Consumers May Be More Trusting of Ads Than Marketers Think<br />Each time, when participants were asked what they thought of modern advertising<br />techniques, they answered with words like “credible,” “fair” and “good.”<br />The study, done by Mr. Grayson and Mathew Isaac, a professor at Seattle University,<br />and published in April in the Journal of Consumer Research, surveyed 400 participants regarding 20 common tactics used in television and digital ads.<br />“People have said, ‘I don’t trust advertising.’ The truth is, there is a lot of advertising that they do trust.”<br />Certain tactics, such as offering to match a competitor’s low prices, reporting a high rating on a site like Amazon or Yelp or mentioning<br />a recent ranking by a third-party source like U. S. News & World Report, received the most positive reactions from participants.<br />Jake Sorofman, who analyzes marketing trends as a vice president and chief of research for Gartner for Marketers, a research and consulting firm, said brands should already be recognizing<br />that the “persuasion by way of manipulation” approaches of the past were not going to work on modern consumers.<br />“Across the industry, we’re seeing brands evolve their marketing communications<br />to be more engaging, more participatory and, ultimately, more personalized.”<br />Mr. Shani said the study reaffirmed his contention that people were looking foremost for authenticity from companies.
