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This week I spoke at Southbound in Atlanta.
Rachel Elsts-Downey (CEO, Share Your Genius) moderated a panel between Jen Allen-Knuth (Founder, DemandJen) and me.
Rachel shared these stats to kick things off:
82% of people trust a company more when a human is posting, and you see 5x more engagement from a person's profile versus a company page.
She asked, Are these stats under-hyped or over-hyped?
I jumped in:
I actually think they're under-hyped. And the reason goes back to something early in my career.
For context — I was the head of content at Gong from $2M to $220M ARR. We built the brand page significantly over those years from 12,000 to 200,000+ followers. And even back then, it was pretty obvious: if you're scrolling LinkedIn and you see a face, you're more likely to stop than if you see a logo. I think we can all agree on that.
But what really cemented this for me was what happened when we tested this idea on email.
We were sending two emails per week to roughly 100,000 people and it was my name they'd see in the sender field. At some point, someone on the team said — what if we tested Gong's name instead?
So we ran an A/B test. My name beat Gong every single time.
That shouldn't be too surprising, honestly. The people on that list had been conditioned to see my name. They knew me.
So then we tested my podcast co-host, Sheena Badani. Sheena had minimal recognition outside of Gong, so we put her name on the emails.
Guess what? Sheena beat Gong every single time.
More opens, more clicks, and more conversions.
Gong was a multi-billion-dollar brand.
This taught me something I'll never forget:
People trust strangers more than familiar brands.
Sit with that for a second.
Then look at your marketing strategy and ask — how often are we asking our people not to post? How often are we hiding personalities in the name of building the logo?
This isn't growing or protecting the brand — it's limiting it. Stunting its growth in the name of control.
Why do people trust strangers over billion-dollar brands?
Companies exist to make money. We know this.
So subconsciously, our brains get defensive. We skip the ad before it loads. We scroll past the logo without stopping. We delete the email without opening it. We close the tab before the popup finishes. We've been trained to filter them out.
But people?
Our favorite people are family, friends, idols. They exist to help us, teach us, make us feel something. We don't filter them out. We look for them.
That's not a marketing insight. That's just how humans are wired.
And yet most brands are out here hiding their people behind a logo, wondering why nobody's paying attention.
-Devin
PS: The best way to build a brand people trust is through content. I help B2B SaaS companies build content systems that grow their authority, audience, inbound lead flow (the good stuff your CEO notices). If you want to work with me, here's how.
Pen by Devin Reed
Founder, The Reeder
Follow me on LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok | Instagram
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