This is the first of two articles about how brands leverage positive editorial reviews of their products.
When products earn high ratings from Consumer Reports, the nonprofit founded in 1936 whose independent reviews subject products to rigorous testing, that comes with serious bragging rights. How much brands can brag about those ratings, however, has long been restricted by CR’s “No Commercial Use Policy,” which for decades prohibited any mention of a rating in advertising.
In recent years, as consumer advocacy website Mouseprint reported in June, it has relaxed that prohibition. Now brands may mention CR ratings in ads—as long as they pay for the privilege.
But far from the creatively excerpted film reviews on movie posters, brands that pay to cite reviews in ads agree to restrictions that preclude cherry-picking, meaning brands end up highlighting the flaws that CR found with their products, too.
Is it worth it for brands to pay to show positive ratings from Consumer Reports if it has to show its shortcomings, too? And how does the nonprofit allow its content to be used commercially without alienating subscribers who cherish its independence?
Consumer Re…vises: Rob Gentile, general manager of brand licensing at Consumer Reports, said it began to relax its commercial-use policy around 2016, when it began to permit brands to license articles, including the charts where it lists competing products on a grid that rates them on numerous criteria.
While still prohibiting brands from using the content in advertisements, the licensing agreement did permit reproducing them on their websites and social media. But it forbade altering or excerpting the content, meaning the brand had to commit to including the dings CR has against the otherwise highly rated product, and good ratings it gives to competitors.
“They have to show the actual content they’re licensing,” Gentile told Retail Brew. “We’re not licensing pull quotes, for example—they can’t just verbally say things without having the content there to validate what they’re saying is true.”
In 2020, Consumer Reports introduced a pilot program to also license content in advertising, then rolled it out officially in 2021. For brands with scores high enough to earn a “recommended” rating, they purchase the right to mention it in ads along with a check-mark graphic, “CR Recommended.” Ads are required to include a QR code that links to a capsule review with bullet points of the product’s “highs” the publication liked as well as the “lows” that it did not.
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“You can imagine, some brands don’t always like that,” Gentile said. “They want to be able to say, ‘Can we just focus on the positives?’”
Ads infinitum: Jack Davidson, president of the YGS Group—which, as Consumer Reports’ licensing partner, helped design the “CR Recommended” advertising program and pitches it to brands—told Retail Brew the no-excerpting rule is to “protect the credibility” of the nonprofit.
While CR declined to reveal how much brands pay for these licensing deals, which tend to renew annually when product categories are reviewed again, Davidson said more than half of brands have renewed contracts every year since the program began.
The requirement to include the dings along with the plaudits is “definitely a harder sell for leadership,” Jose Cardona, senior director of home appliance brand marketing at LG, which has inked licensing deals with Consumer Reports for several years, told Retail Brew.
But Cardona is comfortable with consumers seeing a warts-and-all assessment of LG’s products, especially when the brands’ overall rating is higher than competitors.
“The consumer is bright,” Cardona told Retail Brew. “When they’re doing their research, they’re not spending thousands of dollars on a product without doing some due diligence.”
As part of its licensing deal with Consumer Reports, LG built a hub on its e-commerce website that currently features 29 appliances that have been recommended by the publication. Its product pages for front-load washing machines includes a 2024 ratings chart licensed from CR where 9 of the 10 highest rated models are made by LG. The brand also has licensed the latest reliability survey that CR conducted with its subscribers, where LG finished in a three-way tie for second place, and it’s highlighting the survey on the showroom floor of national and regional retailers.
Reality check: Fake reviews that proliferate online foster an “overwhelming state of mind for the consumer,” Cardona said. “It’s like, ‘What is real? What is an honest review?”
That’s why, Cardona continued, the brand has done so much to leverage the reviews from an independent source like CR.
“In that sea of stainless,” he said of the appliance market, “when you have that CR badge, that makes it stand out. We’re looking for that tiebreaker.”
Next time: How brands leverage being recommended by Wirecutter.