Data: Civic Science 2019 – Lots of marketers worry about brand haters. I mean, they sure seem vocal, and word-of-mouth is important. But 99% of the time, haters aren’t your biggest issue. The good folks at Civic Science surveyed over 26,000 people about their opinions of Dick’s Sporting Goods and R.E.I. (the 2nd and 11th largest sporting goods retailers in the world). It turns out, haters are usually dwarfed by the indifferent: people who have no opinion or never heard of you. So if you want to grow, go after that much bigger group of people. And chill about haters. After all, even U2 has ’em. [Thanks to Johnny Molson for sending us this extremely very cool graph. – Indy Beagle]