust in a brand, both in B2B and consumer sectors.

Reviving trust helped Nurofen tackle a financial headache

In the late 2010s, the pain relief brand Nurofen was on a downwards trajectory for trust and value for money perceptions, and its value sales were in steady decline. During the early stages of the pandemic, sales and trust dropped further when, advice – later shown to be misguided – circulated that the brand’s main ingredient, Ibuprofen, could worsen the effects of Covid.

As part of efforts to revive the brand, customer research found that Nurofen continued to outperform on statements about the efficacy, speed and durability of its pain relief. However, the brand underperformed on being a ‘suitable’ or ‘smart’ way to treat pain. Further analysis established that the drivers of consideration in the category were not dominated by the kind of rational claims about product efficacy which tended to feature in advertising. Instead, among the most important factors leading consumers to consider one pain relief brand over another were statements such as ‘is a brand for me’, ‘is a brand I trust’ and ‘is a brand that understands my pain’. To revive its fortunes, Nurofen would need to improve its scores for trust and empathy.

This objective was used to shape a new brand communications strategy in late 2020 to reposition Nurofen as more empathetic about people’s experiences of pain, rebuild the brand’s trust scores and stabilise sales. From a more general position of empathy about pain, from 2022 onwards Nurofen’s messaging was focused specifically on associating the brand with a wider social impact by speaking out about the ‘Gender Pain Gap’, a term for ingrained bias against taking women’s pain seriously.

In addition to running emotive TV advertising about this gap, other activities by the brand ranged from providing research and training for healthcare professionals and tools for the public to creating 'fake' products to draw attention to the language used to minimise women’s pain.

As detailed in the IPA award-winning 2024 case for Nurofen by McCann London, trust in Nurofen rose by 6 percentage points among the general audience, and by 11 percentage points among those who saw the advertising. The gains reversed the declining trend of recent years.

Overal increase in 'Nurofen is a brand I trust'

Source: Nurofen, IPA Effectiveness Awards 2024 case

There were also increases in affinity, relevance and support for the brand’s pricing. In total, the IPA case estimated that the strategy drove £67m of incremental revenue – more than double its overall media and production costs.

Trust building does not have to be boring

If there’s a funny side to accounting software, it isn’t obvious. Almost 60 per cent of small business owners described book-keeping as ‘draining’ in a survey quoted in the 2024 award-winning IPA case by december19 and House 337 for Xero, the business software provider.

Predictably, most advertising in this category offered rational messaging about how products cut the time and stress of keeping on top of company cashflows. Analysis suggested that as the third placed brand in a market where buyers rarely switched, Xero needed to be more noticed and more trusted in its category if it was to increase its growth.

Though humorous in style and fronted by Rhys Darby of the ‘Flight of the Conchords’ cult comedy series, Xero’s advertising aimed to build trust by using metaphors such as running a marathon or climbing a mountain to identify genuinely with the scale of challenges small traders face running their businesses.

The Xero ads tested above their category norm and were shown in varying length across a number of video and audio channels. In a little over two years, the brand’s score for trust rose by 11 percentage points, and growth in consideration and estimated market share both exceeded targets set for the campaign. The strategy was estimated to have returned £2.11 for every £1 invested, even before adding in potential longer-term future benefits.

These individual cases, and those from Specsavers, Barclays, McDonald’s and others, underline why trust has risen up the rankings of the metrics in the IPA Effectiveness Databank that are most directly linked to increases in business effects such as market share and profit.

These individual examples will also be complemented by the more wide-ranging, data-led view of brand trust to be offered by the FT/IPA report.

Carlos Grande, Editorial Consultant to the IPA

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.