Are Financial Services Ads Really The Least Trustworthy?
18 Feb
The headline “Americans Trust Soft Drink Advertising” caught my eye, so I clicked on the link. The article really grabbed my attention when I saw a sub-header proclaiming that that “financial services companies have the least trusted ads.”
The news that banks are suffering from a lack of public trust is hardly new news. But what we continually see — and that I’ve have railed against in the past — are advertising efforts on the part of financial services companies trying to rebuild trust. I have argued before — and will continue to argue — that you can not advertise your way to trust.
And when I saw the sub-header, I thought “Aha! Proof for my argument.”
But, alas, in this case, the research is simply not worth hanging my hat on.
At first glance of the data, it looks like 34% of survey respondents said that they trust soft drink advertising, 22% trust fast food ads, 18% trust pharma ads, 14% trust car ads, and 13% trust financial services ads.
But when I saw the note on the chart that “percentages may not add to 100 because of rounding”, I wondered why would they need that message. Then I realized: The respondents were basically asked “of the five categories, which do you trust the most?” (Add up the five numbers).
Do you see a problem here?
Assume for a moment that there were 100 kids in your high school graduating class. Your GPA was 99.6 (out of 100). Pretty good, eh? I’d say so. But further assume that that GPA only put you in fifth place (the four nerds who did better than you had 99.7, 99.8, 99.9, and 100 averages, respectively).
Were you the worst performer? Out of the top 5, yes. Did you do poorly? No.
This is the problem with the aforementioned research study. Financial services ads were NOT deemed not trustworthy. They were simply RANKED the least trustworthy out of the five categories that the researcher asked about.
Which raises a whole host of questions: Why did they choose those categories? Why didn’t they ask about other categories? Why didn’t they simply ask how trustworthy each category’s ads are? And…Can I have some of what they were smoking when they designed this study?
Does this mean that I think bank ads are trustworthy? No. But I can’t conclude from the data that they’re not trustworthy.
People don’t trust banks (today). That’s a given. But it’s wrong to simply assume that because there’s a lack of trust in banks, that people find the ads not trustworthy.
Despite the flawed research, I’m not so sure what people were thinking when they responded to the study.
You mean to tell me that the ads from Taco Bell, which attempt to position its fast food as a “healthy choice”, are trustworthy?
Or that pharma ads like the ones from Enzyte are trustworthy?
How about the “tone-deaf” ads from Pepsi?
The ads from financial services aren’t any less trustworthy than any other industry’s ads. [Cut to Don Henley's Dirty Laundry: "Kick 'em when they're up, kick 'em when they're down....."]
Ron -
Its a scary world out there, all those people who don’t know the difference between a mean and a mode, who can’t relate a logically structured sentence with an algabraic equivalent. That someone would publish a study that says X is “untrustworthy” when their data is only a ranking of pre-defined choices is either a hoot or tragic.
Add to the analytic lapse the drive for editors and bloggers to be “edgy.” Jon Stewart did a nice clip on this recently comparing the videos of himself and Rachel Maddow politely critiquing each other with Daily Kos and other headlines about how Maddow “eviscerated” Stewart. The point/joke was that headlines and data can be very very inconsistent.
The survey should have asked how trustworthy each type of advertising was on a scale so that the answers were not interdependent.
On your advertising trust… maybe. I was thinking about this watching upbeat Toyota ads that are now running. If nothing else they appear to be “building levees” against a time when the troubles will ebb and they can change the conversation.
Doug
Who are Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow? What is the Daily Kos?
Jon Stewart hosts The Daily Show, Comedy Central, a program where humorous send-ups and critiques of the world of cable/politics/blogging are common.
Rachel Maddow is a host on MSNBC
The Daily Kos is, as far as I can tell, a blog that politico’s read often
YOU are being difficult.
Ron- The article also posted the question, which one is least trustworthy?” Doesnt that support the argument of trust in banking ads.
Matt: The reverse of the example I gave in the post (e.g., high school ranking) applies here as well. Financial services ads may be ranked the least trustworthy. But if the other categories enjoy a really high level of trust, then, sure, FI ads will be the least trustworthy. Still can’t conclude whether or not people find the ads trustworthy or not.
Even worse, if you suspend logic here for a moment, and convince me that indeed the FI ads aren’t trustworthy, then we still have no idea what it is about the ads that people find untrustworthy.
It appears that the least trustworthy are the news organizations that purport to understand research.