The Devil Wears Prada 2 and the Invisible Impact of Thought Leadership

How many followers do you need before your words actually make an impact?

I've seen versions of that question floating around LinkedIn lately. If you're new to Story Behind the Strategy, I have good news: the answer is 400. I know this because I just hit 400 followers, so I'm declaring it official. You're welcome.

Joking aside, the question underneath it is actually pretty interesting. Is there a point where your audience becomes large enough that people start paying attention? When do recruiters notice you? When does a potential customer start remembering your name? And how would you even know? Because the people influenced by your content aren't necessarily the people liking, commenting or following.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 gives us a surprisingly good example of why thought leadership marketing can have an impact long before that impact becomes visible.

Runway Has a Credibility Problem

Twenty years after Andy Sachs walked away from Runway, she comes back to a publication with a very different problem. Andy has built a successful career as a journalist. Runway, meanwhile, has struggled to adapt to a changing media landscape.

Then it gets caught in a PR mess. Runway publishes a puff piece promoting a fashion house that is subsequently exposed for its fast-fashion practices. Miranda Priestly becomes the face of the controversy, and Andy is brought back to help manage the fallout. But Runway doesn't just have a PR problem. It has a credibility problem.

Nigel explains that people aren't reading the print magazine the way they used to. Runway has responded by leaning into clickbait and cheaply produced short-form content designed to keep advertisers interested and revenue coming in.

Andy starts pushing the publication back toward more substantive journalism. And initially? Hardly anyone cares. Her more serious articles don't suddenly generate massive traffic. There isn't an immediate flood of engagement proving the strategy is working. If Andy were looking at a dashboard and asking whether the new content strategy was successful, the numbers might tell her no. Except someone important is reading.

Runway Didn't Know Sasha Was Watching

Andy eventually helps arrange an interview between Miranda and the famously private Sasha Barnes. During the interview, Sasha explains why she agreed to it. She had noticed Runway changing. She'd seen the shift away from puff pieces and toward more meaningful content. That body of work helped convince her that Runway—and Miranda—were worth trusting with her story.

Runway had been rebuilding its credibility before it knew Sasha was watching. That's the part I haven't stopped thinking about. Sasha didn't suddenly enter the top of Runway's proverbial funnel when Andy approached her. She'd already encountered the content. She'd noticed the change. She'd formed an opinion about what Runway was becoming.

The interview wasn't the beginning of that relationship. It was the first time Runway could see it. And joking about my newly authoritative 400-follower status aside, that's where this gets much more interesting for marketers.

Who Is Quietly Paying Attention?

Someone reads your LinkedIn post and doesn't react. A week later, they see another. They find an article on your website. Maybe they listen to a podcast you're on. They register for a webinar and watch half of it. Another post appears in their feed.

They still haven't filled out a form. They haven't requested a demo. They may not even follow your company. As far as your CRM is concerned, they may not exist. But they're forming an opinion. That's why I'm increasingly skeptical of the question about how many followers someone needs before their content starts making an impact.

You don't necessarily need everyone to be listening. You need the right people to encounter the right ideas often enough to remember you. And you don't always know when that's happening.

I'm Doing the Same Thing as a Job Candidate

I've experienced this from the other side during my current job search. Like a lot of people in this market, I'll browse job boards and see which positions look promising—and which ones already have hundreds of applicants. But when I find a role where I feel strongly about the fit, my next step usually isn't to apply. I start digging.

I look at the company's website. I read its LinkedIn posts. I research the product. I look at what people inside the organization are talking about. I want to understand how the company describes its customers, what its leaders seem to care about and whether the story they're telling publicly matches the opportunity I'm considering.

Sometimes that research makes me more interested. Sometimes it convinces me not to apply at all. And sometimes I find a person whose ideas give me a much better window into the organization than a careers page ever could.

Bob Marshall's posts were one of those signals when I was researching Ting Labs. His content helped me better understand the organization and contributed to my decision that the opportunity was worth pursuing, but the influence didn't stop with the application. Some of what Ting Labs was discussing around AI infrastructure and data centers sent me down my own research rabbit hole. I wanted to better understand the larger story: What does growing AI demand actually mean for the power grid?

That curiosity eventually became the first Story Behind the Strategy: Field Notes. Bob had no idea any of that was happening - just that I'm a new follower. I wasn't commenting on every post:

Hello, prospective applicant here. Your thought leadership is currently influencing my candidate journey—and apparently my editorial calendar. I was just reading.

That's the part our analytics can't see. One person's content influenced how I perceived an organization, helped me decide whether an opportunity deserved a closer look and ultimately inspired me to research and publish something of my own. And I'm sure I'm not unusual. By the time an employer sees my application in its ATS, I may already have encountered the company five, ten or twenty times. And that sounds an awful lot like a customer journey.

The Customer Isn't “New” Just Because You Finally Noticed Them

Marketing has the same measurement problem. We still talk about customers entering a sales funnel as though that's where their relationship with a company begins. Someone visits the website, downloads something, then fills out a form.

Suddenly they're in HubSpot or Salesforce and we can see them. Congratulations! A brand-new lead has entered the funnel. Except they're not new at all. Maybe they saw a LinkedIn post three months ago. Then another. They read an article. Heard one of your executives on a podcast. Watched part of a webinar. Saw a colleague share something your company published. Googled a problem and found another article.

Finally one day they visit your website and request a demo. Which touchpoint caused the conversion? Maybe there wasn't one. Maybe the tenth interaction only worked because of the first nine.

By the time someone becomes visible in your CRM, they may have been part of your audience for months. The form fill didn't necessarily begin the conversion. It revealed that the conversion had been happening for a while. That's where thought leadership marketing becomes much more interesting than counting likes.

Good PR Has Always Understood This

I spent ten years working next to a newsroom, and it changed how I think about PR. The product itself usually isn't the most interesting story. The people are.

What is someone inside the organization seeing that others aren't? What problem are customers actually experiencing? What has an engineer learned after spending 20 years solving the same kind of problem? What can a customer explain about an industry that your product page can't?

Good PR finds those stories. Thought leadership gives organizations another way to tell them. Your best spokesperson may not work in PR. It might be an engineer, product leader, marketer or customer-facing employee who understands something worth explaining.

Give them opportunities to explain it. Not because every LinkedIn post needs to generate an MQL, but because someone may be quietly deciding whether your organization is worth paying attention to.

And Yes, I See the Irony

That's also part of what I've been experimenting with through Story Behind the Strategy. I don't have tens of thousands of followers. I have 400. We have established that this is officially the magic number. But I've spent the last few months writing about marketing, communication, crisis management, manufacturing technology, trade shows, career development and occasionally why fictional characters desperately need better communication skills.

I can see impressions, engagement and when someone visits my profile. What I can't see is every person quietly reading. Maybe it's a recruiter. Maybe it's someone I worked with ten years ago. Maybe it's a future consulting client. Maybe it's someone who will eventually need a public-speaking workshop. Maybe it's simply someone who enjoys reading what I write.

I don't know and that's kind of the point.

I'm building the body of work before I know who might eventually need a reason to trust me. A résumé tells someone where I've worked. A portfolio shows what I've made. A certification demonstrates what I've studied. Thought leadership adds something different: Here's how I think.

The Story Behind the Strategy

Runway couldn't repair its reputation by publishing a statement telling everyone to trust Miranda again. It had to start producing work worth trusting. And importantly, that work didn't immediately look successful.

Andy's articles weren't suddenly going viral but Sasha was reading. That's what makes thought leadership marketing difficult to measure—and potentially more valuable than its visible engagement suggests. Followers tell us who has opted into the possibility of seeing another idea. Impressions tell us the content was served. Engagement tells us who publicly reacted. Website analytics tell us when someone finally arrived somewhere we could measure them.

None of those numbers tells us who changed their mind about us. That's reputation and trust. And that's why the magic number probably isn't 400, 1,000 or 10,000 followers. Sometimes it's one. You just have to publish something worth finding before you know who that person is.

So What?

The next time a thoughtful article gets 150 impressions, it might be tempting to decide it didn't work. Maybe it didn't. Or maybe your Sasha is reading. Who are you trying to reach—and what would they learn about you if they've been quietly paying attention?