Growing Bolder Founder/CEO Marc Middleton recently sat down with Chaya Weiner of Medium to discuss how he built Growing Bolder into a trusted and beloved brand.
In this interview, Marc had the opportunity to share a bit of his journey and his top 5 tips for company leaders on building a great, trusted brand:
1: Leverage the “Someone Like Me” effect. We’ve learned that we can share compelling statistics, incontrovertible research or the opinion of renowned experts but the only thing that results in personal transformation is when we can see ourselves in others. It’s the example of an ordinary person living in a way that we aspire to that not only makes us believe it’s possible but also gives us the motivation to try. Consequently we’ve built our brand by looking for and sharing those stories.
My favorite example begins with 100-year-old Ida Keeling who ran in a special 100-meter dash at big track meet — setting a new world record for women 100–104. Video of her run went viral and 100-year-old Ella Mae Colbert, who had never ran a race in her life, thought, “Maybe I can do that too.” Three weeks later, Ida stepped onto the track in South Carolina and ran 30-seconds faster than Ida did. Video of Ella Mae’s run went viral and 101-year-old Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins was inspired to enter the National Masters Championship where she broke the world age group record by over 6 seconds. Suddenly, the hottest division in track and field was women age 100–104 all because ordinary people were exposed to examples of something they hadn’t thought of or didn’t think was possible.
Not only are we inspired by “someone like me”, we trust “someone like me.” In fact, we now trust the opinions of others that we can relate to more than the opinions of experts. We trust the unsolicited recommendation of a complete stranger more than we do advertising. Always be looking for and empowering brand ambassadors.
You can read the full article Medium.com (with a free account), or click the link below for a PDF version.
Medium- 5 Things You Need To Do Build A Trusted And Beloved Brand