'People Like People More Than Brands'

Angie Hicks has been the face of Angie's List (now called Angi) for 30 years. It's not a role she wanted, but she knows how important it is.

- by JASON FEIFER

Every company needs a “face.” It’s the person who represents the brand in public and builds relationships with customers. The face becomes the person that customers relate to—because it’s easier to relate to a human than to a faceless corporate entity.

Angie Hicks wasn’t thinking about any of that back in 1996, when her company was named Angie’s List. She had no interest in the spotlight; her team just thought that “Angie’s List” was a good name.

But as the company grew, and then she began appearing in its marketing, she got a crash course in how to be the human embodiment of a brand. Now she believes it's an incredibly important role for brand leaders to play.

Angie’s List was acquired by IAC in 2017, and combined with its HomeAdvisor brand. Now it’s a publicly traded company called Angi Inc.—and although Hicks isn’t as consistently public as she used to be, she’s still there, still the face of the brand, and still taking calls with customers. Here, she explains how she grew into the role, and what anyone who’s the face of a brand needs to know.

Before this interview, I told my wife that I was talking to Angie from Angie’s List. And she asked, “That’s a real person?!” You must get that all the time.

I do. And in fact, that’s why our marketing team wanted to put me in our commercials—because it was people’s most common question. “Is there an actual Angie?”

Founders don't often realize the power that they have. As the face of a brand, founders are the ones that customers build relationships with. Did you appreciate that when you named the company Angie’s List?

It was quite a journey for me. We started the business in Columbus, Ohio, and we called it Columbus Neighbors. No one understood the business. They always got our name wrong. So a year in, we went through this process of renaming.