How to Build Brands People Actually Believe In

At theSocialNext Marketing Alliance (SNMA), Canadian marketers from across the country virtually gather each month to swap ideas, test playbooks, and challenge what “brand” really means in 2025. Across sessions led by Christina Garnett, Kate Brown, Daniel Francavilla, Camille Moore, and Chad Hason, a clear theme emerged: the future of marketing belongs to brands people believe in.

The conversations moved beyond logos and taglines. They tackled what happens when you rebuild trust in a distrusted category, when you lead with community instead of campaigns, and when you treat thought leadership as a brand act.

These are the ideas shaping the next wave of marketing in Canada, ten lessons from SNMA’s most thought-provoking voices on how to build brands that don’t just sell, but stick.

Lesson 1: Trust Is the New Performance Metric

In industries that people instinctively distrust (insurance, banking, subscriptions) neutral isn’t neutral. It’s a red flag. Building a loved brand in these spaces means rethinking how you earn and keep trust.

A useful north star from the Insurely team: be the “Disneyland of insurance”, create unexpected magic with radical simplicity where people don’t expect it.

As Insurely CMO Kate Brown shared, “Every touchpoint either compounds trust or drains it.” Her “challenger mindset” calls on marketers to stop playing defense and start creating trust with intent.

The New Trust Playbook

• Audit your trust gaps. Map the customer journey and identify friction points like hidden fees or confusing terms. You can’t fix what you haven’t mapped.
• Humanize your voice. Drop the corporate jargon. Let people hear real humans behind the brand.
• Obsess over the right data. Use surveys and sentiment tools to understand the “why” behind customer behaviour.
• Reduce friction. Simplify processes and remove barriers across your website and experience.
• Layer emotion with proof. Authentic testimonials matter more than polished claims.

As Calgary-based author Chad Hason puts it in Brand Is a Verb, the strongest brands don’t just describe who they are, they prove it in every action. “How you do one thing with your brand,” he says, “is how you should do everything with your brand.”

Brown’s team at Insurely saw results to match: a 70% lift in open rates, 425% higher engagement, and a 51.85% faster lead-to-customer conversion. Her point is simple, clarity and value beat cleverness every time.

Lesson 2: Design for Belief, Not Just Clicks

Building a trusted brand is psychological. Customers are tired, skeptical, and cautious. The solution? Precision. Every keyword, click, and design choice must serve intent.

A few field notes from the Insurely playbook: lead with intent-based keywords (niche, high-intent searches), place CTAs where eyes naturally travel, and shape layouts to Z and F scanning patterns. Then test relentlessly (copy, color, font, button size) because visual hierarchy nudges behaviour.

Rather than trying to out-advertise competitors, Brown advocates for empathy-led design and data-driven precision. Make your value explicit (“Save an average of $428 a year”), guide the eye through frictionless layouts, and build experiences that feel intuitive, credible, and human.

One mindset shift that helps: “Stop fixing landing pages—fix your category.” When you show customers that you’re rewriting the rules for them, not just for profit, they lean in.

Lesson 3: The Pendulum Has Swung Back to Brand

The era of performance-at-all-costs is ending. After years of chasing clicks and short-term wins, marketers are rediscovering the compounding power of brand.

As strategist Daniel Francavillaputs it, “Brand compounds. Campaigns decay.” Each campaign may drive a spike, but brand keeps paying dividends long after the ad spend ends. Research backs it up: the best-performing companies balance brand building and performance roughly 50/40.

Neglecting your brand is risky, trust erodes, acquisition costs climb, and every campaign starts from zero. Investing in brand gives every future click a head start.

Daniel Francavilla at SocialNext: Ottawa 2025, Photo by Mat Higgins-Savidant

Lesson 4: Thought Leadership Is the New Brand Amplifier

Here’s a simple but powerful formula that keeps brands coherent while scaling their reach: “Brand is the frame. Thought leadership is the voice.” Your brand gives structure; your experts give it life.

That means creating consistent, authored content around clear editorial pillars. Give your ideas a home: an Insights hub, a newsletter, a recurring series. Publish under real names and distribute widely. When people see consistent, thoughtful voices from your team, they begin to associate credibility with your brand.

You see this playbook in action at companies like Shopify and Wealthsimple. Their leaders, Harley Finkelstein and Michael Katchen, don’t just sell products; they shape conversations. Their human presence turns logos into leaders.

Lesson 5: Loyalty Starts with Listening

True loyalty begins long before a sale, it starts with empathy. “Rewards can buy attention, not affection,” says Christina Garnett.

Every post, comment, and piece of feedback is emotional data. The words people use, “love,” “frustrated,” “wish”, tell you what’s really happening beneath the surface. Brands that listen deeply and act on that insight transform casual buyers into long-term advocates.

As mentioned in her book, Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships, community is where this loyalty takes root. As Garnett puts it, “Community is the new funnel—it’s where customers move from connection to advocacy.”

Lesson 6: From Connection to Community

Listening is just the first step; action is what cements loyalty. Garnett challenges brands to show empathy in motion, respond, adapt, and admit mistakes publicly.

Brands like Patagonia and Dove have mastered this. Their communities don’t just buy products, they share values. When customers feel part of a movement, they stay for reasons far beyond discounts or perks.

The metric to watch? Advocacy. When people defend you unprompted, you’ve built something that outlasts algorithms.

Lesson 7: Your Personal Brand Is a Verification Engine

Social media is no longer a billboard, it’s a background check. Prospects do a quick “2–3 point pass” (your website, LinkedIn, and one more profile) before deciding if you’re credible. To pass that check, make every profile tell the same story and prove your expertise.

From Camille Moore’s session, a few actionable anchors:

• Keep your story consistent across profiles: who you are, what you do, who you serve, and why you’re the right choice.
• Develop content buckets (3–8 recurring themes that are authentic to you—e.g., educate, case studies, thought leadership, mentorship, travel/lifestyle). Buckets keep you recognizable without being repetitive.
• Choose the right account strategy for your context: business-only, owner-as-brand, or hybrid (personal thought leadership + business account working in tandem).

This isn’t about aesthetic grids; it’s about coherence and proof everywhere someone looks.

Lesson 8: Build on a Clear Brand Core (Then Use Pillars & Buckets)

Before you worry about algorithms or formats, lock your Brand Core, the foundation Camille teaches:

• Purpose: Your why. What are you here to do?
• Position: The lane you want to own (POV + differentiators).
• Personality: How you show up (tone, voice, visual energy).
• Perception: What the audience actually feels and remembers about you.

With that set, choose the right execution system:

• Pillars (great for business accounts): Balance ~2 sales/convince pillars with ~2 connection/relate pillars. Avoid posting the same pillar back‑to‑back to prevent suppression and fatigue.
• Buckets (great for personal brands): Your recurring themes as a person (e.g., educate, case studies, business insights, mentorship, lifestyle). Each bucket can be expressed in multiple formats (talking head, carousel, long form, podcast clip, etc.).
• Inner vs. Outer Circle: Blend top‑of‑funnel, more viral topics (outer circle) with deeper, intimate content that builds trust and converts (inner circle). Most “viral-only” creators struggle to sell because they skip the inner circle.

These systems help you stay creative and consistent, regardless of platform.

Lesson 9: Measure Brand Like It Matters

Brand building isn’t fluff, it’s measurable. Francavilla and Garnett both point to the need for leading and lagging indicators.

Leading (Brand Health): Share of voice, branded search, quality press, engagement depth, partnerships.

Lagging (Business Impact): Pipeline contribution, win rate, retention, and the CLV-to-CAC ratio.

Tracking both proves that brand isn’t just a cost center, it’s a growth engine.

Lesson 10: Brand Is a Verb, And Action Beats Appearance

A brand isn’t a slogan or a design system, it’s behaviour. In his book Brand Is a Verb, Chad Hason argues that every action your brand takes, from customer service to social posts, should reflect your values.

Hason also champions humor as a powerful connector: “If you laugh about something, you’re more likely to repeat it.” But he’s quick to note that not every brand needs to comment on everything. Sometimes, restraint is the smartest branding move.

“You don’t have to care about everything,” he says. “Sometimes brands just need to take the day off.”

That mix of self-awareness, clarity, and consistency might be the most important lesson of all.

Quick-Start Playbook

1. Run a trust audit and fix your top five friction points.
2. Launch an Insights hub with three to five editorial pillars.
3. Create your Brand Core document and share it across your team.
4. Open one community space where customers can engage directly.
5. Rebalance spend toward a healthy 50/40 split between brand and performance.

HighLevel at SocialPacific 2025, photo by Neil Zeller

The Brands People Believe In Will Win

From distrusted industries to challenger startups, every SNMA session came back to the same truth: brand is the most powerful currency in marketing. The future doesn’t belong to the loudest brands, it belongs to the ones people trust. When you build with empathy, consistency, and conviction, your audience doesn’t just buy, they believe.

The SocialNext Marketing Alliance continues to bring together Canada’s most forward-thinking marketers to share real lessons on brand, strategy, and connection.

Join the next SNMA session to connect with leaders like Kate Brown, Christina Garnett, Chad Hason, and others shaping the future of modern marketing.

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