Recent data breaches and major scandals have lead to Harvey Norman, Medibank, Optus, and Telstra being named among Australia’s most distrusted brands.
Roy Morgan data scientists analysed nominations from more than 22,000 Australians to identify the nation’s most trusted and most distrusted brands.
Not surprisingly, its retail giants that garner the most trust, with the top five trusted brands remaining in the same spots as in September, when the last survey was taken.
Apple is the only tech company to grace the top ten (albeit falling a spot since September), while Australia Post’s commitment to and success in Christmas deliveries saw it jump top places to enter the top ten in #9 place.
On the flipside, Optus’ September data breach, which occurred weeks after the last polling took place, saw it jump from the 17th most distrusted brand in the September quarter, to the 2nd most distrusted brand in the December quarter – bumping Telstra down to third.
Qantas remains in freefall, dropping from the 9th most trusted brand in the September quarter to the 40th most trusted brand, after a run of price hikes, cancelled and delays flights, and terrible customer service.
Facebook remains the least-trusted brand in Australia, for all the obvious reasons, with the rest of the ten shuffling down a spot to make way for Optus.
Somehow, Medibank missed the ten, although it climbed to 14th least trusted brand during the quarter. Twitter also narrowly missed, leaping from 16th least trusted to 11th, following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform.
“What we see with brands that suffer major scandals is that once distrust takes hold, it is very difficult to curtail,” Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says.
“We saw it with AMP and the big four banks following the Royal Commission, and we are still seeing it with Harvey Norman.
“More than 2 years after the JobKeeper scandal they are still ranked in the top 10 most distrusted brands in the country.
“The first step in re-building trust is to eliminate distrust, and only Roy Morgan measures distrust.”
