NPR Study: Evidence That Brands Build Credibility (or Not) With Their Media Choices

That connection between brand messaging and environment was deeply analyzed in a new study from NPR, working in partnership with neuro-analytics firm Neuro-Insight. The study, “Transference of Trust: Driving Purchase Intent & Brand Equity,” helps demonstrate how a news organization’s credibility extends to brand partners, sways consumer opinion and impacts purchase intent.

According to the Edelman Trust Report, trust is built on five core tenets: ability, dependability, integrity, purpose and personal relevance. To establish those, an individual or company should associate with positive causes, outlets and individuals. Those relationships create positive associations and lead consumers to perceived intentions. That cycle is good for brands.

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“With consumers, communications are primary,” said Neuro-Insight Vice President of Client Solutions Samrat Saran. “When you’re with someone who is trusted, then you are trusted by association.”

In both marketing and media, credibility is more important than ever. When consumers are deciding if they’ll make a purchase from a new brand, trust ranks as the second most important factor. It’s behind only price/affordability, according to a recent Edelman Brand Trust study. Three-quarters of respondents said they want to trust brands based on their ability to impact social and environmental causes.

Young consumers are particularly attuned to these issues. About 90% of Millennials and GenZers are willing to buy products with social benefits, according to a recent Markstein and Certus Insights study.

“Customers have high expectations, and they’re willing to purchase from companies with social and environmental benefits,” noted Lamar Johnson, Vice President of Marketing for National Public Media, the sponsorship arm of NPR.

After George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020 and Americans rallied around police reform and social justice, many companies doubled down on their CSR commitments. Fortune 500 companies are spending $20 billion a year on CSR efforts, according to KMPG estimates.

Despite those investments, many Americans remain skeptical, concerned that brands are merely paying lip service to social justice. Nearly half of consumers pay close attention to CSR, according to the Markstein and Certus Insights report, but there’s widespread reservations about authenticity. The study reported that:

• 71% of consumers said brands won’t deliver on their promises.
• Less than 50% of participants considered brands trustworthy.
• Only one-third of respondents said companies are transparent about their CSR commitments.

Facing such reservations, brands are working to convince Americans that their efforts are genuine and authentic. That’s why associating with a trusted, reliable publisher helps establish credibility, noted Neuro-Insight’s Saran. Consumers make strong connections between the content on a website, TV outlet or publication and the ads they see on that platform.

“Trust can be influenced beyond the activity, the content on the page, and the platforms people view content on,” Saran said. Take NPR as an example. If a listener trusts NPR to deliver accurate, timely and important news and information, then, by extension, they’ll be more receptive to sponsorship messages they hear on their favorite NPR station, or while listening to an NPR podcast or streaming the NPR app.

“Trust is built through consistent action, and NPR has been doing this for many, many years,” he noted.

Saran recommends that brands take a two-step approach: commit to CSR and then choose their publishing partners carefully. A company can make a strong commitment to social and environmental justice, but if they advertise with a media company that isn’t credible, they’re risking their collateral and possibly alienating consumers. Put another way, a positive message can be drowned out by the messenger.

“The publisher platform is the lens through which brands are being received and that association builds trust and transfers it back to [the advertiser],” Saran explained.

Audio offers advantages over TV advertising, he added. When consumers watch video ads, they’re influenced by the images and actors, and they’re also notoriously distracted by other devices, which detracts from the ad experience. In contrast, audio encourages consumers to conjure up their own experiences, increasing ad engagement and brand awareness. The study found that audio — specifically NPR radio in this case — gives brands a 13% lift in memorability at branding vs. a TV news environment.

“When we listen to audio, we are reacting not to what is being presented but also what is being imagined,” Saran said. “That is a unique strength of audio.”

As NPR looks to grow its sponsorship business, it’s working to sway more brands. Neuro-Insight set out to measure NPR’s trustworthiness, how it compared to TV news brands, and if NPR provided brands with an advantage to deliver their CSR messages. Participants registered strong associations for NPR as ethical, reliable, relevant and accurate. In fact, NPR scored higher than a major TV news brand in three of four areas. (NPR and the TV news brand were nearly tied for their reliability scores.)

For the second part of the study, Neuro-Insight evaluated consumers’ reactions to sponsor messages on NPR compared to ads in TV news. On average, respondents reported higher peak memory for the NPR spots. In a separate, earlier study, Neuro-Insight measured NPR against other audio publishers and found that NPR spots were 23% more memorable than ads on commercial radio outlets.

“NPR has a significant track record of delivering information in a way that is memorable, likable, and that allows brands to build the trust that they want,” Saran concluded.

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