Perceptions of individual companies
In the previous section, we looked at global perceptions of 12 FMCG companies in aggregate. We turn our attention now to the individual companies, starting with their global Trust & Like Scores, as well as the extent to which stakeholders are both aware of and familiar with them.
BY THE NUMBERS
Colgate-Palmolive, Nestlé, and General Mills share the top Trust & Like Score (74). What’s notable is how well stakeholders know the first two companies.
More than three-quarters of survey respondents are aware of Nestlé, and more than two-thirds are somewhat or very familiar with the Swiss giant.
For Colgate-Palmolive, Awareness is 55%, Familiarity 45%.
CLOSER INSPECTION
General Mills, Mondelez, Mars, Kraft Heinz, and Associated British Foods all have notably lower Awareness and Familiarity rates. One explanation? They’re all “houses of brands” with much better-known products.
By contrast, Coca-Cola, which is effectively a single-product brand, has a high Familiarity score, but at what consequence (see “Swiss Congeniality” below)?
FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTENT
Nestlé's long history and much-loved products aren't the only reasons it's a household name. A legacy of recalls and controversies has likely raised its Familiarity too.
But that familiarity also seems to have given stakeholders a closer connection to the company, perhaps even an emotional bond, that has helped protect it from lasting reputational damage.
One sign of this is that Nestlé's global Trust & Like Score is more than three points higher than the average of its attribute scores. In other words, stakeholders feel more warmly toward the company overall than their ratings of its individual attributes would suggest.
That goodwill may help explain why Nestlé's score recovered so quickly after dipping early in the year, and why it now shares the top spot in the ranking, just months after a much-publicized global recall of infant formula.
SWISS CONGENIALITY
Like Nestlé, Coca-Cola benefits from an emotional halo — its TLS is three points above its average attribute score — and the two FMCG giants have nearly identical Awareness and Familiarity rates.
But the Swiss food and drink giant has a higher global Trust & Like Score (74 vs. 69). One explanation? Nestlé's sprawling brand portfolio (Nescafé, KitKat, Purina, etc.) may further insulate it in ways that Coca-Cola’s effectively single-product identity can't.
In particular, Coca-Cola's ESG scores are comparatively lower: a reflection, perhaps, of stakeholder perceptions of the popular soft drink's environmental and health impact.
Do product brands build trust?
MAKING THE CONNECTION
We asked people to connect Nestlé and P&G products with their respective parent company and calculated the average Trust & Like Score both companies get when people successfully link them with one or more of their brands.
The upshot? Broadly, the more brands people connect to the parent company, the more they tend to trust it.
THE LENOR EFFECT
Many brands have a big impact on trust levels. In Japan, P&G has a Trust & Like Score of 63 — but among people who correctly identify Lenor as one of its brands its TLS is 73.
Does brand damage travel too?
BRAND ON THE RUN
To test whether a brand-level crisis affects the parent company, our media-intelligence partner Polecat analyzed coverage of 12 Nestlé brands, each tracked separately, before and during the infant-formula recall.
The baby-nutrition brands took the hit. On Polecat's severity scale, negative coverage of Gerber rose 22 points and Nestlé's own infant-nutrition line rose 17, while NAN and SMA Nutrition, which previously had no coverage, appeared on the chart for the first time.
Most of Nestlé's other brands held steady or improved, including KitKat, Nespresso, Nescafé, Maggi, and Quality Street. Purina and San Pellegrino saw small rises. The exception was Perrier, whose coverage worsened by 16.5 points as it faced its own controversy over a French water treatment plant.
CRISIS CONTAINMENT
The infant-formula crisis stayed with the baby-nutrition brands, and it did no lasting damage to Nestlé's corporate reputation. Nestlé's Trust & Like Score dipped early in the year, but it has since recovered and now shares the top spot in the ranking. This suggests that crises stay inside whatever boundary the public draws.
Brands lend trust upward to their parent company, but damage doesn't travel up with it.
It also suggests that houses of brands are better shielded from crises than companies whose name is on the product. A problem at one of Nestlé's many brands stayed with that brand. For a company like Coca-Cola, whose corporate and product identity are effectively one and the same, there's no such buffer.
The AI Trust Bump
THE ISSUE
People are increasingly turning to LLMs such as Claude and ChatGPT to get information about companies and their products and services. What impact does this have on stakeholder perceptions of those companies?
THE BOTTOM LINE
People who use AI tools to research FMCG trust the sector more than those who don't, and the gap is especially wide for companies: 78 among AI users, compared with 68 among non-users.
BY THE NUMBERS
45% of people have used AI to research FMCG product brands, compared with 37% for the companies behind them. That may seem surprising, since researching a company feels like a more obvious use for AI than everyday shopping. But it suggests people are turning to ChatGPT and other tools to compare products before they buy.
THE TRUST BUMP
Among AI users, brands score slightly higher than companies (80 vs 78), and they do so with every tool. But the bigger difference is between users and non-users: 10 points for companies, and six for brands.
IN CONCLUSION
AI users are among the sector's most trusting stakeholders, which makes what AI tools say about FMCG companies and their brands worth watching.
Smarter decisions start with stakeholder intelligence.