Public trusts estate agents more than ad people
The Australian public’s trust in the advertising profession has hit a new low, according to a new survey.
The research, carried out by Roy Morgan asked consumers to rate various professions on their ethics and honesty.
Only 6% of those polled said that they would rate those in advertising’s ethics as high or very high.
The number is the worst ever for the advertising industry in the survey which has been conducted annually since 1979. The (not very) high spot for trust in advertising was in 2002 when 13% of people said they thought the industry had high ethics.
Of the 30 professions covered, only used car salesmen fared worse, on 3%.
But most of the media and marketing industry fared badly. Public opinion pollsters scored 23%; talkback radio announcers 15%; TV reporters 14%; and newspaper journalists 9%.
At the other end of the table, nurses scored 89% and doctors 82%.
The findings were based on a telephone survey of 687 people aged over 14 taken earlier this month.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Yes, we are all really the spawn of Satan sent here by the Prince of Darkness himself to trick people into buying products they either don’t want or need….mwah ha ha ha!
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seems to me that the average punter wouldn’t have much contact with us untrustworthy types in advertising, so they rely on the second-hand experience of consuming the messages we produce on behalf of clients. So, in executing work to a client brief and of course with their sign-off, is this survey a case of the messenger being shot? or should the companies/executives behind the marketing be included in the survey too?
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Maybe we should all buy cheap suits and post cheesy, offensive, self indulgent pictures of ourselves in people’s letter boxes to improve trust ratings.
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The public judge us by our work. Maybe there’s a message there.
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Aged over 14, aye? What percentage of them were over an age that required them to engage with a real estate agent in the first place? Or even have a license?
And really, which member of the public would ever have to deal with an advertising pro anyway? It’s not like contact details are published on the pizza hut coupons.
Pinch of salt, and stir.
How did PR rate?
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Interesting that most of the professions in the survey received lower scores this year. Indicates to me that people are less trusting on the whole.
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I can actually fully understand this. Given the “the small print taketh, the large print giveth away” attitude of most (especially television) advertising in this country, I think this is a healthy and intelligent stand to take for most people.
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I thought that on average 1.2million people had watched the first and second series of The Gruen Transfer, so surely this would have given them a wider of view of what advertising people are like and do. Then again, perhaps many of these people didn’t take it that seriously while some in the industry had assumed and hoped they had.
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