The Roy Morgan brand trust rankings for 2024 provide some fascinating insights into consumer perceptions of brands, how hard consumer trust is to win and how quickly it can now be lost.
This year, Bunnings has been the clear winner when it comes to brand trust, retaining top spot ahead of supermarket Aldi and discount department store Kmart in third place.
But earlier in the year, the brand trust podium looked very different. Woolworths and Coles were the most trusted brands in Australia, after spending years in the top five.
Today, they have both slid more than 200 spots to now be two of the most distrusted brands in Australia.
And it’s not just cost of living pressures driving a lack of love for supermarkets; the strong performances of both Aldi and IGA, both comfortably ranked within Australia’s top 15 most trusted brands, prove that not all supermarkets have lost the trust of Australians.
Both plagued with negative media coverage, a government enquiry and accusations of price fixing, collusion and price gouging, Coles and Woolworths are facing what would seem to be a fierce consumer backlash. In an era where many people are proactively looking for something to be offended by, it would seem that brand trust that takes years to build can turn to active brand protest in a minute, particularly when the CEO’s of both companies appeared vague, evasive and even defensive when they spoke publicly about these issues.
It was this same leadership approach that spelled disaster for Optus, which took first place as the country’s most distrusted brand in the wake of a data breach which saw Optus’s CEO take days to front the media.
Optus, Coles and Woolworths have undergone management changes but it seems it’s going to take time – and a lot more than new leadership – to win back the trust of consumers.
This should be a warning for all leaders. When the consensus is that corporate greed is prioritised over delivering value to consumers, the tide can turn very quickly. Consumers are now demanding transparency, honesty and a new form of consumer centricity where mistakes are owned and handled swiftly with radical responsibility and authenticity.
