I’ve always viewed Morning Consult as the team you call when your brand faces a crisis and you need real-time insight into stakeholder sentiment. Say you’re hit with a lawsuit—your board or C-suite wants to know if customers will boycott your product, if investors will dump your stock, or if policymakers will push for tighter regulations.
However, Morning Consult is also a lifesaver for leaders to plan ahead and build reputation capital for their brand.
I sat down with Jeff Cartwright, CMO at Morning Consult to learn more.
Can you describe Morning Consult to us the way you explain it to family at Thanksgiving? Give us the high level elevator pitch.
When people ask what Morning Consult does, I usually say: We give leaders the world’s fastest, clearest read on what people think and feel.
Every single day, we survey more than 30,000 people across the globe. That scale and consistency means we can show, in real time, how consumer attitudes are shifting — whether toward a brand, a political issue, or the economy at large.
For comms leaders, that’s not abstract. This year alone, we’ve worked with global companies caught in the geopolitical crosshairs — facing new tariffs or reputational blowback tied to America’s standing abroad. With Morning Consult, their teams could see, almost immediately, how consumer sentiment toward U.S. brands was changing in different markets. That meant they weren’t just reacting after the fact; they were guiding executives with data in hand before a small issue snowballed into a full-blown crisis.
At its core, Morning Consult is an always-on consumer signal that helps leaders cut through the noise and ground their strategy in the clearest, most forward-looking view of consumer attitudes and intent available today.
Tell us more about Morning Consult’s Reputation Score product.
The Morning Consult Reputation Score™ is our way of turning something that’s often fuzzy — brand reputation — into a living, breathing metric. We measure how people feel about more than 4,000 brands every single day, across 40+ countries. That means, instead of waiting for a quarterly or annual brand tracker, comms leaders can see reputation shift in real time, right alongside the news cycle.
For a communications professional, that makes a huge difference:
When a crisis hits or an executive makes headlines, you don’t have to wait weeks to know the impact — you can see changes in brand trust almost immediately
You can benchmark against competitors or industries and drill down to the audiences that matter most, whether that’s Gen Z, investors, or policymakers.
And you can walk into the C-suite with a clear, comparable score that explains why reputation is rising or falling — and what actions to take.
In short: the Morning Consult Reputation Score™ makes managing brand trust as tangible as monitoring stock prices. It helps leaders protect equity, manage risk, and prove the value of communications with data that is timely, global, and decision-ready.
What’s an example of Reputation Score in practice?
Take the recent American Eagle x Sydney Sweeney campaign. Online, the backlash felt overwhelming — the kind of moment that can send comms teams into crisis mode. But the American Eagle’s Reputation Score™ told a different story.
At the topline, American Eagle’s overall reputation in 2025 held steady. Among Gen Z, American Eagle’s Reputation Score rose from 61 to a reliable August score of 64, with an average closer to 67. Millennials, meanwhile, maintained a steadier reputation, moving from 69 to 70, with an average around 71. Importantly, both groups showed resilience — and in the case of Gen Z, modest improvement — even as online commentary suggested otherwise.
That perspective proved critical. Weeks later, the company reported earnings that outpaced Wall Street expectations — and the stock jumped 38% in a single day. For comms leaders, Reputation Score is the bridge between perception and performance: it helps you separate online noise from true reputational risk, and gives executives confidence that brand trust is holding up where it matters most.
What trends are you seeing in the communications landscape as it relates to brands building and protecting their reputation capital?
We’re in an era where consumers are more polarized than ever — and that polarization seeps into how people view brands. Who you collaborate with, the issues you take a stand on, even the reputation of your CEO can shape whether someone buys from you or walks away. For Gen Z in particular, loyalty is fragile: it’s harder to win and easier to lose than with any generation before. That means leaders need to think holistically about what truly drives reputation — and be ready to adjust quickly when the ground shifts.
At the same time, consumers still expect brands to take creative risks. Playing it safe doesn’t win attention or loyalty. The challenge is finding the balance: how do you lean into bold ideas while knowing when a backlash is just noise, and when it’s a real threat to your reputation capital?
There’s so many brands that could have leveraged your services prior to a crisis. Cracker Barrel’s rollback of their new logo is top of mind. It’s a huge distraction to backpedal a business decision. How do you work with comms pros to learn about their brand’s audience and plan ahead?
Cracker Barrel is a telling example of how even a legacy brand can face real reputational risk when a business decision collides with audience expectations. At the topline, its Reputation Score among all adults usually averages around 73 — fairly stable. Frequent customers rate it even higher, in the low 80s, reflecting strong loyalty.
But when the logo and store concept change rolled out in August 2025, the decline was broad-based. Low-income adults fell from their usual mid-70s to 68. Republican respondents, typically one of Cracker Barrel’s strongest audience segments, dropped nearly 10 points to 69. Rural consumers also fell sharply, from peaks in the 80s earlier in the year down to 70. Even with a partial recovery in early September, those kinds of dips show just how quickly reputation capital can erode across multiple core constituencies.
Contrast that with American Eagle’s recent campaign, where chatter online suggested a crisis, but reputation data showed stability overall. For Cracker Barrel, the declines were real, widespread, and tied directly to brand credibility.
That’s why comms leaders need tools like the Morning Consult Reputation Score™. It allows them to see in real time which audiences are moving, distinguish between temporary backlash and brand-wide disruption, and build a recovery strategy before a crisis becomes existential. With the right signal, you can protect what makes your brand resilient — instead of scrambling after the fact.
Morning Consult data is often quoted in top-tier media such as Fast Company, CNBC and the WSJ as a barometer for the economy and consumer behavior. What are some recent mentions and any tips for comms pros trying to land earned media with data?
Reporters are always looking for credible data that can both ground their stories and make them stronger. That’s why Morning Consult is so often cited in places like The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Axios, and Fast Company. Data isn’t just a supporting detail — it can be the entry point into a news cycle. In fact, many editors even have quotas for including data, which makes the right numbers a powerful tool for comms leaders.
Take a few recent examples: The Wall Street Journal used our data to show how middle-income consumer sentiment flipped from optimism in June to pessimism by August, while higher-income sentiment rose — nuance that made their story. And Axios Markets tapped us after McDonald’s CEO remarked on America’s reputation abroad; our global tracking revealed U.S. favorability had plummeted, with China now outranking it in key economies.
But we don’t just fuel media directly — we also partner with comms leaders to design surveys that create their own media moments. Whether it’s shaping a thought-leadership campaign, amplifying a new product narrative, or inserting a brand into a fast-moving cultural conversation, the right survey can give comms teams an angle reporters can’t resist.
Tips for comms pros looking to land earned media with data:
Be proactive: Don’t wait for reporters — bring them the numbers that frame the conversation.
Dig into the detail: Audience-level insights (income, generation, politics, geography) often reveal the headline-worthy angle.
Tie it to the cycle: The more current the data, the better the chance it gets picked up.
Think like a journalist: Craft surveys not just for internal insight, but to spark a story or amplify the message you want out in the world.
What industries have seen the biggest shifts in brand sentiment recently?
One major story we’re watching is how global consumers are reassessing American brands. McDonald’s CEO recently pointed to growing hesitancy abroad, and our data confirms it: America’s favorability has dipped in key markets, with China now ranking higher across several economies. That’s a surprising reversal that raises the stakes for any brand closely tied to the U.S.
But this isn’t just about geopolitics. Two other big shifts are unfolding right now:
Brand value under pressure. Across grocery, retail, CPG, and apparel, more consumers say brands feel like a “poor value” relative to their cost. Gen Z is especially skeptical — one in five say grocery brands don’t deliver good value, at least seven points higher than older generations. For business leaders, that means value perception is now as critical as price itself, and rebuilding trust requires transparency, consistency, and stronger customer experiences.
Employer brand on the rise. At the same time, Gen Z’s perception of employers is improving. Since 2022, their net admired employer scores have climbed 11 points, narrowing the gap with older generations. Tech and retail lead the way, but travel and financial services have recently posted big gains. TikTok, Instagram, and Spotify stand out as the most admired workplaces among Gen Z, showing that the line between consumer brand and employer brand is blurrier than ever.
Taken together, these shifts show just how multidimensional reputation has become. It’s no longer just about what consumers think of your products — it’s also about whether they feel you’re worth the price, and even whether they’d be proud to work for you. Because Morning Consult surveys 30,000 people every day in 40+ countries, we give comms leaders the real-time intelligence to see these patterns as they emerge and guide strategy before sentiment hardens.
How is Morning Consult helping comms pros leverage AI?
Comms leaders today are being asked to do more with less — move faster, respond to crises instantly, and prove impact in the boardroom — all while managing reputational risk in one of the most polarized environments we’ve ever seen. That’s exactly why Morning Consult is building an AI-first future for insights: to help communicators meet these challenges with speed, clarity, and confidence.
Unlike most AI tools trained on the messy internet, Morning Consult AI is built on one trusted source: our proprietary database of 80 million+ interviews, with 30,000 new ones added every day. That means every answer is grounded in real consumer sentiment, not guesswork.
We’ve already launched Morning Consult AI Chat, which puts the power of our global survey engine into an intuitive interface. Instead of waiting days for a follow-up report, a comms leader can ask in the moment: “How are Gen Z women reacting to this campaign compared to six months ago?” — and have a data-backed answer in seconds.
And this is just the beginning. We’re building AI agents designed specifically for reputation and brand management, so communicators can detect risk earlier, see exactly which audiences are shifting, and decide how to respond before issues escalate.
At the end of the day, our mission is simple: give comms leaders the tools to keep pace with the demands of their world — where every decision has to be faster, sharper, and more defensible. With Morning Consult, AI isn’t just an add-on. It’s the engine that makes doing more with less not only possible, but sustainable.