What Middle Schoolers Have Taught Me About Branding
Middle schoolers can spot a fake in about three seconds. Businesses spend years trying to learn the lesson they already know instinctively.
If you want to know whether something is authentic, do not ask a focus group. Ask a room full of middle schoolers. They will tell you, often within the first thirty seconds, whether an adult is being genuine with them or performing at them, and they will not soften the verdict to spare anyone’s feelings. I have spent a significant part of my career in rooms exactly like that, and it has taught me more about branding than almost any boardroom ever has.
Middle school is a particular stage of life where young people are developing a finely tuned radar for inconsistency, because they are navigating so much of it themselves—who they are supposed to be, who they actually are, what is expected of them, what they actually believe. That radar does not turn off when they become adults and customers. It just gets quieter, more polite, less likely to be said out loud. But it is still there, still noticing.
This week I want to talk about what working with that age group has taught me about building brands that hold up under real scrutiny, not just polished presentations.
Adults Learn to Tolerate Inauthenticity. Kids Don’t.
Somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, most of us learn to accept a certain amount of performance as normal. We expect a little bit of spin in advertising. We expect a company’s public statements to be somewhat rehearsed. We develop a tolerance for the gap between what an organization says and what it actually does, because that gap has become so common we stop registering it as unusual.
Middle schoolers have not developed that tolerance yet, or at least not fully. When an adult says one thing and does another in front of them, they notice immediately, and they often say so, sometimes bluntly and sometimes simply by disengaging and refusing to trust what comes next. That instinct is not immaturity. It is actually a more accurate read of the situation than the polite acceptance adults have learned to perform.
The problem for brands is that this same instinct exists in every adult customer, just buried under years of learned tolerance. A promise that does not match the experience still registers as a mismatch, even if the customer has stopped expecting better and does not say anything about it. They simply quietly leave, or quietly stop recommending you, and the business never finds out why.
Jessica LaShawn’s Perspective
When I work with middle schoolers, I cannot rely on a polished pitch to earn their attention. I have to actually mean what I say, follow through on what I promise, and be consistent across every interaction, because they will test all three before they decide whether to trust me. That has made me a more honest brand strategist than any client meeting ever could, because the standard in that room is higher, not lower, than the standard most businesses hold themselves to.
I bring that same standard into my consulting work now. I ask organizations to imagine presenting their brand promise to a room of sharp, skeptical thirteen-year-olds. Would it hold up? Would the follow-through match the pitch? Most brands, when they are honest, admit it would not survive that room unscathed, and that admission is often the most useful moment in the entire engagement.
This is not about dumbing anything down. It is about raising the bar back up to where it used to be before adults collectively agreed to accept a little bit of spin as the cost of doing business.
Personal Reflection
Working with young people has repeatedly humbled me in the best way. There is no hiding behind credentials or polish in a classroom full of middle schoolers who are deciding, in real time, whether an adult is worth their trust. I have had to show up honestly, admit when I did not know something, and follow through on small promises consistently, because that is the only currency that works in that room.
That experience has shaped how I think about my own rebuilding, too. There were seasons when I was more focused on how I appeared than on whether my actions matched what I said I believed, and the young people I work with would have called that out instantly if they had been watching closely enough. Mentorship has a way of holding a mirror up to the mentor as much as the mentee, and some of the most important accountability in my life has come from students who were simply too young to know they were supposed to be polite about it.
What Shows Up When the Audience Won’t Pretend
Programs that work successfully with young audiences, whether in schools, youth sports, or community organizations, tend to share a common trait: consistency between what is promised and what actually happens, week after week. A coach, teacher, or mentor who says practice starts at a certain time and means it earns trust quickly. One who is inconsistent, even in small ways, loses credibility with young people faster than almost any other audience, because they are watching so closely for exactly that mismatch.
Edutopia, the George Lucas Educational Foundation’s resource for educators, has long emphasized that trust between adults and students is built through consistency and genuine relationship rather than authority alone. That principle translates directly into branding: trust with any audience, young or old, is built the same way—through consistent follow-through, not through persuasive language.
Putting this into practice? Explore Academic School SEL Curriculum with Jessica LaShawn.
What the Research Suggests
Pew Research Center’s work on younger generations has repeatedly found that younger audiences tend to value authenticity and transparency highly when evaluating institutions and public figures, often more skeptically than older generations evaluate the same claims. Edelman’s Trust Barometer work has similarly tracked how transparency and consistent behavior, rather than messaging alone, drive trust across audiences broadly. The pattern across this research suggests that the instincts middle schoolers display so openly are not a phase they will outgrow entirely; they are simply an early, unfiltered version of standards that persist, more quietly, into adulthood.
The JLC Classroom Credibility
The standard a skeptical young audience applies, translated for any brand.
- Say It Plainly: No jargon, no spin, no hedging.
- Mean It: Only promise what you actually intend to deliver.
- Show Up Consistently: Repeat the behavior until it is expected.
- Own the Gaps: Admit it honestly when you fall short.
Classroom Credibility is built in layers because trust with a skeptical audience is earned incrementally, never all at once. Plain language removes the suspicion that something is being hidden behind complexity. Meaning what you promise prevents the small gaps that erode trust before anyone notices it happening. Consistent follow-through turns a single good interaction into an expectation the audience can rely on. And owning the gaps honestly, when they inevitably happen, protects everything built in the layers before it, because a skeptical audience forgives an honest mistake far more readily than a hidden one.
Any brand willing to hold itself to this standard, the standard a room of middle schoolers would actually apply, tends to build trust that survives far more scrutiny than most marketing claims.
What This Means for Your Brand
For your brand, this means running an honest test: if your actual customer experience were presented to a room of sharp young people with no patience for spin, would it hold up? Where would they call out a gap between your promise and your follow-through?
It also means recognizing that the discipline required to earn trust with a skeptical young audience is the same discipline that earns lasting trust with any audience. Consistency, follow-through, and plain honesty are not softer virtues reserved for working with children. They are the actual foundation of every durable brand.
Middle schoolers will tell you the truth about your brand faster than any focus group, because they have not yet learned to politely accept the gap between a promise and a follow-through.
Build something that would hold up in that room, and it will hold up almost anywhere else.
Sources & Further Reading
- Edutopia — George Lucas Educational Foundation
- Pew Research Center — Pew Research Center
- Edelman Trust Barometer — Edelman