Australians have the least trust in advertising professionals – Ipsos study
A new Ipsos poll has revealed that advertising executives are the least trusted profession in Australia and that doctors are considered the most trustworthy in Australia. Scientists are the most trusted globally.
Six in ten of the global public rate scientists as trustworthy and just one in ten consider them untrustworthy. The next most-trustworthy profession globally is doctors (56% trustworthy), followed by teachers (52%). Politicians are the least trusted group globally.
The Ipsos Global Trust in Professions survey, completed online by adults aged 16-74 in 22 countries including Australia, showed that while the most trustworthy profession varies across the countries covered, there is greater agreement on the professions considered to be untrustworthy. In all countries polled, politicians are seen as the most untrustworthy profession – globally, two thirds of the public consider politicians generally to be untrustworthy (67%) and almost six in ten say the same about Government Ministers (57%).
A snapshot of trustworthiness in Australia
In Australia, Doctors are the most trustworthy profession (69%), followed by a group of four different professions: Scientists (62%), Teachers (60%), Armed Forces (58%), and the Police (56%). The professions most likely to be considered untrustworthy were politicians (64%), Government ministers (55%), Advertising executives (55%), Bankers (52%) and Clergy/Priests (42%).
Australia is one of only nine countries that had a positive score on the Global Trustworthiness Index. The Index looks at the net trust score (the difference between the proportion considering a profession trustworthy and the proportion considering a profession untrustworthy). A positive index score means most of the professions listed have net positive scores – so more people consider them to be trustworthy rather than untrustworthy.
Detailed global findings
Doctors are the most trustworthy profession for citizens of Australia (69%) as well as Belgium, Canada, France, Great Britain, South Africa, Spain and Sweden (where they are tied with scientists). Australia ties with Spain as having the highest trust in doctors across countries (69%). Doctors are the second most trustworthy profession globally (56%).
Scientists are overall the most trustworthy profession globally (60%) as well as in individual countries: Argentina, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Sweden and Turkey. Scientists are the second most trustworthy profession in Australia (62%).
Teachers are the third most trustworthy profession for Australian citizens (60%), which is in line with global rankings (52%). Teachers are the most trustworthy profession for Brazilians (57%) and Americans (61%).
Australians rank the Armed Forces as the fourth most trusted profession (58%), which although in line with the global average ranking, is actually 15 percentage points above it (43%). While Indians are the only country to see armed forces members as the most trustworthy profession.
Perceptions of the trustworthiness of servicemen and women are highest in China (72%), India (70%) and the US (60%), while they are particularly low in Germany (24%) and South Korea (18%).
Australia’s trust in ordinary men and women (42%) is slightly higher than global views (37%), although is ranked one spot lower as the seventh most trusted profession.
Trust in the police – overall the fifth-most trusted profession at 38% – ranges widely from the most trusted in China (80%) to the least trusted in Mexico (11%). Although Australia is in line with global views ranking the police as the fifth most trusted profession, Australia is 18 percentage points above the global average. Australia is the second highest country in the world for trust in the police (56%) after China (80%). In addition to China and Australia, a majority of the public consider the police to be trustworthy in France (53%), Canada (52%) and Italy (50%).
Pollsters are the second least trusted profession in Australia (9%). Australia’s trust in pollsters is two and a half times lower than the global average (23%). Additionally, across countries Australia has the lowest trust in pollsters, closely followed by Japan (10%) and Great Britain (11%). While China (45%), Saudi Arabia (39%) and Russia (39%) have the highest trust in pollsters.
Australia has the least trust in advertising executives (8%), which is only slightly below the global average (13%). In line with the rest of the world (67%), Australia sees politicians in general as the most untrustworthy profession (64%).
The Global Trustworthiness Index
Comparing net trust scores across nations shows which countries are marked by low trust in professions, and which show higher levels of trust.
In all, nine of 22 countries in the index have positive scores. This means that most of the professions listed have net positive scores – so more people consider them to be trustworthy rather than untrustworthy. The remaining 13 countries have negative scores, which indicates higher levels of distrust with most professions. The overall figure for all 22 countries is also negative.
· China scores highest on the Index, followed by India, with Canada in third.
· Sweden, the USA, France, Australia, Great Britain and Germany also show positive scores, meaning citizens of these countries are more trusting of most professions covered in the poll.
· Argentina, South Korea and Hungary are the bottom three countries on the index, indicating high levels of distrust with professions. These three countries are notably more negative than the rest of the countries in the poll, which also have negative scores overall.
Says David Elliott, director, Ipsos Australia Social Research Institute: “It has been said that we are losing faith in experts. This study shows that in fact, scientists are held in high esteem both here and in Australia.
“The high levels of trust placed in many professions of crucial importance to our society are encouraging as they indicate that we don’t think society is completely broken. We still have a lot of trust in many important professions, like doctors, teachers, the armed forces and the police. What is more concerning for us as a society are the low levels of trust in politicians, government ministers, bankers, journalists, clergy/priests and business leaders.
“Encouragingly for my colleagues and industry, while pollsters sit at the bottom on trustworthiness this looks to be more a result of many being undecided rather a strong sense of untrustworthiness. When we look at the proportions indicating a profession is untrustworthy, pollsters soar to 8th position as the most untrustworthy well behind politicians, government ministers, advertising executives, bankers, clergy/priests, journalists and lawyers.”
19 Comments
Who the hell are ‘ordinary men/women’ and how do I get a job as one of them? Mid table would be quite a boost to my confidence.
Only in Australia can the advertising execs can trust this poll!
Oh really?
Good thing I don’t give a fuck.
We made it guys!
Trust me, I’m adopted.
I’m sure some wanker on another ad site will be writing an opinion piece on how the industry needs to do better and how they can show us the way.
Advertising execs or marketing execs? We work for marketing execs and they set the tone, don’t they?
In this industry over a couple of decades I have worked with some of the most honest, delightful and talented people in the world, but I tell you what, I have also worked with many of the people that have put our industry where it is on this survey and rightfully so. We are a complete contradiction- always have been – always will be.
if only they saw the comments here.
maybe it’s a good thing our industry is imploding.
at least tech and consultancies don’t have to put up with this drivel. (plus free snacks.)
we (the campaign brief commentariat) are an ugly, pathetic, egotistical, talentless bunch.
who peaked by copying comedy skits in the late 90s and riding the coattails of directors who now make amazing feature films (glazer, jonze, et al.)
we’re not artists, we’re bullshitters.
and we don’t even do bullshit well anymore.
RIP us. no-one will miss us. good.
long live life.
Honestly, this isn’t a problem that needs tackling at an industry-level. No amount of goodwill or posturing is going to change the fact that the average punter will always take exception to someone whose job it is to find calculated ways of making you try and part with your money through emotional manipulation.
I will continue to sleep well.
What do these people think we do? Check some emails, make a few layouts, write a bit of copy then cook up a few nuclear bombs?
Hey, that’s cheating! In past surveys we were always ahead of car salesmen and union officials. Bring them back!
We manipulate people to buy stuff.
i don’t trust me either
As a former scientist who is now in advertising, I hope they cancel each other out so I can now be only moderately untrusted.
To jump on a soapbox for a second though – IMHO this would look a lot different if people were actually aware of the extent of fraud that goes on in research –
“A 2012 study published in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, researchers estimated that 14 percent of other scientists commit serious misconduct, while up to 72 percent engage in questionable practices.”
https://leapsmag.com/researchers-behaving-badly-why-scientific-misconduct-may-be-on-the-rise/
What about real estate agents and car dealers?
Can the great unwashed distinguish between account men and creatives?
I doubt this survey probed that important difference.
I don’t trust and wouldn’t trust someone who has never created an ad, but whose job is to sell other people’s work to clients (who work in the marketing department and would be correctly described as ‘advertising executives’).
I have sat in the darkened auditorium of a cinema when one of my commercials came onto the screen and the person sitting right in front of me nudged her friend & said “Oh, watch this, it’s really good”. I know that when we creatives do an ad that people like or even love, people respond positively to what we do. Even with excitement in some instances. Thirty years after some of my ads went to air, people still recall them with affection.
Yes, this industry does produce a lot of dross, and seems to be a honeypot for trendoid narcissists, but I can hold my head high knowing that some of my work amused and genuinely entertained its intended audience. And on top of that, I also know that my best work made a huge difference to the fortunes of the brands they spruiked.
the phrase “the brands they spruik” used by Old CD Guy conjures up an image of some greasy doorman in The Cross flogging the notion to drunk men the benefits of going in to a strip joint…….
Kinda let his self-aggrandising waffle down.
Self-aggrandising? More like self-deprecating. Perhaps you didn’t pick that up.