“Make guesswork illegal for marketers!” Consumer research platform Attest calls on brands to give up on gut decisions

Attest, the leading consumer research platform, launches a campaign urging brands to remove guesswork from their marketing playbook for good. The campaign follows the finding that 60-75% of marketers feel their departments rely on guesswork when making decisions.

Attest hopes to highlight the risk of such guesswork in an era of weakening brand loyalty. A survey it carried out among 2,000 US consumers found that almost 9 in 10 (88%) are trying different products and services due to price pressures. Trust in brands is also at a new low, with 80% of shoppers convinced that brands are involved in “greedflation” (i.e. using inflation as an excuse to hike prices, or reduce product size/quality).

Attest is launching a campaign video to showcase the dangers facing brands that rely on instinct instead of data when making high-stakes decisions. The “Make guesswork illegal” campaign will be shared across social media, earned media and digital channels, with video content developed in partnership with Nusa Films.

I want to report a brand crime! Bringing the Guesswork Crime Lab video to life

To bring Attest’s campaign fully to life - with a dose of well-intentioned humor - Attest CEO and founder Jeremy King donned a lab coat in the campaign launch video to walk us through the Guesswork Crime Lab, where the most salacious brand crimes are investigated for their lack of consumer forethought. 

The campaign is rooted in reality as Jeremy started his career as a scientist focused on behavior, genetics and ecology, long before he founded Attest in 2015. With this background, he relies on empiricism, exploring hypotheses, uncovering paradigms and using data to make decisions. When he moved to the world of business, he was shocked by how little a role hard data played in critical business decisions and the messes left behind by decisions devoid of research.

The fictional environment will be instantly recognizable to marketers the world over who have been forced to rely solely on gut instinct. 

“In my early days as a scientist, I learned why guesswork is practically illegal in the world of science,” said Jeremy King, CEO and Founder of Attest. “Personal bias can derail even the greatest of experiments, resulting in massive, costly mistakes and error-filled conclusions.” 

“Yet, when I was just starting to dream up the idea for Attest, I was shocked to see that many businesses consistently fail to make decisions with anything like the inputs, objectivity and rigor that science demands – often using pure guesswork, gut feel or HiPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion). It happens constantly in the business world – even though the stakes are so high. We see the same mistakes again; flopped product launches, marketing that backfires, failing to understand consumer needs or choosing the right tone at the right time. Major decisions made without information have fatal consequences.”

“This campaign, albeit playful in tone, touches upon a very serious problem in business today. Whether a brand is handling the backlash from a high-profile controversy, adjusting prices due to inflation or strategizing on how best to reach their next wave of growth, you can easily trace the biggest PR, advertising and product disasters back to one simple fact: instead of doing their research, brands made big calls based on guesswork.”

“At Attest, we believe access to great research creates a stream of unfair advantages, and it’s an advantage we want more people to have. We exist to help all businesses look outside their office, and think beyond their experience, by connecting directly with millions of target consumers everywhere. With this campaign, we hope to remove ‘guesswork’ from marketers’ vocabulary and habits once and for all.”

The price paid by brands for marketing missteps & controversy

Attest is a platform that exists to put quality insights into more people’s hands by making it far less of a big deal to conduct regular research. And with this campaign, Attest wants brands to avoid the disasters Jeremy mentions and stay out of the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. 

To do this, the research also delved into consumers’ views on marketing missteps and high-profile controversies: 

• Consumers value transparency the most during a controversy: A majority of Americans want brands to fess up when they’ve messed up. 55% want a brand involved in a high-profile controversy to provide full transparency and steps on how they will fix it.
  • 42% will be happy with the issuance of a public apology alone.
  • Other remedies favored by people include removing the person responsible (32%), offering a discount/refund (29%) and providing services to lodge complaints (18%). 
• Most people are willing to wait before reacting: The most likely response from Americans is to give a brand time to issue a statement before making up their mind on a response (35%). 
  • By contrast, however, 26% are much less patient and will boycott/stop buying a brand’s products and services “immediately” due to a controversy. 
  • While social media plays a key role for 15% of consumers, who will either unfollow a brand or publish public posts disapproving of a company involved in a controversy. 
• Americans most concerned by brand racism and treatment of animals: An accusation of racism when a brand is involved in a controversy is the top issue that concerns the public (at 42%). 
  • This is followed by accusations of discrimination (based on people with disabilities, religion, and sexual orientation) and poor treatment of employees (both at 35%). The other top issues include the treatment of animals (32%), while a combined 27% of Americans are concerned with brands involved in political controversies:
    • 15% express concern if a brand was accused of left-wing, socially liberal politics.
    • While 12% would feel the same way regarding accusations of ring-wing, socially conservative politics.
  • 16% say that “greenwashing” would worry them the most, while ageism is the least cited as a concerning issue for the public (at 8%).

To view Attest’s other brand video on Guesswork Industries, where employees rely on some interesting methods to figure out what their consumers want, click here.