Helping Rebuild Trust in a Major Brand

BlueLabs helps an established brand regain consumer trust and significantly improve purchase consideration with our unique persuasion methodology.

Reputation management is a major concern for large organizations, and especially for consumer brands. Since 2018, BlueLabs has worked with a major brand on improving consumer trust and purchase consideration by designing a persuasion program with three main components: message testing, persuasion modeling, and campaign measurement.

First, we helped the client’s research vendor deploy a message test to identify messages that performed best with consumers, specifically in improving brand trust and consideration. This allowed us to hone in on core messages, each appealing to a different audience.

Next, BlueLabs carried out a large national survey. This not only provided a wealth of information on consumer attitudes toward the brand, but also enabled us to identify the top individual targets for each of the three messages through persuasion models. Our modeled top targets for each message were 3-4x as likely as the median consumer to be receptive to that message.

Finally, our client deployed a campaign measurement test using digital banner ads. We began by providing a list of the strongest prospects for each message. They were then randomly assigned into treatment groups, who received their respective ads, and into control groups, who received a placebo ad instead. Following a brief advertising campaign, individuals in the control and treatment groups were surveyed by a third-party vendor.

Despite the low footprint of the campaign, the results were impressive. Trust in the brand was higher among all treatment groups compared to the control groups, registering a top lift of 12% for one of the messages. Purchase consideration improved even more for two of the messages, with a 30% and 19% lift for treatment compared to control targets. Improving brand trust in a sustainable way is a long-term and demanding challenge, but our early success demonstrates the value of our persuasion approach.