Learn how audience members grow from indifferent dawdlers to zealous nuts about your brand from examples like Ben & Jerry's, Burt's Bees, and SoulCycle.
There are casual consumers and then there are “zealous nuts.” We love this latter group, not just because you can count on them to help your business stay solvent. We also love them because they serve a special brand purpose; they become extensions of your brand, like roving marketing satellites orbiting your global brand identity.
Zealous nuts are the people who will not only engage with your brand, but will also voluntarily promote it to their friends and family. They will share, tag, and link your content on their personal accounts, and may even go so far as to ad hoc their own pitches to sell what you’re offering to their contacts. These folks are a type of influencer (before influencing was cool). Also known as “evangelists” or “brand advocates,” zealous nuts will stick with you through all sorts of market volatility. They’re kind of like your rainy day fund; they’ll show up no matter the weather. You became part of their life tool belt—and everyone loves to share their favorite gadget.
Every potential audience starts on the opposite end of the spectrum, as “indifferent dawdlers.” These folks are cruising around the wide open consumer landscape with varying degrees of intention. Your goal is to snag their attention and slow them down, give them reason to care, show them how what you’ve got might just be what they need, provide wayfinding cues, and ultimately guide these dawdlers along the road to brand loyalty. Different brands will go about this very differently, but every solid audience conversion campaign includes the following elements:
Movements don’t materialize out of thin air. Some may be sudden, or even spontaneous, but they do not operate in a vacuum; they are the outgrowth of a perfect storm of elements that build upon and reinforce each other. They’re like 3D puzzles. Here are the parts:
A doctor of theology named Jonathan Swift living in 18th-century Dublin once said, “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” Clearly, Swift himself was a visionary. He understood that if you’ve got a vision, you’re onto something that hasn’t yet registered for others. So where does vision come from? First, you need an ideology—the lens through which you view the world, how you want to live in it, and what you want to achieve in it. An ideology shapes how a group perceives the world by providing core beliefs and values that set their goals and guide their actions. So your ideology informs your vision, and your vision is the first ingredient of a movement. Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action coined the now famous phrase, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” Think Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia:
A January 2025 article in Forbes Magazine features “Eat the Rich,” a fake Ben & Jerry’s limited edition flavor that started as a satirical meme and became a viral idea critiquing egregious wealth inequality in the United States. The author, Stephanie Gravalese, asks whether the fictional “Orange Dreamsicle Ice Cream with Toasted Middle Class Marshmallow Swirl,” complete with a graphic of a fat orange wearing a long red tie, can ignite a cultural debate. “We’re in a moment where even ice cream has become political,” writes Gravalese. “Whether satire or strategy, the idea highlights how food serves as one of the most powerful vehicles for cultural commentary.”
Patagonia, another household name, has always been synonymous with social and political activism, with a goal of achieving 100% renewable energy for its stores, offices, and distribution centers worldwide. To decarbonize transportation emissions, which account for 10% of their annual total, Patagonia joined the Zero Emissions Maritime Buyers Alliance (ZEMBA), purchasing zero-emissions maritime fuel in bulk to reach their climate goals. Always ahead of the curve, Patagonia committed to using only organically grown cotton 20 years ago. The company continues this practice today: In 2025, 98% of their products now contain preferred materials like recycled polyester and other regenerative textiles. And it’s safe to say this is the only clothier that actively encourages its consumers not to buy that second fleece when wearing the one they already have is best for the planet.
Consider the root word of movement: move. To fundamentally differentiate your brand from what has come before is to move away from what is known and move toward something new. When you write your mission statement, you are laying claim to that new worldview and setting your sights on how to go about achieving your vision. Building your worldview is an act of sheer creativity; you are drawing the map, charting the lay of the land, blazing the trails, setting up the signposts, showing your followers the way.
Perhaps the most obvious example of a brand that has created its own all-encompassing worldview that many of us inhabit every day is Apple. As of January 2025, more than 1.382 billion people own iPhones. These devices have become so enmeshed in the workings of our daily lives, for better or worse, that they’ve shifted from devices we use to devices that influence our behavior in ways even Steve Jobs may not have anticipated. Apple Inc.’s digital ecosystem is command central for an interlocking suite of products and services that speak to one another—the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, HomePod, Mac computers, and the apps that run on them—streamlining the way we manage our lives. Personal iPhones seem to be as ubiquitous as cars; if they all suddenly disappeared, millions of people would feel handicapped, lost, unable to navigate their day to day affairs with ease. So it’s no surprise that Apple set the record for being the first publicly traded U.S. company to hit a $1 trillion market cap only a decade after the iPhone’s release in 2007 and remains one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Movements need someone at the helm, someone to stand up and have the courage to do the new thing first. Burt’s Bees has been “playing by nature’s rules since 1984” when Burt himself quit his photojournalism job in Manhattan to move to the Maine wilderness, where he became “the local bee man” after coming across a stray hive and deciding to try his hand at beekeeping. One day, Burt picked up hitchhiker Roxanne who, in addition to becoming his life partner, had a knack for making things out of Burt’s surplus beeswax. And so the story begins….
Burt represents a quality that is hard to name—a certain energy or ethos that’s elusive until you see it expressed. After that, it can’t be ignored. He is the “shirtless dancing guy” who stars in Derek Sivers’s viral treatise on movements and how they’re made. Without the guy who dares to get up and risk criticism, or worse, ostracism, where are we after all? We’d remain static, underdeveloped, dull, tiresome. But something’s got to happen to keep the dancing guy from being a lone weirdo. That power lies with the next guy who decides to throw caution to the wind and jump up to join in the dance. This is the first follower, and as Sivers emphatically observes, he is the one who lights the spark that morphs dancing guy’s random oddity into something fun and cool and followable. The first follower makes the shirtless dancing guy “a thing.” Because realistically, we can’t all be leaders, nor can we all be iconic, but we can, in a thousand different ways, show others how to follow.
This idea is discussed in a TED Talk by Simon Sinek (the aforementioned author of Start With Why) called “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” It’s called the law of diffusion of innovation, and it describes how populations can be broken down into five groups: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards. We all sit at various points along this continuum at different times for different reasons. As marketers, however, these categories are critical because the law of diffusion of innovation tells us, Sinek explains, that “if you want mass-market acceptance of an idea, you cannot have it until you achieve the tipping point between 15 and 18% market penetration, and then the system tips.” The early majority, which comprises about 34% of the population, will not try something until the early adopters, a mere 13.5% of us, have tried it first. So you need the innovators and early adopters “to make decisions that are driven by what they believe about the world,” instead of by what catches their eye.
The next ingredient of a movement lies in the nature of communities, which, when strong, galvanize into their own organic force. Galvanized communities often build solidarity against some other ideology, worldview, or leader. There is an inherent energy fueling the coalescence of people who share a vision that resolves into a mission to build a worldview that followers can inhabit. So you start to see the many onion layers that form around the bulb of an ideology. Water that soil and you’ve got the neon green shoots of a movement.
We are in Vermont, and in honor of our state’s entrepreneurial spirit, it’s fitting to mention Eat More Kale. This brand started as a one-man t-shirt-making machine operating out of a small studio over founder Bo Moore’s garage. Armed with a DIY t-shirt screen-printing kit, Bo roughed out the lettering and cut the original stencil for a pair of farmer friends who sold vegetables. The first batch of t-shirts became instant conversation starters and ultimately garnered enough attention to warrant larger and larger print runs. The slogan that started a couple decades ago as a literal suggestion for eating a healthy diet has evolved to represent the community that came together to help get Bo’s screen printing operation off the ground. It’s also become a stand-in call-to-action in support of organic agriculture and local businesses.
From its beginnings, SoulCycle has billed itself as a community galvanizing force. On the face of it, they offer 45-minute cardio workouts on stationary bikes. But what really gives SoulCycle its oomph is you, showing up for your workout…. “Pushing yourself. Pushing each other. Until you’ve shed what was and pedaled toward what could be. What will be.” They pitch the community experience of a dance party on a bike as a transformative force for big life change.
SoulCycle now hosts Give Back Rides to promote important causes “from cancer research and gun control to immigrant rights and suicide prevention,” so in addition to riding with likeminded workout enthusiasts, you can ride for good. The soul in SoulCycle really comes through in the company’s Give Back Ride messaging: “when the pack comes together, there’s nothing that can stop its light from spreading. And it’s all thanks to you.”
Not entirely necessary but quite helpful in movement building is the allure of obsession. You often hear people say they are “obsessed with” their new favorite yoga leggings, for example, or they’re hopelessly “addicted to” the new probiotic beverage on the market. People can’t get enough of stuff, and they love talking about the things that have become their lifesavers: the razor club that inspired them to develop a daily grooming ritual, the fitness hack that saved them from apathy, the tax app that rescued them from financial oblivion, the exfoliating scrub that magically erases decades of worry lines.
The coveted hyper-enthusiastic consumer comes in many shapes and sizes: Kombucha connoisseurs, CrossFit evangelists, iPhone addicts, Burton believers, Emface advocates, Dunkin’ Donuts diehards, Pilates preachers, Nike champions—these are the zealous nuts who have the power not only to elevate your brand, but to promote a whole way of life. The sneaker brand On promises to “ignite the human spirit through movement,” a claim that many women athletes stand by. Aqua ViTea Kombucha is dedicated to “universal gut health for all,” and many long-time consumers pledge their allegiance to the brand’s digestive healing properties. You can no doubt list some of your own essential lifestyle brands.
Going viral is the new black. It’s our twenty-first-century rags-to-riches scheme. You can begin as a four-year-old unboxing a LEGO Duplo set and morph into a “teenage mogul in the making” with a net worth upwards of $100 million. When things go viral they’re usually easy to love (or hate), easy to understand, quick to inspire emotion, and eternally shareable. The unbelievably simple concept of an adorable child genuinely excited by the latest toys he gets to play with was off the charts, garnering 54 million views the last time we checked.
The hero pig who saved a baby goat from drowning, while a total hoax to boost visitation to a California petting zoo, pulled the heartstrings of seven million viewers. A man known to YouTube as Yosemitebear62 earned 51,710,915 views in 2010—a digital lightyear ago—of a recording capturing his enlightened appreciation of a double rainbow. Social media posts featuring curious bonds between pets garnered so much traffic they inspired a National Geographic Kids series called Unlikely Animal Friends. And there’s a reason the Juicy Fruit gum commercial still plays like a skipping record in my brain 40-odd years later, even though I really wish it wouldn’t.
Even if your brand isn’t exactly the stuff that movements are made of, your marketing strategies can use movements as a model for nudging the dawdlers further along the Buyer Journey. Remembering the lessons of Burt and his bees, the shirtless dancing guy and his first follower, toy-happy toddler Ryan, the goat-loving swimming pig, and gobsmacked Yosemitebear will help you create promotional content that grabs attention, perks curiosity, maybe even warms the heart, and ideally inspires action.
And action is the gleaming tip of the Zealous Nut Iceberg.
In addition to understanding the magnetism of movements, a solid audience conversion campaign acclimates itself to the cultural climate. It tests the waters of its marketing ecosystem, listens to the resident elders, and lifts a moistened marketing finger to determine which way the winds are blowing. Ask yourself the following questions when taking the cultural temperature: Where is the energy in this arena? Where is the action? What trends are building momentum? Who are the leaders, and who are the followers? Who has the loudest voice? Who is the most impactful? What can you learn from them?
This research is important because it informs a brand about how it can be additive instead of repetitive. The best brands both represent the cultures from which they spring and add something new. How does your product or service advance the cultural conversation? How does it engage with or redefine the status quo? Does it enhance or amplify it? Does it challenge or disrupt it?
Familiarizing yourself with the cultural landscape also clarifies who you’re competing against. To stand out, you need to pay attention to what’s already being done. Your product or service can then both present something different but also something better than the competition with implied, if not direct, comparisons. Rival brands will be developing their own differentiation strategies as well, so it’s wise to track their movements carefully.
This is the fun part. The folks that sought out your product or service on their own are the shirtless dancing guys of your particular sphere of influence. Pay attention to who they are and whether their customer behavior engages other potential customers or first followers. Their interests and behavior can teach you a lot about which audiences to target—from the low-hanging fruit to the fruit that’s ripe but still just out of reach—and also what you may need to do to expand your audience to include those who still need to be sold that your fruit is worth tasting in the first place.
This is called a first-party focus. The first-party data you obtain using this strategy is any information gathered firsthand from your existing audience through their interactions with your brand. This data is reliable and relevant because it can reflect where your brand is currently having the most success; it’s a lot easier to design your next iteration of personalized marketing strategies when you have actual customers to learn from.
Throughout all these efforts to bolster your customer base, be aware of your blind spots. Are you fulfilling your brand promise? Is there anything else you can do to promote brand loyalty? How can you tap into your existing zealous nuts to gather consumer insights and give them reason to promote your brand to others through word-of-mouth?
Lastly, take the haters with a grain of salt. This may seem obvious, but negative feedback is either valuable or distracting enough to knock us off our game. Make sure it’s the former. Sometimes the negative feedback comes from people just trying to Jedi-mind-trick you. In this case, don’t waste your precious resources and energy trying to catch a fish with a fly when they’ll only bite a worm.
Now that you have your people, it’s your job to guide them along the Buyer Journey. Here, we want to underscore some of the “soft” tactics that can mean the difference between customer conversion and bail out.
First, make it easy for people—easy to access, easy to use, easy to enjoy. Make sure the rewards of your product or service fall handily in their laps. Require no heavy lifting. Incorporate lots of helpful prompts and guides. Pack light from a content perspective so your message isn’t burdensome or overwrought. It’s a long road to full adoption; take a lesson from the Tortoise’s book while letting the Hare dash inefficiently all over the target market making a lot of unnecessary noise and confusion.
Second, leave a trail of golden crumbs, enticements, rewards, fun engagement opportunities; attention spans are short, and many customers need the allure of the next shiny thing on the path to pull them along. (Don’t let the fairy tale analogy here confuse you into emulating the old lady in Hansel and Gretel, however. Remember she was easily outsmarted by those crafty, curious kids in the end.)
Third, forge your Holy Grail, your brand’s version of what life will be like for your prospective customers should they take the plunge. There it is, glowing on the horizon, so real you can almost touch it. What brand-happy future awaits? Just look how much better things could be with your product or service in their lives! You already believe in it—it's your brand after all—so painting the picture should be easy.
Congratulations! You’ve done it! Your zealous nuts and early adopters have multiplied into a respectable crowd! It’s now time to take good care of your converts by investing in their experience. We’d advise taking the following steps to ensure audience retention:
There are so many success stories out there, and so many shirtless zealous dancing nuts who are willing to vouch for their favorites. Studying them is a great way to understand how your brand can attract its own fans.
Each great brand employs the three pillars of rhetoric to tell its story. The three pillars are logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos appeals to reason, framing logical arguments. Ethos appeals to status or authority, making the audience more likely to trust them. Pathos appeals to the emotions, trying to make the audience feel something. Collectively, these three elements are called The Rhetorical Triangle, marketing’s perfect storm.
Here are some of our favorite brands that channel logos, ethos, and pathos to forge and fuel their identities and messaging. The categories themselves also give cues about why they resonate so powerfully with their audiences.
What would you add to this list? What brands do you hold dear? Which ones can you not do without? Which have become so enmeshed into your lifestyle that they cease to even seem like brands, but are more like tools for life?
So now you have a rough guide to elevating your brand to a thing that moves and breathes and talks and performs. You also have a loose map charting how to direct as many indifferent dawdlers as possible toward your strong ideology, your differentiated worldview, your iconic leaders and followers, your bespoke community galvanizing tools, some irresistible obsessions, and a dose of good old virality.
Be sure to take the cultural temperature, find your people, and show them the way. Make your product or service easily accessible and usable; leave some enticing tidbits to draw them in further and reinforce loyalty; and go to lengths to reveal your shining city on the horizon—the holy grail of your brand promise that is just within reach.
Once your new customers are swimming along in the pleasing current of your beautiful brand river, remind them why this is fun, why they should keep going and see where the next bend leads. Celebrate them when they cross into friendly waters. Show them how the shirtless dancing guy zealous nut status now applies to them and that it makes them look super stylie and worthy of admiration.