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Schaefer

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schaefer, Mark W.
Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing
Strategy
Mark W. Schaefer - 1st ed.
ISBN-10: 978-1-7335533-9-1 (paperback)
You pick up a book, start with the dedication, and find that, once again, the
author has dedicated a book to someone else and not to you.
Not this time.
Just because we haven’t met doesn’t mean we won’t in a community
someday. It might just be the best thing ever. So, this is for you. My future
best friend.
 Other books by Mark W. Schaefer

The Tao of Twitter, Changing Your Life and Your Business One Tweet at a
Time

Return On Influence, The Power of Influencer Marketing

Born to Blog (with Stanford Smith)

Social Media Explained

The Content Code, Six Essential Strategies to Ignite Your Content, Your
Marketing, and Your Business

KNOWN, The Handbook to Build and Unleash Your Personal Brand in the
Digital Age

Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins

Cumulative Advantage: How to Build Momentum for Your Ideas, Business,

and Life, Against All Odds
 CONTENTS

Introduction

SECTION ONE The Last Great Marketing Strategy

CHAPTER 1 The Loneliest Generation
CHAPTER 2 Community versus Audience
CHAPTER 3 The Business Case for Community
CHAPTER 4 Dana's Story
CHAPTER 5 The Community Framework

SECTION TWO The Art and Science of Community

CHAPTER 6 The Culture Club
CHAPTER 7 It Begins with Purpose
CHAPTER 8 Gather Your Community
CHAPTER 9 A new leadership mindset
CHAPTER 10 The Truth About Measurement

SECTION THREE The Next Community

CHAPTER 11 Web3 and the New Frontiers of Community
CHAPTER 12 The Secret Communities
CONCLUSION From Me to We

KEEP LEARNING
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NOTES
 Introduction

“There is no business excellence without community excellence. Think deeply

about this.”
—TOM PETERS

The book in your hands contains insights that can grow your company, create
an unassailable competitive advantage, and transform your view of marketing
forever. It might even help heal the world.
I know that sounds like a lot. But I’m sure I’m right. The idea of
“belonging to the brand” is something I’ve thought about (obsessed about!)
for years.
The notion started brewing for me in 2018 when I wrote a popular book
called Marketing Rebellion. It served as a wake-up call for marketers
slumbering through the momentous changes taking place in consumer
behavior.
I suggested that marketers set aside their algorithms and automated
programs for a moment to reimagine our profession through the lens of
fundamental human needs like love, meaning, and respect.
In one chapter, I proposed that the need for belonging and community
would emerge as a priority for our future marketing plans. When I finished
writing Marketing Rebellion, I recognized that this chapter was singularly
important. In a world where fewer customers see or trust our ads, the white-
hot competition of content marketing isn’t sustainable, and profitable success
with search engine strategies is out of reach for many businesses, community
seems to be an undeveloped customer access point.
Helping a person belong to something represents the ultimate marketing
achievement. If a customer opts-in to an engaging, supportive, and relevant
brand community, we no longer need to lure them into our orbit with ads and
SEO, right? What we used to consider marketing is essentially over.
Thirty years ago, this scenario would have been impossible. Consumers
had no choice back then. In order to know about our company, nonprofit,
hospital, or university, they had to engage with our ads and intrusive
marketing messaging. But a 10-year examination of hundreds of thousands of
“buyer journeys” concluded that two-thirds of our marketing is occurring
without us.1 And it’s likely even worse than that for B2B companies.2 Today,
our brand story is narrated through social media posts, reviews, testimonies,
influencers, and powerful content creators.
Month by month, our traditional marketing grows weaker. The power of
customers and creators grows stronger.
In 2018, I knew that “belonging to a brand” would become an essential
source of meaning for consumers who were ignoring, blocking, and
streaming their way past conventional sales and marketing practices.
But I had no idea how rapidly my prediction would come true.

Community takes center stage

Exactly one year after Marketing Rebellion was published, the COVID-19
pandemic upended our lives. In a world where our customers were locked
down and locked out of many routines and relationships, the most human
companies stepped in to help fill the gap.
It took a while for this to click in, though. Early in the pandemic, confused
companies anxiously clung to an advertising script. How many times were
we bombarded with the same meaningless, unconvincing message: “We are
with you in these unprecedented times.” But then many companies rolled up
their sleeves and actually helped the communities they serve.

Kiolbassa Provision Company, a business that makes smoked meats in

Texas, donated 10,000 pounds of their product to their suffering
communities every month.
Heineken redirected its billboard advertising budget to support
customers. When bars shuttered during the pandemic, Heineken paid
them to put an ad on their door that said, “See this ad today, enjoy this
bar tomorrow.” Turning the bar into a paid media outlet helped save
their customer businesses.
The English National Opera helped COVID victims suffering from
breathlessness and anxiety by offering a free program focused on
effective breathing exercises.
 Fans of my book began telling me that the changes I predicted were
happening right before their eyes. The pandemic forced companies to finally
throw away the insincere advertising cliches and connect to customers in a
truly human way.
A fearful world visited online communities at record levels, and
engagement in these communities nearly doubled. About 80 percent of
Americans said an online community was their most important social group
during the crisis.3
But this trend of seeking comfort through community was percolating
long before the pandemic. Levels of depression, isolation, and loneliness
have been creeping upward since the 1960s. Communal activities like church,
sports, and social clubs have been replaced by hours spent alone, scrolling
through social media feeds and playing video games. Health professionals
have declared today’s young people “the loneliest generation.” The profound
crisis of belonging in our world has become a global health disaster.
The pandemic accelerated another significant trend: remote work. This
arrangement exacerbated the loneliness problem for many, but it also sped up
technological innovations that could help combat the social isolation for
those disconnected employees.
I believe that mental health and wellness will be among the most
dominant megatrends for decades to come. Pay attention to the headlines.
“Pausing” for mental well-being, demands for contractual mental wellness
days, and mental health warnings from doctors are in the news every day.

Connecting the trends

The intersection of three trends …

1. Deteriorating effectiveness of traditional marketing

2. Exploding levels of mental health problems
3. Transformational technological developments on Web3 and the
metaverse that will help people gather

… point to community as the marketing megatrend of our time.

The idea of a brand community is nothing new. The value of this book is
how it considers community through the lens of marketing strategy for the
first time.
Today, most communities fail because they’re seen as a place to sell, not
help. About 70 percent of brand communities focus primarily on transactional
benefits through customer self-help or self-service. By ignoring the vast
potential of community for brand building (spelled out in Chapter 3), the
marketing world is overlooking a unique source of competitive advantage
when it needs it most. Through extensive research and case studies, I’ll
propose that community — belonging to the brand — can replace the
intrusive marketing systems that are rapidly becoming obsolete.
Community can even become your company.
Great branding means building an emotional connection between your
audience and what you do. Brands are much more than logos and taglines.
They’re meaning systems. I believe community is the definitive meaning
system that helps our customers discover — and even create — our brand’s
connection to their world.
A customer committed to a relevant brand community doesn’t require any
further convincing, coupons, or coaxing to love us. They’ve become an
engaged advocate for our brand, sustained through the purpose they find
though our community.
We spend our lives gathering — first in our families, then in
neighborhoods, playgroups, schools, churches, meetings, weddings,
Facebook Groups, conferences, board meetings, class reunions, dinner
parties, trade fairs, and funerals.
The last great marketing strategy is community because we have always
longed to gather and belong. Specifically, your customers could want to
belong to you. And I will teach you how to gather them.
Belonging to the Brand is divided into three lively and useful sections:

1. The Last Great Marketing Strategy: In this section, I explain why the
time for community is now, the benefits of establishing community,
and tangible proof that it works. You will learn that community is
different from a list of customers, social media fans, or an audience.
Establishing a community is an elite achievement that creates
sustainable competitive advantage.
2. The Art and Science of Community: This section provides a
framework for considering community in the context of a company’s
marketing strategy. It’s a new marketing mindset with a new language,
 new priorities, and a thorny problem with measurement.
3. The Next Community: In this section, we look at where community
can go in the future. Can technology enable entirely new community-
based business models? You’ll learn how young people expect
community in places that confound traditional views of marketing.
Finally, I provide a personal glimpse of my own experience with
community and how it has impacted my business.

At the end of each chapter, I highlight an inspiring case study from big
businesses, small businesses, agencies, nonprofits, technology, education, and
the arts. There’s something for everybody!
Are you ready? Of course you are. We’re wired for community, and that’s
accessible to nearly every business, nonprofit, university, church, association,
and organization in the world.
Let’s begin. Your community is waiting for you.
 CHAPTER 1
The Loneliest Generation

To a large extent, loneliness determined who I’ve become.

I didn’t start out lonely. I had a quiet American childhood. My days were
spent playing in the streets of my blue-collar Pittsburgh neighborhood. We
didn’t have much money, so I cruised around my tiny kingdom on a
secondhand bike that was at least 25 years old, which means it was built in
the 1940s. It was a tank on two thick rubber tires, and I lovingly decorated
the wheel spokes with baseball cards that clacked loudly when I whizzed
down the steep hills of my community.
Fun in those days meant making something out of nothing. My friends
and I experienced boundless joy with rocks in a creek, wild berries that
became our war paint, and baseballs so old that the insides were hanging on
the outsides.
I was popular in school, and to my parents’ dismay, teachers noted on
report cards that I was the class clown. I remember being sent to the office for
doing a hula dance at my desk every time the teacher had her back to the
class.
I was fortunate to grow up in a school district with one of the finest music
programs in the country. By the third grade, we were expected to choose an
instrument to play. I fell in love with the cello and shared my musical
intentions with my mother.
“Can you take a cello on the school bus?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think that would fit,” I said.
“Then I guess you’re not playing the cello.”
The decision was made for me when a neighbor offered a beat-up clarinet
that I could use. So, I played clarinet ... and became a bit of a prodigy. By the
fifth grade, I was first-chair clarinet and soloing in the county-wide junior
high symphony. There are no words to describe the pure joy of sitting on a
stage with an orchestra, surrounded by the music of Beethoven. One of the
greatest thrills of my life.
Just days before I started the seventh grade, my family moved to a small
town in West Virginia. I entered my new junior high school without a friend
in the world, longing for my neighborhood and school pals more than a
hundred miles away.
The 1930s-era yellow brick building that was my new school was
decaying and underfunded. The student locker room was in a creepy,
windowless, dark basement with thick concrete support columns. On my first
day of school, I was alone and lost, looking for my locker in that
underground cavern, when I was cornered by a ninth-grade bully at least
twice my size. I’ll never forget that he was the first kid I ever saw with a
mustache!
The bully trapped me behind a column in the darkest back corner and told
me he was going to teach me how to play the “skin flute.” He unzipped his
pants, and with all my strength and a sudden gift of adrenaline, I wriggled
away. As I bolted out of the dark basement, he said he would kill me if I ever
told anyone what had happened.
In that moment, I transformed from a happy little boy to a 12-year-old
living in everlasting terror. I never tried to find my locker again. I just carried
everything with me. I never stepped foot in the lunchroom either, afraid of
the bully’s threatening stare. And tragically, I never picked up my clarinet
again — never played in an orchestra for the rest of my life — because the
bully played drums in the band.
I spent my life at school cowering in lonely corners, a living shadow. I
couldn’t tell my parents, fearing for my life if they went to the school and got
involved.
Then the situation worsened. My parents enrolled me in a private Catholic
high school. I was never a trouble or concern to them — I was a classic first-
born pleaser — but perhaps my parents saw this as an insurance policy for
my soul. Or maybe they sensed I wasn’t thriving in the public school, which
certainly was true.
In any event, the bully had finally moved on, and I hated the idea of
moving to a new school and being alone again. I fought them over the
transfer and lost.
Moving from public school to private school this late in the education
game was an unusual move. Most of these private school kids had been in
class together since kindergarten. Their patterns, traditions, and cliques had
developed over a decade. Newcomers were ignored.
I was ignored.
 I was more alone than ever and sinking into depression. In my first
semester of high school, I don’t believe I had one significant conversation
with a classmate.
Then something happened that changed my life forever. In the second
semester of my freshman year, I tried out for the high school musical. I have
no idea how I summoned the courage to do this. I had never acted in a play or
sung on a public stage. Perhaps it was an act of sheer desperation.
The drama productions in this school were a big deal. Everyone was in the
annual school musical. The jocks. The cheerleaders. The nerds. It was the
only truly unifying activity in the school.
For my audition, I sang “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce. It was an easy
choice because Jim Croce’s Greatest Hits was the first vinyl album I owned,
“Time in a Bottle” was the only song I knew by heart, and let’s face it, it’s
about as monotone a song as you could ever find.
The audition results were posted at the end of the next school day. I was
lost in a hive of excited people trying to read a neatly typed list pinned to a
bulletin board. I couldn’t find my name. Then I skimmed all the way to the
top of the list ... and there it was. I had been awarded the lead in the high
school musical.
I was standing right there in this buzzing mob of classmates, and
everybody was asking, “Who’s Mark Schaefer?” That’s how invisible I was!
I quietly walked away, trying to process this miracle.
I had suddenly achieved a minor but significant celebrity status. As daily
rehearsals began, I became part of a community that shared traditions, a
common language, and a purpose. The older, experienced actors mentored
me. Girls flirted with me, and dating became easier. One of the other leads in
the play, a kid who had teased me in the first semester, became my best
friend and later a roommate and the best man at my wedding.
The production was a hit, and I stole the show. Decades later, a family
friend surprised me with a shaky home video of this performance — and it
was actually pretty good!
In one incredible stroke of divine intervention, I was established as the
Drama Club’s reigning alpha male. For the first time in my teen years, I
belonged.
Once I had been accepted into this mainstream activity, I was transformed.
I became a leader in school government and president of the National Honor
Society. I played sports, wrote for the local newspaper, and earned many
awards and scholarships for my leadership. This surging confidence and
achievement rolled over to my college career and beyond. Belonging to this
group of performers forged an entirely new arc in my life.
I’ve always been haunted by this existential question:
What would have happened to me if I had not found that community to belong
to?
These were my formative years. By the time a child is 15 years old, most
of their neural framework is set. Psychologists contend that belonging to
groups at an early age is essential to developing a young person’s identity.
Two-thirds of those who felt chronically alone during childhood say they feel
lonely or isolated as adults all or most of the time.4
Teen experiences are strong predictors of where we end up as adults, and I
was not heading in a positive direction up to that point.
What would I have become if I had lived in a world of unremitting
loneliness instead of experiencing the validating joy of this high school
community?
If I had not climbed out of the shadows in that very crucial moment,
would I have excelled in college? Ascended the corporate ladder in a Fortune
100 corporation? Started my own business?
Would I be writing this book for you?

The epidemic of loneliness

My friend Keith Jennings is a healthcare industry executive, but his real title
is business philosopher. Years ago, we debated an idea he called “The
Furnace”: Our ultimate values and purpose evolve out of childhood wounds.
Each wound becomes a furnace that powers years of personal direction and
passion.
He’s right. I have a number of furnaces, and my childhood loneliness is
one of them that shows up in my work. My experiences undoubtedly
influence why I am so deeply disturbed to see the daily headlines reporting
the mounting crime, disease, and depression resulting from a global epidemic
of loneliness.
Loneliness is the gap between the level of connectedness that you need
and the level that you have. It’s a subjective feeling. People can have a lot of
contact and still be lonely. This explains why our social media streams are
full of connections, yet for many, more time on social media is making the
problem worse.
There’s conclusive evidence that a loneliness crisis has been building for
decades.5 In the 1980s, 20 percent of Americans said they were “often
lonely.” Today, that number is 40 percent. A staggering 22 percent of
millennials say they have “no friends at all.”6
Former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy summarized his experience as
a doctor: “During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I
saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness.”7
This is not just a US problem. A dark veil of loneliness is blanketing the
world. The UK established a Ministry of Loneliness to combat the national
problem. Two-thirds of citizens in India and China report they prefer their
online lives to real life.8 A condition called hikikomori, in which adolescents
become recluses in their parents’ homes, unable to work or go to school for
months or years, was identified in Japan and is sweeping through many other
countries.
Being lonely, like other forms of stress, increases the risk of mental health
disorders like depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. It puts people at
greater risk of physical ailments like heart disease, cancer, stroke,
hypertension, and dementia. A well-known analysis said the health effect of
loneliness is about the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.9

The special impact on youth

While this trend touches every generation, it’s most profound among young
people.
Teenagers today are less likely to date, less likely to leave home without
their parents, and more likely to put off the activities of adulthood.
Many teens are getting less sleep and exercise and spending less in-person
time with friends, creating a cognitive implosion: anxiety, depression,
compulsive behaviors, self-harm, and even suicide.10 In a six-year period,
adolescent loneliness doubled in 36 out of 37 countries surveyed, according
to a report in the Journal of Adolescence.11 These trends appear across
genders, among poor and rich adolescents, in every ethnic background, and in
cities, suburbs, and small towns.12
 Over a quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds say mental-health issues have a
major impact on their ability to perform at work (compared with 14 percent
of all employed respondents).13
What’s behind this devastating megatrend? The issue is complex, but here
are some of the reasons cited by scientists:

Single-parent households: Pew Research Center14 found that nearly

one-quarter of children in the US live in single-parent homes, a rate
more than three times higher than the average of children around the
world. An American National Family Life survey showed this
circumstance led to higher levels of loneliness and depression.
Experiencing parental divorce: Adolescents with divorced parents are
twice as likely to struggle socially and experience greater feelings of
social isolation.15
Shrinking family size: Even before the COVID-19 pandemic upended
the conversation around family size and the cost of raising children,
couples were trending toward smaller families. Research shows that
“only children” are more likely to be lonely.16
Pandemic pressure: School counselors have reported dramatically
higher incidents of anxiety, problems with emotional regulation, and
signs of low self-esteem following the lockdowns. The US Surgeon
General warned of a “devastating” mental health crisis among
adolescents.17 The implications of disrupted lives will be long-lasting.
Extended screen time: Time spent on social media has shifted from
optional to ubiquitous among our teens. Gen Z spends 7.5 hours a day
on their phones compared to an average of about 2.5 hours per day for
other generations.18 Heavy users of social media are about 30 percent
more likely to be depressed.19

It doesn’t help that social media is an outrage machine. Life online has
become far nastier, more polarized, and more likely to incite bullying and
shaming.
It’s disturbingly ironic to live in a world where a friend is a social media
click away and yet we are lonelier than ever. “They’re hanging out with
friends, but no friends are there,” said Bonnie Nagel, a psychologist at the
Oregon Health & Science University. “It’s not the same social connectedness
we need and not the kind that prevents one from feeling lonely.”20
 It appears that many of our online friendships are little more than empty
social calories.
We long to belong
In the most extensive health study in human history, Harvard researchers
examined the lives of the same group of people for more than 85 years.21 By
looking at human development over a lifespan, the researchers hoped to find
trends that would provide insight into what factors ultimately led to a good —
and long — life.
After decades of study, the researchers discovered that long-term
contentment didn’t come from money, status, or material goods. Those who
were happiest and healthiest reported strong interpersonal relationships while
those who were isolated experienced declines in mental and physical health
as they aged. Robert Waldinger, the director of the program, shared that key
finding in a popular TED Talk22 viewed 44 million times. His conclusion:
“Loneliness kills.”
In his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger
writes: “As society modernized, people found themselves able to live
independently from any communal group. A person living in a modern city or
a suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day — or an
entire life — mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be
surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone.
“The evidence that this is hard on us is overwhelming. Although
happiness is notoriously difficult to measure, mental illness is not. Studies
show that modern society — despite its nearly miraculous advances in
medicine, science, and technology — is afflicted with some of the highest
rates of depression, schizophrenia, poor health, anxiety, and chronic
loneliness in human history. Rather than buffering people from clinical
depression, increased wealth in a society seems to foster it.”
I was lucky. A miracle happened that helped me transcend loneliness and
launch into a productive and contented life. And it makes me wonder: What
will happen to the millions of people who aren’t as lucky as me? Are we
losing the creative, intellectual, and leadership potential of an entire
generation to loneliness?

The time for community is now

So far, this book has been a downer! I suppose that was unavoidable as I set
the stage for this serious topic. But this is where we turn the corner together
and focus on the profound opportunity to build positive change and hope.
Every trend is aligning to make NOW the time for a community-based
business model that provides both economic and social benefits.
Robert Christiansen, VP for Innovation at Hewlett Packard Enterprise,
predicts the switch is already happening. “Humans are social creatures, and
we need to be in proximity of other humans,” he said. “There is an energy
and exchange in that proximity. When I see you and you see me, I become
real through the social interactions of community. This helps build the
durability of the individual and helps us become more resilient as a person.
“Over the last several years we’ve seen the rapid degradation of the ability
to gain meaning and relevance in our social status because we’ve substituted
technological diversions for human community. This trend will swing the
other way. It’s already happening.”
A study by First Round Capital confirmed this idea when it found that 80
percent of startups are investing in community as a primary marketing
strategy and 28 percent consider it to be “most critical to their success.”23
This is a valuable peek into the future of marketing. Why are startups
suddenly focusing so heavily on community? Because it’s what customers
want, it’s what customers need, and it works.
Companies are abandoning the deep-rooted advertising playbook for a
fresh way to know customers, share information, co-create products, and
build an emotional connection that leads to loyalty and advocacy.
Community is good for companies, and it’s good for customers. A
mountain of research shows how belonging to a brand community enhances a
person’s self-esteem, self-identity, and pride. Sharing a common history,
language, and spirit with a community contributes to a potent sense of
belonging.24
When I had nearly completed writing this book, a new McKinsey research
report caught my eye: “A better way to build a brand: The community
flywheel.” The authors declared that community is the most significant
marketing trend of the decade.25
In a thunderous voice, the world seems to be telling us: We need
community now.
In Chapter 2, I’ll help you decide whether it’s time for YOUR community.
 CASE STUDY
Talking with strangers

Summary: Ashley Sumner built an audio app to close the loneliness gap.
Ashley Sumner has been bringing people together since she was a
teenager, so it was natural for her to invent an app that creates conversation
communities. As she says, “There is a unique power that comes from talking
to strangers.”26
“Talking to strangers is great and empowering,” according to Ashley. “We
connect to strangers for the same reason we want a therapist — we get an
objective view.
“Our natural state is to need to connect deeply with human beings. But
we’re more disconnected than ever because we’ve spent the last 20 years
being human guinea pigs for tech companies that are creating community on
their terms through social media. But it hasn’t worked.
“When I moved to LA, I started hosting 10-person conversations in coffee
shops or in hotel lobbies because I craved community. In no time, I went
from knowing nobody to having a list of thousands of people who wanted to
come into these conversations.
“I wanted this to be a daily experience for the world. That’s how Quilt
was born. Our vision was that people would open their homes to host
conversations and experiences. We would enable community gatherings so
we could get to know our neighbors and talk about things that matter to us.”

Moving to audio
In the first two years, there were 5,000 live, in-home conversations hosted
through Quilt. Five to 15 people were coming together at a time. And then
the pandemic hit, and Ashley’s business model evaporated in a day.
“Obviously, strangers aren’t gathering in homes at that point,” she said,
“so Quilt evolved into a social audio platform — micro spaces for
communities to gather. We went with audio because we found that video was
not the best way to create community. People would no-show if they didn’t
feel their appearance or apartment was presentable. Getting ready for a video
call was an obstacle to community. People’s feelings would be hurt if
somebody turned their camera off. Were they paying attention? Video was
friction. So audio was the way to go.
“We focus on kindness as a core value. I’ve been very clear about what
we stand for and what we don’t stand for. Our community guidelines show
how we honor people. This transparency builds trust.
“With most social platforms, you start by connecting with the people you
already know. Maybe you know them professionally. Maybe you know them
because you saw them on Twitter. Quilt is different because you come
together as strangers, and you become friends based on what people are going
through together.”

The role of live interaction

Today, live meetings still play an important role in Quilt communities, but
the difference is that people are meeting in person after a community has
already formed through the audio channel.
“A couple months ago, 100 Quilters from a community bought plane
tickets to meet up in person to spend a weekend together. They housed each
other, had picnics, slumber parties, and wild games. Some dressed up. These
were men and women from all over the country who had bared their souls on
Quilt and carried each other through the pandemic.
“Now they’re moving in together, starting businesses together,
collaborating with each other. What hit home for me was that they started as
strangers but found meaning through each other in a community.”
 CHAPTER 2
Community versus Audience

Marketers strive to forge a brand identity that is a positive emotional

connection with our customers and stakeholders.
Branding expert Evelyn Starr defines a brand as: “the expectation of what
you will get when you interact with an entity based on prior experiences with,
and impressions of, that entity.” Ideally, we would like that expectation and
emotion to be expressed as trust, respect, and maybe even love.
Building a brand connection used to be accomplished through advertising.
Many years ago, I was giving a speech before a large crowd in Poland and
asked, “What do you think of when I say the word ‘Coca-Cola?’” Somebody
shouted, “Polar bears!” Even in Poland, Coke goes better with polar bears.
Over many decades and millions of dollars in ad expenditures, Coke
moved the emotional connection to its product from “brown-colored sugar
water” to cute, beloved cartoon polar bear families. (They even have their
own merchandise line!)
Here’s the problem, though: Even if you have decades and millions of
dollars, those old ways of generating emotion through repetition and
familiarity are largely over. We’re inexorably moving toward a content-
streaming, ad-blocking world where even in the unlikely event somebody
sees your ad, they probably won’t believe it.
The marketing profession is in desperate need of a reboot, which will
come, in part, by considering the role of community in a fresh new context.
Before we get too far, let’s define community and how it differs from an
audience, a group of customers, or a list of social media followers.

The emotional continuum

In the digital world, our customers and potential customers inhabit an

emotional continuum that should be the obsession of every marketer. Let’s
dissect this:

A social media follower is a weak relational link. Algorithms may keep

customers at a formulated distance from your business, and just because
somebody follows you on Twitter doesn’t mean they would ever buy your
product or service. A “like” on Facebook merely represents a wave. “Hello. I
see you. But I’m not really a customer.” When a brand posts on social media,
it’s like standing on the beach and throwing a message in a bottle into the
ocean. Except for customer service, marketing at this level is an exercise in
hope — and with younger customers migrating away from primary social
channels like Facebook and Twitter, it’s increasingly less hopeful!
Building a social media audience is still important, though, because it
represents potential. Anybody following you on a social platform is a
candidate to transition to the next level on the continuum, an audience of
subscribers.
An audience has a significantly higher level of emotional connection and
represents reliable connectivity. By subscribing to your organization’s
newsletter, podcast, or other content, a person opts-in to your message and
allows you to market to them. Rather than relying on the “hope” that
somebody sees your social media post, you now have direct, reliable insight
into who is connected to you and how often. Over time, an audience can
become passionate fans, advocates, and customers.
But this is where most businesses are stuck — they have not moved
beyond content and the audience-level emotion of the continuum.
A community represents the uppermost level of emotional alignment and
commitment. It transcends a cult of personality — an audience following a
leader or brand image — and becomes a self-sustaining entity.
GWI, one of my favorite resources for research, asked social media users
and online community members how each platform made them feel. There is
a profound difference in the level of trust and commitment in communities
versus social media, including the ability to have meaningful conversations,
earn respect, and feel appreciation.27 Safe communities allow members to
escape the judgment of the internet and explore difficult ideas without the
fear of getting flamed.
Community also unleashes an entirely new level of economic benefits,
including co-created products, market insight, real-time communication flow,
and much more that I will lovingly detail in the next chapter. This is the
ultimate customer connection. The bond is so strong that the community can
become the business and other marketing expenditures could be reduced or
suspended — a dream state for any marketing strategy.
Think of this continuum like a traditional Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) strategy. In CRM, a marketing effort aims at moving
customers from awareness to consideration and then on to a purchase,
loyalty, and advocacy. A marketing strategy based on emotional
empowerment through community is more effective than the hope-based
marketing systems we rely on today.
Moving customers from follower to audience to community is a process
they will actually embrace!

The special qualities of community

Let’s peel the onion a little further and take a more precise look at
community.
There are three distinguishing features of a community compared to an
audience or list of social media followers:

1. Connection to each other. Like friends in a neighborhood, members of

a community know each other and communicate with each other,
either in a real-life setting or online. They share information to help
 each other, like a neighbor who has your back in times of trouble.
There is a connection felt between members and a collective feeling of
difference from individuals who do not belong to the community.
2. Purpose. Like-minded people gather in a community because they have
a shared reason for being there. Maybe it’s a love of birdwatching,
software development, political activism, or learning about the future
of marketing. Some common purpose pulls them together. Shared
rituals and traditions strengthen the sense of group identity and allow
members to bond over common values.
3. Relevance. A community will dissolve if its purpose becomes
irrelevant. A thriving community pivots and adjusts to the times and
needs of its members while maintaining its core values. This
adaptability helps strengthen the internal cohesion of the group in
addition to guaranteeing the community’s maintenance and survival.

That’s it. Three things. It’s that simple ... and that difficult!
Granted, there are many other dynamics and nuances of communities that
I’ll get into later, but these three points represent the fundamental conditions
of a successful community.
As a reminder, this book explores community through the lens of
marketing strategy. There are millions of other kinds of communities that are
unrelated to any brand mission. I belong to a Facebook Group dedicated to
the exquisite nature of the nearby Smoky Mountains. I visit this community
for peaceful photos of animals (especially otters, my favorite). But there is no
corporate intent here, no organization that is a catalyst for action. And I don’t
want there to be one.
But as I spent the last four years learning about the potential of brand
communities, I wondered, “Why is the corporate world overlooking the
greatest marketing opportunity in the history of marketing opportunities?”
Our customers are crying out to belong. Why not give them an amazing
reason to connect to us ... and change the marketing game entirely?

The business of emotion

In this book, I might generically refer to a “brand community” or “company

community,” but the truth is that a community can be for any organization
seeking to build a connection with its stakeholders.
Is building a community right for you? Look at it this way: How important
is a human-centered emotional bond between you and your customers?
If you work for any organization that depends on relationships, such as

Personal services like insurance, consulting, travel, wellness, coaching,

and wealth management
Sports, entertainment of all types, gaming
Education at all levels
Retail, restaurants, fashion

... then you’re a prime candidate for a community-based business.

There have even been communities built around commodity products like
hand tools, pens, and car parts. If you’re in marketing, you’re probably in the
emotion business, and there could be a community strategy in your future.
Still not convinced? In Chapter 3, I blow the doors wide open and
examine the extraordinary value a community can bring to a business.

CASE STUDY
The conference that’s a community

Summary: A business leader put her small town on the map through a
passionate conference community.
A few years ago, I conducted research on why people attended
conferences. The list of priorities goes something like this:
1. Visit a fun city
2. Go to restaurants and tourist sites in a new city
3. Network with industry friends
4. Take family along for a vacation
5. Learn something new
Conference organizers might like you to think the value is in absorbing
spectacular new information from their speakers and sponsors, but the true
attendee value is in traveling to an exciting place like Las Vegas or London
and having fun with industry friends for a few days.
The business model of events leverages an audience built through email
lists ... at best. A conference is not a community. People leave their annual
conference (slash vacation!) and don’t think it about it again until next year’s
sales pitch.
And this is what makes Social Media Week Lima so fascinating. Within
the social media community, Lima, Ohio, is one of the most coveted
destinations in the industry. The little Midwestern town is among the poorest
cities in the state and has a surprisingly high crime rate. There are no casinos,
no Broadway shows, no ocean views, no amusement parks. It is a most
unlikely place for a popular annual conference.
But what Lima does have is Jessika Phillips, who by sheer force of will
has transformed her hometown into an epicenter of social media marketing.

A vision for Lima

“I have had a very different view of marketing,” Jessika told me. “Business
should be centered on real relationships instead of bombarding people with
ads and messaging. Most people thought I was crazy and naive. I felt pretty
alone in the industry. But then I attended Social Media Marketing World in
San Diego and found a group of like-minded people who I could relate to.
They understood my view of business, and I wanted to stay connected and
bring that feeling back to my part of the country.
“I thought we deserved something like this in my town. Even though it’s
small, Lima has some of the best creators around, amazing entrepreneurs, and
our small businesses are thriving. I wanted to bring the heart of Social Media
Marketing World to my city. So I started the Social Media Week
conference.”
Today, her event attracts hundreds of people from across the US, but
Jessika found the kindling for her movement through existing relationships in
her local customer base. She already had a group of people attracted to her
ideas through the free training programs she was offering, so bringing these
connections together for an event was a natural extension of her business. At
her first event, she even asked her competitors to be guest speakers in order
to demonstrate a unified community event.
The camaraderie of the Lima event was infectious, and people vowed to
return year after year. As the buzz grew, Jessika could attract speakers and
attendees from other states.
“I think of our event as the marketing community’s family reunion,” she
said. “Like any family, you stay in touch all the time. Some cousins are closer
than others and maybe they check in more often. They show up in your time
of need. But when anybody attends our event, they see that we care ...
because we do genuinely care. A lot of this interaction takes place in private
communications, like a family, but we’re also constantly posting in our
Facebook Group. That’s like the family newsletter. The annual conference is
the shared experience that keeps everybody together.”
I attended Jessika’s event, and I can vouch that it really does feel like a
family reunion! People in t-shirts and shorts were playing cards and board
games in the crowded hotel lobby. All play stopped for hugs when another
“family member” arrived at the hotel. Some hauled coolers of beer from their
trucks. Others went bowling together during the event. Members of the
community had their own language and traditions.
This is a community that cheers for each other whether the members are
speaking on a stage or helping somebody navigate life’s tragedies. They are
co-creating, collaborating, and supporting each other in some small way
almost every day, whether they’re in Lima or not.
“There’s no great reason to go to Lima, Ohio,” said conference attendee
Chad Illa-Petersen. “But I drive 18 hours from Texas every year to be there.
Social Media Week is something that is so real and so refreshing compared to
other stuffed-shirt conferences. Jessika has an innate ability to make you feel
like you’re the only one there. She empowers you and recognizes your gifts.”
In his third year of attendance, Chad was picked as a speaker for the
conference. In year four, he was promoted to emcee. “It’s sad on my part, but
Jessika might believe in me more than I believe in myself. She accepts us for
who we are while pushing us to be the best we can be. It’s an amazing thing
to experience, which is why I make the drive every year. Her event is like a
two-and-a-half-day hug.”
Jessika has “promoted” attendees like Chad to leadership roles every year
of the event. For some, this might be the first time they’ve ever been a
speaker on a big stage. “I don’t look at a person’s fame or how many
followers they have, or who is going to be a guaranteed win,” she said. “I
want to support our biggest cheerleaders and advocates. I look for people
who are craving that opportunity. They put their faith in me, and I put my
faith in them. Some of the speakers who started at my event are now on
stages all over the country. These are my people for life.”

How do you make money from a family reunion?

“I’ve never made a direct profit off the community or the event,” Jessika said.
“But there are certainly direct business benefits. My churn rate of clients is
extremely low, and I attribute a lot of that to the community. Customers are
energized after attending the event ... they’re on board with me. And it’s not
just about churn. It’s about magnetism and how people are attracted to me
and my company. I attribute a lot of the confidence they have in me to this
event and community.
“Another value is the benefit to my team members. They work remotely,
but all year long they’re excited about coming together at the event to see
their friends and clients. I’m now involving area schools in our social media
community so they can get a taste of it. I’m building the next generation of
connections — these are my employees of the future. Basically, I have no
recruiting costs.
“The content we create during the event fuels our social media for the
entire year. Many of the connections we’ve made have become collaborators
— like Chad — and new customers or referrals. There are several of our
clients that attended the event who are now co-creating together and building
businesses together, and I’m part of that equation, too, right? That is business
that probably wouldn’t have happened without the event.
“In this community, there is also this intangible benefit of having my back.
I can overcome almost any business problem or need somehow through the
connections in the community. Relationships are the currency of business,
and you can’t buy that. A community is an investment in assets that make a
business work that aren’t for sale anywhere. It provides a richness that is
going to keep you profitable in every single area of your business.
“In our community, we have these moments that are 100-percent
unfiltered and real. Moments that create connection and emotion. That’s what
people crave from their favorite brands. Isn’t that the ultimate experience big
companies are paying millions of dollars to achieve?”
 CHAPTER 3
The Business Case for Community

Not long ago, I traveled to the city of my birth, Pittsburgh, and visited the
most famous cheese store in the state of Pennsylvania. Perhaps it’s the most
famous cheese store in America. Or the world! Who’s to say?
In 1902, three brothers from Sicily — Augustino, Salvatore, and Michael
Sunseri — started a little handmade pasta company now known as
Pennsylvania Macaroni Company. The young immigrant family worked
bravely to keep the operation afloat through the Great Depression, two world
wars, and a devastating fire that nearly destroyed their business.
Today, the store still bustles in Pittsburgh’s historic Strip District, selling
200,000 pounds of cheese each week.
This magical store holds a special place in Schaefer family history. My
grandfather shopped at this store for decades. If his business as a plumber
took him across the Allegheny River, he might bring home a special sausage
or cheese from what he called “the EYE-talian store.” My family didn’t have
much money, so this was a special occasion!
I had a warm feeling as I entered this store through its familiar red doors
and worn wooden floors. I had been away for 40 years. The store — still run
by the Sunseris — had doubled in size, but the heart and soul was still the
cheese counter. Its glass case had to be 30 feet long and filled with 400
different types of cheese and every sort of imported sausage and smoked
meat imaginable.
I stood against a wall and watched this legendary business in action. An
employee nicknamed “Dear Heart” (because that’s what she calls every
customer) greeted an elderly woman wearing a colorful scarf around her
head.
“How are you Mrs. Sullivan? And how is Mr. Sullivan this week?”
“Not too well,” the customer replied. “He fell again and broke a rib. He’s
in an awful lot of pain.”
“Oh my goodness dear heart! Let me pack up a little something extra for
Mr. Sullivan. We just got in some of his favorite cheese. Tell him I hope he
feels better!”
Mrs. Sullivan chatted with Dear Heart a bit longer but didn’t leave the
store after collecting the precious Fontina cheese for her ailing husband. She
ambled to a corner where she recognized a familiar face, and soon there were
four neighborhood friends talking about Mr. Sullivan’s sore ribs. And then
they were all laughing over a story. I couldn’t hear everything, but it had
something to do with a nephew falling in a puddle of mud at his high school
prom. In a white tux.
As I watched this unremarkable scene unfold, I unexpectedly felt a deep
yearning. I wanted to belong to this! I want somebody to call me “dear heart”
and wrap up special cheese for me when I’m feeling blue. I want to go to a
store and find my friends and laugh.
Although I’m just one generation removed from this everyday
neighborhood shopping scene, I’ve never experienced such a gathering place.
I HATE shopping. Wandering through a mall gives me anxiety.
But a visit to the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company isn’t shopping. It’s
gossiping and smelling and tasting and laughing and maybe even getting a
hug from Dear Heart. It’s a place to belong. This was the way the world
operated for most of our human history. Village store owners knew your
favorite meat, or cheese, or flowers. Your birthday. Your name. Your kids.
And this is why I boldly proclaim that “community” is the last great
marketing strategy.
It was the first marketing strategy. It’s the only marketing strategy people
really want. Intellectually, psychologically, and emotionally, customers need
it. And creating community might be the last effective strategy we have left
as access to customer data permanently migrates from web-based cookies to
private “wallets” owned by customers in a Web3 environment (more on that
in Chapter 11!).

Do we have a choice?

Perhaps the most compelling reason to consider a community-based

marketing strategy is that you may not have a choice. Many of our tried-and-
true marketing practices are fading away.
“It’s harder to reach audiences, the cost of marketing is going up, the
number of channels has exponentially grown, and the cost to cover those
channels has proliferated,” said Jay Pattisall of Forrester. “It’s a continual
pressure cooker for marketers — we’re no longer just creating advertising
campaigns three or four times a year and running them across a few networks
and print.”28
For a long time, the most efficient way to sell stuff was simple: Buy ads.
Ads worked. Ads were a bargain. They made you (or your brand) a little
famous. For most of my lifetime, marketing was advertising. And then, it
wasn’t.
In a stunning experiment,29 ad executive Ted McConnell tested how
banner advertising represented actual engagement with the brand versus noise
— people clicking for no reason. To do this, he created a unique ad with no
message. It was blank! What were the results?

The click-through rate on the blank ad was .08 percent. The click-
through rate on the average Facebook ad is about .05 percent. The
blank ad performed 60 percent better than a brand ad.
The click-through rate for the blank ad was about double the average
click-through rate for a “branding” display ad (an ad without an offer.)
About .04 percent of the clicks were mistakes. Since the average click-
through rate for display ads is .09 percent, this indicates that as much
as 44 percent of banner ad clicks are mistakes.

With all the data Facebook is collecting, all the geniuses analyzing display
ad results, and all the digital gurus lecturing on the magic of online
advertising, this experiment showed that empty ads outperformed brand
messages.
Consumers are racing away from ads and signing up for streaming
subscription services by the millions. More than 800 million consumers
worldwide have ad blockers on their smart devices, making it the largest
human rebellion in history.
The advertising industry faces an “existential need for change,” according
to Pattisal. Agencies must “disassemble what remains of their outmoded
model or risk falling further into irrelevance.”
Another strategy on the ropes is search engine optimization (SEO), the
strategy behind ranking high in the search results for a generic term. Only the
biggest, meanest, richest junkyard dogs in the industry can occupy the top
three search results and make a huge profit. Everyone else is left to spend
money on consultants and link trickery to somehow rank higher. The math
can’t support this anachronistic scheme.
It’s time for a radical new approach to marketing, and we must consider
community part of the mix.
“We have this deep-seated need to be a part of something bigger,” said
Jonathan Mildenhall, the former chief marketing officer of Airbnb, who
helped turn its following of travelers into home-sharing zealots. “When we
were cavemen, we didn’t sit around the fire looking for happiness. We were
looking for belonging.”30

A historic moment for community

As I described the community of “the EYE-talian store,” did you feel that
same longing? If you had a place like that on your street, would they have to
interrupt you with YouTube ads or pay an SEO specialist so their Fontina
cheese ranks on Google? No. When customers belong to your place — either
in real life or online — the marketing is over, at least in a traditional sense.
The good news is you don’t need 400 kinds of cheese to build your
community. It’s happening in Fortune 500 companies. It’s happening in
nonprofits, at universities, in churches, in schools. It’s happening down the
street in your local cheese shop.
Sometimes an idea just needs the right moment. And the moment for the
brand community is now. Time to get off the social media merry-go-round
that goes faster and faster but never gets anywhere. Time to stop hustling and
interrupting. Time to stop spamming and “lead nurturing,” which is just a
polite way of saying “I’m going to keep annoying you until you block me.”
Let’s create something we’re proud of. Something our customers actually
like.
The idea of brand communities isn’t new. The first web-based community
was launched in 1985 as The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, otherwise known
as The WELL. To quote The WELL’s About page, it’s “widely known as the
primordial ooze where the online community movement was born.”31
It didn’t take long before the site hosted an array of eclectic conversations,
leading Harold Rheingold to coin the term virtual community.
As internet popularity grew in the 1990s, almost every major brand
experimented with online communities, including Procter & Gamble, Ford,
IBM, and Shell Oil. But these early efforts failed for three reasons:

1. Bandwidth limitation. The internet speed was so slow back then that
remarkable ideas we take for granted today like sharing videos or
streaming music were impossible. The early sites were infinitely more
boring compared to what we have today!
2. Price tag. Brands had to create their own destination sites, at a massive
cost. These unique branded sites required consumers to log in to a
Coca-Cola community site called “Journey,” for example. Companies
couldn’t generate enough interest to become a stand-alone community
worthy of an extra click. Sophisticated platforms like Facebook,
LinkedIn, and Slack that host thousands of free communities didn’t
exist back then.
3. Company-centered, not consumer-centered. The first brand
communities were designed to promote and sell products rather than
offer an experience people desired. It was a sales channel, not a
customer community. Later communities evolved to focus on problem-
solving and customer service.

Today, more than 70 percent of all brand communities remain focused on

customer service as a primary objective.32 Aberdeen found that firms using
an online community platform decreased customer support costs by 33
percent.33
While this is a fine and worthy objective, businesses are ignoring the full
marketing potential of the brand community!
Another indicator of this latent potential is that 47 percent of the
respondents to a community research report were from the tech industry.34
There are plenty of wide-open spaces for marketing innovation.
Understandably, there’s still uncertainty around how to invest in
community. A deeply entrenched marketing/advertising industrial complex
fights to keep the status quo in place (even if it doesn’t work!).
And yet the benefits for the bold and brave marketers building community
are significant. Let’s break down 10 reasons why businesses can no longer
ignore the economic power of brand communities:

1. Brand differentiation
If I had to pick one marketing theme repeated most often in the guru circles,
it’s this: “You need to be different than your competitors.”
If you’re not differentiated in a remarkable and meaningful way, how in
the world can you compete (except on price — and then, you’re a
commodity!). What’s your marketing message if you don’t know what story
to tell?
Differentiation matters, and you probably know that. But I want to push
your thinking further. When it comes to differentiation, you only have two
options.
The first option is that you own some unassailable product, place, or
process. Examples would be an exclusive location, a patented technology, or
a transcendent brand image (like Apple) that simply cannot be replicated. In
the business world, this distinctiveness is relatively rare.
The second option is the unique way you communicate and care for your
customers, and that’s accessible to anyone. Product, price, promotions — so
easy to copy. But the bond of community is an obvious and elegant
opportunity to create a differentiated customer experience.
Community adds an emotional layer to switching costs. To leave your
product would mean leaving their people, their relationships, and sacrificing
the social capital they’ve earned within your community.

2. Market relevance
Business success is a never-ending journey of remaining relevant. How do
you keep up with the pace of culture, the language of your customers, and the
shifts in taste that will drive your marketing?
A community is a continuous conversation that reveals opportunities for
new relevance. Marketing’s role is to serve as the glue between a community
and the rest of the company to effectively craft responses to customer needs
and drive market opportunity.
The bedrock of every relevant new idea is consumer insight. If you
overlook an insight, you fail. If you seize the insight, you thrive. These
market leaders failed because they missed a consumer insight:35

Smartphone: Blackberry versus Apple

Laptop computer: Smith Corona versus Dell
Streaming: Blockbuster versus Netflix
Encyclopedia: Encarta versus Wikipedia
Electric car: GM versus Tesla
 Digital camera: Kodak versus Canon

Online groups are the easiest way to collect and monitor opinions about a
product or service. About 60 percent of organizations worldwide already use
online communities in their market research.36
One idea from your passionate community could make the difference
between ongoing relevance and rapid decline.

3. Speed of information
Business innovation isn’t just about meeting new customer needs. It’s about
doing it faster than the competition. An online community creates the
platform for instantaneous and real-time data collection and information
dissemination.
Let’s say you own a local bakery with an active Facebook Group
community. You’d like to test a new product idea: Should the bakery create a
pumpkin or apple spice donut in the fall season? You put up a quick poll, and
in a few hours, you’ll have an answer. (The answer is probably apple spice,
or at least I hope so!)
But then a big rainstorm hits and store traffic is just 25 percent of what
you expected. Now you have to move a lot of unsold apple spice donuts! Tell
your community to come by for a two-hour special deal, or better yet, give
the donuts away for free so you have a chance to meet people face-to-face.
This is a simple illustration, but the concept is relevant to a business of
any size. In fact, research shows that information speed is the single most
powerful source of competitive advantage for brand communities.37

4. Trust
Brand communities can spread information quickly, but more important, that
information is believed. While nearly half of consumers distrust
communications coming directly from a company, only 14 percent distrust
information disseminated through a community.38
At a time when misinformation and deep fakes could pose an existential
crisis to some companies, this is a critical benefit. Give people a place to
come for the truth.

5. The center of advocacy

I belong to a Facebook Group of road warriors. We share experiences and
tips for making the weary world of travel a little easier.
A few years ago, a friend posted a photo of a new luggage purchase. “This
is the best suitcase ever,” he proclaimed. “It has a lifetime warranty and the
best craftsmanship in the industry.”
Two years later, I was in the market for a suitcase and sent him a note
asking for the name of the brand. I promptly bought the suitcase. I didn’t see
an ad, branded content, or a discount code. I just bought it because I trust my
friend from this community.
At this moment, I can’t even remember the name of the brand.
The customer is the marketer. Recommendations and content shared from
friends and family forge the brand identity, demonstrate loyalty, and drive
sales.
According to a benchmark study by McKinsey, brands with effective
communities propel this product advocacy.39 They found that among
established communities

More than 75 percent of content about the brand is user-generated.

The influencer engagement rate — that is, the percentage of viewers
who go on to like, comment, or share the content — is greater than 2
percent (a number higher than many celebrity influencers!).
More than 4 percent of online traffic is converted to sales — about the
best rate you will ever see in a marketing campaign.

Studies show that community-generated product advocacy can

significantly reduce marketing costs. There’s simply no better way to create
brand awareness, grow market share, and drive sales than by organic
customer advocacy.

6. Brand loyalty
Strong ties between members in a community also create a long-lasting
emotional connection to the brand.40 Academics call this the brand relational
paradigm.
Customers in brand communities aren’t just obtaining functional benefits
like product news and deals. They’re also creating emotional and social
benefits that lead to long-term loyalty. They belong. Specifically, they belong
to you.
 When consumers actively engage with a brand through community, it
drives something beyond loyalty described by researchers as “attachment.”41
Some experts believe the deep connection of community helps buffer
companies from economic downturns.

Two-thirds of brand community members claim loyalty to that brand.42

27 percent of customers say that belonging to a brand community
influences their decision process.43
66 percent of companies say their community has a demonstrable
impact on customer retention.44

Creating different levels of access and rewards in a community is a way to

nurture your most loyal customers.

7. The soul of co-creation

Many innovative brands are stepping back as the product development
authority and instead are involving customers. Command and control have
been removed in favor of collaboration and the collective. Innovators like
Nike and the NBA work with their communities to build things that have
never been built before and then distribute a share of the intellectual property
and profits to creators.
Since 2018, IKEA has hosted one of the most effective co-creation
communities. Thousands of budding designers attend training boot camps,
access company test labs, and collaborate on new product innovations. If a
suggestion for a furniture or product design is up-voted by the community,
IKEA might license the technology from the customer, provide cash
incentives, and could agree to fund future products.
Another example is the private Slack group created by beauty brand
Glossier. Created exclusively as a place for Glossier’s best customers to talk
about beauty, organize meet-ups, and discuss new products, the brand credits
the community with co-creating one of its top-selling products, Milky Jelly
Cleanser.45
The LEGO Ideas community enables any fan to contribute new product
ideas. If a project receives 10,000 votes in the community, LEGO considers it
for their production lineup. This incentivizes customers and gives them status
in the community.
Through community, you can build a movement of people ready to
collaborate and contribute in massive ways.

8. Community-as-a-service
Why do people pay outrageous membership fees for country clubs and elite
professional associations? Is it for the joy of sipping bourbon on a porch with
a group of millionaires? Of course not. It’s because of the market tips, real
estate deals, and business insights that are passed through a network of
friends.
Belonging to those exclusive clubs is out of reach for most people, but
could we obtain these same networking benefits by accessing an elite online
community?
This is an idea that is becoming more popular: CaaS, or community-as-a-
service. CaaS is the idea that access to a group of people is valuable enough
to be considered a marketable product.46
An example of this is socialmedia.org, which is an exclusive community
for professionals managing social media at billion-dollar brands. A paid
membership gains access to ideas and solutions from peers at other large
companies. The parent company runs elite communities for many other
industry verticals.
In this model, the community is the business.

9. Community connection to culture

Younger audiences are leaving public-facing social platforms and flocking to
smaller, more intimate online destinations. Digital marketing expert Sara
Wilson calls these “digital campfires,” where young consumers live to
message one another, connect to relevant communities, and create shared
experiences.47
The biggest cultural moments aren’t happening through traditional media,
movies, or festivals. They’re happening within these closed online groups.

A series of five concerts by hip-hop artist Travis Scott inside the game
Fortnite was attended by more than 27 million fans.
A two-day rap concert on the gaming platform Roblox garnered more
than 33 million views.
Spotify uses its community to spot new musicians and cultural trends
that influence its recommendation engine.
 The pandemic accelerated the digital campfire movement as a force
defining modern culture. Marketers can’t ignore them, and we’ll cover this
in-depth in Chapter 12.

10. A solution for consumer data

Over the past 25 years, much of marketing has been defined by the ability to
collect and leverage consumer data to tailor product offers and ads. New
privacy laws and the depletion of this data bank creates a crisis for many
dependent on that data.
But in the guarded walls of a brand community, consumers freely express
their personality, values, and product preferences, creating a rich, new first-
hand data source. This can be part of the solution for a post-cookie world that
can enable new approaches to customer segmentation.

… and one more

There’s another significant business benefit of communities that I’m not
exploring in this book: employee satisfaction and retention. The case study at
the end of Chapter 2 mentions how Jessika Phillips eliminated her employee
recruiting costs through community. While there is substantial overlap
between successful brand and employee communities, there are enough
differences that I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole in this book. But I
wanted to at least mention it.

Self-worth and self-identity

I started this book with facts showing how our stressed-out world is longing
to belong, resulting in an undeniable megatrend of our time. But can a
community created by a company actually help a person who is feeling
depressed and lonely?
The answer is yes.
Since it was published in 1986, a famous paper titled “The Social Identity
Theory of Intergroup Behavior” has generated an enormous amount of
subsequent research, especially in the field of marketing.48 According to this
theory, a person’s identity is created from two components:
1. The personal identity is derived from personality features like abilities,
skills, and beliefs — things you can know about yourself.
2. The social identity comes from belonging to a group and is based
around what others think of you and what they tell you that you are.
When an individual belongs to a brand community, a mutually beneficial
bond occurs. Researchers conclude that the brand love experienced and
expressed in a community contributes to both individual feelings of self-
worth and positive brand advocacy.49
There are so many benefits and opportunities from brand communities
that I could go on and on. But instead of telling you about them, I’d rather
have my friend Dana Malstaff show you in Chapter 4!

CASE STUDY
The ROI of community

Summary: A sportswear retailer charges triple the price for a standard

product, with a contribution from community.
Among the many mysteries of the internet is why we see what we see
online. While browsing YouTube, a video was suggested to me: “Why Are
Lululemon’s Leggings So Expensive?” This puzzled me since I have neither
shopped at Lululemon nor worn their leggings.
Even more mysterious is that YouTube apparently knew that I would click
on this darn video. I suppose I am the marketing moth predictably drawn to
the YouTube flame!
Lululemon started in Vancouver, Canada, in 2000 as a single store selling
yoga gear. The company expanded rapidly and became a beloved global
brand. Despite its famously high prices for products that often sell out
quickly (95 percent of their sales are at full price), the retailer has developed
an obsessed fanbase.
Now, back to those leggings — close-fitting, high-rise garments worn
over the legs, typically by women. The average retail price for leggings is
about $30. But at Lululemon, the cheapest pair is $100, and they can go up to
$140. It’s estimated that the markup on this item is nearly 3,200 percent.50
Nice.
Although the company is known for its attention to design, durability, fit,
and fabric quality, the propellant for this extraordinary pricing is the sense of
belonging built through the Lululemon culture. Here are three ways this
company helps its customers belong:51

1. The Sweat Collective

Lululemon customers are referred to as “The Sweat Collective,” a way to
unify and inspire people with an active lifestyle.
The company creates unique, inclusive, community-led experiences in its
stores, its neighborhoods, and online. For example, customers can opt for an
in-store yoga-class, a community 10K race, or an online workout.
Lululemon is also experimenting with “experiential stores” — 20,000-
square-foot spaces complete with a yoga studio, meditation space, smoothie
and coffee bar, and areas for community events.
A technology offering called MIRROR simulates the in-studio workout
experience with cutting-edge hardware, responsive software, and best-in-
class content that transforms any room into a complete home gym. Customers
can experience thousands of on-demand workouts ranging from boxing and
yoga to dance and more.

2. Activate community leaders

Communities are built on trust, and trust is usually associated with a person.
A year before each new store opens, Lululemon scouts the immediate area to
identify influential yoga, running, and fitness instructors willing to become
community ambassadors.
Stores choose local ambassadors to be leaders that reflect the company’s
culture and passion for fitness and health. This partnership creates authentic
and engaging relationships with a real person from that city.

3. Employees as conversation-starters
Store employees (called “educators”) are encouraged to discuss exercise
goals and fitness tips with customers. They seem more like gym buddies than
sales associates (in fact, they’re instructed to dress like they’re going for a
workout).
Most Lululemon employees are athletic, so they have shared values with
their customers. Each retail location is organized and designed to encourage
conversations. Employees have an efficient system to stock and maintain the
store, freeing up more time for human interactions with customers.
Nina Gardner, Lululemon’s community relations manager said,
“Relationships with customers — that’s what really sets us apart from being
just another retail store that sells clothes. We are building relationships. We
are building communities.”52
As a result of this community culture, the Lululemon Sweat Collective
spends more, exhibits more brand loyalty, and provides more profitability
than almost any group of retail customers on earth.
They’re not customers. They’re a community.
 CHAPTER 4
Dana's Story

This story begins over breakfast at the Broken Egg restaurant in downtown
San Diego. The last chapter started in a cheese shop. Starting to detect a
theme?
In 2018 I met Dana Malstaff at an early morning meet-up of speakers at
an industry conference. This was when I was writing Marketing Rebellion
and actively looking for alternatives to the old, obsolete marketing techniques
that weren’t working any more. And in Dana, I met the future.
We struck up a conversation, and I learned that in the span of a few years,
Dana had built a rapidly growing, half-million-dollar business with no sales
or marketing team.
This is worth repeating. Dana’s marketing budget is zero. She runs no ads.
There are no sales promotions. She had reached a six-figure salary in her first
eight months, and at that point her business had more than doubled every
year.
Do I have your attention?
Dana has a business based entirely on community. This is her story, in her
words. You’re about to experience the explosive power of community at
work. Take it away, Dana!

A career interrupted

“I worked for a lot of startups early in my career but came to a point where I
couldn’t find anywhere I actually wanted to work. One company I liked
couldn’t hire me full-time, but they were willing to hire me to freelance and
contribute to projects. That’s when it dawned on me ... instead of finding a
job where somebody hires me full-time, people would pay me money for just
part of my time and part of my brain. Why would I ever take a full-time job
again when I can hop around from project to project?
 “I became excited by this possibility and launched a new phase of my
career. And then my husband and I found out that I was pregnant.
“I was in this weird position where I desperately wanted to start my
business. I wanted to build a website. I wanted to build a brand. And now I
was dealing with morning sickness and fear, because it’s scary having your
first baby.
“I was surrounded by absolutely nobody who understood what I was
going through. Nobody understood why I would want to work on my own.
None of my friends had babies. I felt alone and isolated, but things changed
for the better when we decided to move from Ohio to California where my
family lived.
“This turned out to be a blessing. In California, I met a lot of moms who
had their own businesses. It seemed like everybody was an entrepreneur!
Surrounding yourself with like-minded people with a shared purpose is life-
changing. But I also saw an opportunity. Nobody was approaching this as a
community. It was networking. It was friendships, but it wasn’t a community
where people were there for each other, a place with shared responsibility,
shared leadership, and shared beliefs.
“I experimented with several business concepts that didn’t make much
money when I met a new friend who was a coach for budding authors. I had
been a journalism major and always wanted to write a book, so I started the
process. I thought I was going to write a book about content marketing, but it
ended up being Boss Mom — my book about integrating entrepreneurship
and motherhood. I openly address the guilt, the pressure, and the anxieties
uniquely experienced by entrepreneur moms.
“I tapped into something raw and much needed among mothers. The ideas
in my book caught fire. I didn’t know it at the time, but a community was
being born.”

The first community members

“As I was writing the book, I went into various Facebook communities and
let them know what I was doing. This was a strategy I had used to network
for years. I would say, ‘This is what I’m thinking of calling it,’ or ‘Here are
some book cover options — what do you think?’ This was important because
I found that I didn’t have to make my decisions alone and my new friends
became excited about what I was doing.
“This was important market research, but it also made me micro-famous
in these groups. I was becoming known. The number of interactions I was
getting from my book ideas grew and grew. Sometimes I was getting 400 or
500 comments on a post.
“I was obviously developing interest in my book, but also forming the
base of a movement — the first followers of my own community. I thought I
was doing research, but I was also banding people together over an idea we
were all passionate about. I sensed this was something more than just a book.
“This is how the Boss Mom community started. Like any good
entrepreneur, I saw some momentum emerging and I just fanned the flames
through personal attention. I wanted to put everything I had into this new
community.
“I started my own Facebook Group. I brought over 100 members from the
other groups pretty quickly. And then in no time it became 200 and 300
because of the interest in the book.
“The purpose behind Boss Mom was always the same — encouraging
women who want to start a business and a family. I want to give them
permission to not feel like a bad parent. If you love your business, that does
not mean you love your children less.
“For the first time, a group of entrepreneurs was acknowledging that
you’re probably not a 20-year-old, who has 20 hours a day, living a laptop
life on the beach. A big goal for most moms is just being able to pee by
yourself! It’s a different life that we’ve chosen, but that doesn’t mean we
can’t create some freedom for ourselves and run a lucrative business.
“I once read that your purpose is the thing you are willing to suffer for.
And this was it for me.
“To keep the momentum going, I launched the community, the Boss Mom
book, and a new podcast simultaneously. Now people could connect and
binge on me in different ways.
“People started buying the book, and because of the support of the
community, Boss Mom hit number one in several Amazon categories. That
sparked a lot of enthusiasm and pride for what was happening in the new
community. I was invited to talk about the book on podcasts, and that
attracted even more people into my Facebook Group. I wasn’t concerned
about the book being a chart-topper; I was focused on the message I needed
to share.
 “I knew the first push on the book would wane because there were only so
many people in the community and they were moms with busy lives. So I had
to generate more interest by delivering new value through the podcast and
Facebook Group if I was going to make the community sustainable. That’s
when I started focusing on content, coaching, and training.”

The community platform

“When I joined my first Facebook Groups, I found they were much more
community-based. There was a collective voice. I tried every platform out
there but landed on Facebook because it’s easy to use and it does the best job
of creating camaraderie and deep connections. I needed a place where I
wasn’t the center of attention.
“I get into this argument all the time. People tell me they have a
community on Instagram, and I tell them they don’t. It’s just a group of
people commenting. If they went away, the audience would go away. There’s
no collective voice on Instagram and most other social media platforms.”

Establishing purpose
“The first stage of community is defining the purpose. What is the belief
system? What do people need to feel they belong? What is the house we’re
going to build together? That’s the rallying point that brings people to you.
“The biggest mistake people make is inviting a bunch of paying customers
to a Facebook Group and calling it a community. No. It’s not.
“You can’t have people competing with each other. They must believe in
why they are there and the benefit of working together.
“The unifying foundation for Boss Mom is very specific. I could have
created a general entrepreneurial group, or one for parents, but my
community is for moms. And not just any moms, but moms who aren’t
willing to sacrifice time with their kids to grow their business. Those moms
think and act and feel a different way. That defined the belief system.”
“I was driven by the idea of giving women permission to love their
businesses. This was literally the only group I could have started because the
purpose was so clear.”
Elevating others through a “community ladder”

“As the community grows, there are basic functions like welcoming people,
onboarding, connecting, and even training that you can’t do yourself. A self-
sustaining community needs to have volunteers who share the work.
“Community means that everybody has a space and the ability and the
desire to contribute. With the concept of a ‘community ladder,’ we give every
person the opportunity to step up into roles that help the community flourish.
Some people feel valuable by helping keep the rules of the group. You have
the women who are the connectors; they’re the ones who love tagging other
people and connecting new friends. Other people are empathetic listeners
who can be a shoulder to cry on. They’ll hop on the phone with you if you’re
having a bad day. We have women who are cheerleaders who help us
celebrate successes. There are a lot of other roles that people can fill. It’s not
about controlling everything. When you seek to control, you lose sight of the
fact that people inherently want to be useful.
“There are also opportunities for the people who are most passionate
about the group to move into roles on the paid side of the business (the
Nuture to Convert Society) as progress coaches. You can see the people who
want to do more because they believe so strongly in what you do.
“We also help women who go through the business certification program
acquire new customers from within the community. We can see those who
need elevated support. So it makes sense to recruit existing society members
who wanted to learn this particular coaching experience but don’t want to
have to do their own sales and marketing. That’s been really fruitful.
“We leverage the value of our most veteran members, especially when
they embrace the new members. Nicole is our director of connections, and
she supervises our onboarding process. She makes sure that newcomers
connect with other people in the community with similar interests. But she
relies on veteran volunteers to help because she cannot possibly know
everyone. Every new society member takes a personality quiz so we can do a
good job of connecting them to people who can balance out their skill set.
“My goal is NOT to build infrastructure. I don’t want to have employees. I
don’t want to have a bunch of coaches under me. I want to have Boss Mom
women who are waking up saying, ‘I have my own vibrant business ... but
then I want to go pick up my kids up from school at 2 p.m. and I don’t want
to work 30 hours a week.’ Freedom means choice. You choose to build your
life your way. It’s realistic to have a solid six-figure business and only work
20 hours a week if that’s what they want to do.”

Building emotional connections

“By creating systems and leveraging the value inside the community, it gives
me more time to build deep emotional connections. When I get most of the
admin out of the way, I have time to learn people’s names, learn the names of
their children, understand what is pressing in on them. This lets me know
how I can better serve them with new training and ideas.
“Most businesses don’t ever get to this level because they create systems
centered on their own control of the community. This is an old way of
thinking, a traditional way of thinking. They believe that without control,
they can’t be successful. They miss the point. They overlook the original
passion they had at the beginning and start to focus on organization and
logistics, something that has to be closely managed.
“One of my sayings is that establishing the self-sustaining community is
your ultimate goal in a business. I want to build this community so that I’m
not needed any more. Putting yourself at the center of community is
egotistical because you think that nobody can be successful without you. That
type of person doesn’t want community. They want to be revered.
“Your job as a community leader is to facilitate. That allows people to
flourish. When you manage, you ‘tell.’ When you facilitate, you ‘ask.’ That is
the cornerstone to creating deep engagement in a community.
“Your job is not to create codependency with the people you work with.
Your job should be to create individual success and independence.
“I’ve come to realize that I can’t know all our people in the community.
But the exchanges have to feel organic and random, so everybody feels as
though they have a chance for connection.
“One of the ways we do this is by sending video messages to our
members. When people sign up to our paid community, we ask them for their
birthday and another day of either celebration or a day where they need
support because it’s a day of mourning or sadness. I create videos for those
days, and an automated system sends them out on the right day. It’s like a
virtual hug from me. I want them to know they are loved, they are a
wonderful human being, and they’re going to get through this day.
 “The number of emails we receive from these videos is staggering. One
woman told me, ‘I had a miscarriage on this day and your video was literally
the most wonderful thing that happened because nobody else knows my grief
today.’ The videos really create a peak, valuable moment, even if it’s
automated.
“Establishing an emotional connection is the key to building loyalty.
People feel that I actually give a crap about who they are as a human being.
Most people focus on sales and only celebrate the people who are successful.
My goal in the community is to celebrate everybody in a way so they know
they’re valued even if they’re not successful right away. When a business
isn’t going well, that does not necessarily mean the person is the problem.
How do we raise those people up? How do we dig in and help them create
more success stories? When that happens, people talk about you.”

Boundaries and growth

“I read about this study where dog owners sat on a bench with their dog.
When it was an open space like a park, the dog sat right next to their owner
80 percent of the time. But in an environment that was fenced-in, the same
dog almost always roamed free away from the owner.
“There is a good lesson here for communities, too. People respond to
boundaries. When we create safety and boundaries, we facilitate
independence. That’s my number one job as a leader: creating safety for my
community. That creates freedom to grow and succeed. I create unalterable
boundaries.
“Holding true to our boundaries is what has created the engagement, the
enthusiasm, and the growth. It is the reason people recommend us. It’s clear
what we stand for.
“Today we are 70,000 members and still growing fast. But even at that
level, we still have a huge amount of engagement and connectivity. People
are finding new friends, new business relationships, getting on each other’s
podcasts, and collaborating in amazing ways. Because we have so many
volunteers, we can still create intimacy and connection in a group this size.”

Community culture
“My most important role in this community is to protect the culture and our
common belief system.
“The purpose behind the community is to empower women — whether
they just want to earn extra vacation money or build the next business empire
— by providing the resources to do it without sacrificing family life. That
means I have to reinforce a culture of acceptance and safety.
“My role within that purpose is to help women feel valuable. Insecurity
creeps into our lives in so many ways. We’re criticized for how we look, how
we feel, how we raise our kids. We’re supposed to feel guilty for sending our
kids to after school care so we can get some work done.
“We’re building a new kind of culture and ecosystem within Boss Mom
that’s healthy and different. It’s safe. No judgment. Pay it forward.”

Loyalty to the brand

“Having a community is not about selling, selling, selling. It’s about

elevating people and making those in your community feel valued.
“To be clear, I have no problem selling when I have to. But I don’t have
to. We have a community built on integrity, and if you have integrity, that’s
the beginning of a relationship, and a relationship is the beginning of loyalty.
And if you have loyalty, you have everything.
“Loyalty is hard to earn in any business, but it develops naturally over
time in a community based on integrity. You know your community is really
working when there are people in there who would fight for you. Loyalty is
when someone says something mean to you, other people drop their gloves
and they’re like, ‘It’s on.’
“Our business is growing through a constant flow of referrals because
people simply believe so strongly in what we’re doing. About a third of our
sales come from outside the community.”
“A movement is easier to start than a business. A business is selling things
to make money for it to be a business. But there aren’t enough businesses
starting movements.
“A movement happens if I can get people to shout in the rain about the
same things that I care about.”
Monetization

“The Boss Mom Facebook Group is a completely free community. I would

charge for ‘flash sales’ of products in the early days, which was a way for me
to test out new content ideas and build up some revenue. A few months later,
I started Boss Mom Academy, which was a paid, six-month group coaching
program.
“In the fourth year, we tried our first membership program that allowed
people to access a library of content for about $60. Fifty or sixty people
signed up immediately, but what I learned is, moms don’t need options,
moms need decision support. Providing unlimited access to everything
doesn’t really fit their lifestyle. I needed to create a system that people could
follow and grow with us over a period of years.
“That happened in year five. We were growing so quickly and started
charging a membership fee for our Nurture to Convert Society™. This is the
foundational group coaching program that will help Boss Mom continue to
grow. Sales started happening immediately because we were offering a much
more strategic, guided flow toward entrepreneurship success, instead of just
adding random content all the time.
“Today, about 70 percent of our revenue is from the community
memberships. About 10 percent comes from workshops, 10 percent comes
from consulting to clients generated from the community, and 10 percent
comes from specialized certification courses we provide.”

Measurement
“A healthy community is an active community. Watching the engagement
rate — how often people are posting and commenting — drives the right
behaviors for our leaders. Are we relevant? Are we creating meaningful
conversations and posting content that makes people think? We want to have
a consistent engagement rate.
“Of course we look at community growth. This is somewhat dependent on
the Facebook recommendation algorithms because our Group gets
recommended a lot, but our best members come through referrals. Growing
the community helps me get my message out and grow the movement.
“Another measure — Is news of the community spreading outside the
community? Am I being asked to be on podcasts and video interviews? Being
featured in media outside the community builds awareness.
“Finally, I look at sales and sales leads, of course. Increasing sales is an
indicator that I am providing meaningful products to a relevant audience.”

The future

“After years of running Boss Mom, I realized how important mentorship and
apprenticeships can be in the learning process. It is a beautiful, reciprocal
relationship. One of my ultimate life goals is to make those more accessible
so we can develop alternatives to college. Let’s learn from each other instead
of sitting in a classroom, which is the very best way to kill the joy of
learning!
“I would love to have a million women wake up feeling valued and
valuable. Knowing where you fit in the world, knowing your worthiness,
knowing you can rise to the occasion — that creates a sense of value, a great
life lived.
“Another project we are growing are certifications to build a bridge to a
business. Maybe a woman isn’t at a point where she can have a business, but
we can train her to be a Virtual Assistant to help her bring in some money
and get through to the next step. We find there is a great demand for that
service, and they are getting booked out very quickly. Perhaps they’ll do this
for six months or a year before they’re ready to launch their own business.
“My goal is not to make millionaires. My goal is to create sustainable
businesses for people that help them feel legitimate, valuable, and worthy.”
 CHAPTER 5
The Community Framework

In the first three chapters, I establish the contextual relevance of community-

based marketing. I touch on some of the impressive economic benefits of
community. In Chapter 4, Boss Mom’s Dana Malstaff shares the path toward
a successful community that became a prosperous business. Dana’s keys to
success include the following:

1. Culture

Dana established a community-first culture that pervades every message,

policy, and product in the organization. Every aspect of the community is
aligned with her vision to inspire entrepreneurial moms. She doesn’t have the
pressure of constant selling to succeed. She creates a safe place for the
community to thrive as the basis for her business success.

2. Purpose

A clearly defined purpose was the first step and an essential “rallying cry”
that brought her community together.
Notice that her purpose of “empowering women who wanted to be moms
and run a business” was entirely customer-centered. The dream fueling the
community was “creating sustainable businesses for people in a way that
helps them feel legitimate, valuable, and worthy.” Dana never mentioned any
quarterly sales goal.
From a human point of view, this is common sense. We’re not normally
going to offer our loyalty to a community that is simply coaxing more money
from our wallets. But from a business standpoint, this is a radical idea. The
implication is that Dana’s marketing in a community-based business involves
no marketing. At least not in a traditional sense.

3. Gathering members

Dana’s community has more than 70,000 members, but it was built by
gathering a few friends who were interested in her ideas. She used an old-
school technique of networking — something she had done for years — to
find her first advocates.
The initial energy in the community came from an activity — contributing
to her book. But then growth stalled, and she had to re-energize the
community by offering relevant new reasons to be there through her content
and coaching.
Eventually, the community became self-sustaining as members worked
together toward a common purpose.
Dana built her platform on Facebook, a place that was familiar to her
community and an organic part of their daily lives.

4. Redistribution of power
Dana spoke decisively about giving up her ego and allowing the community
to lead itself. She created paid positions and elevated volunteers as they
demonstrated real leadership.
And yet her singular role and vision are crucial: She is the protector of the
culture. She told me that her only job is to help people in the community feel
safe.
Dana guides the direction of where the community will go next. Boss
Mom must change with the world, or it could become irrelevant.

5. Monetizing the community-based business

In her pre-Boss Mom career, Dana was in sales. But she doesn’t have to sell
in a community-based business because the people in a relevant, engaged,
and loyal tribe do the job for her. They buy her products because they believe
in the purpose of the community and trust her. They bring in new members
and referral business because of their loyalty.
In every sense, her community members are the sales and marketing team.
Her business grows and thrives because the community grows and thrives.

6. Measurement

Dana’s primary measures are related to brand-building: Engagement, growth,

and awareness. These measures indicate the community is significant and
serving its members.
Establishing community as a part of your marketing strategy means new
ideas about measurement that may not fit neatly on an existing spreadsheet or
dashboard.

Here we go …
This concludes the first section of the book! I hope you’re beginning to
understand the awesome opportunity of community-based marketing.
In the second section, we’ll build on these ideas and explore:

1. Aligning organizational culture

2. Establishing a customer-centered purpose that will make people want
to gather
3. Assembling your first community or finding a pre-existing one
4. The surprising new leadership mindset required to succeed with
community-based marketing
5. Measurement — one of the most paralyzing subjects for any
community!

It’s time to begin a journey toward a community-based business, and the

first stop is an examination of organizational culture. When it comes to
community, your company culture can be a make-or-break consideration.

CASE STUDY
 Leaning away from the mugs

Summary: Alice Ferris uses an unconventional community approach to meet

her client’s fundraising goals.
In America, nonprofit fundraising — especially when it comes to public
television and radio stations — is all about the mugs. “Send us your pledge
within the next hour and you’ll get this exclusive Dolly Parton mug (or DVD
or tote bag)” is how the pitches usually go.
This is a story of the intrepid woman moving nonprofits away from their
mug addiction and toward a new fundraising focus on value and community.
Alice Ferris co-leads a successful fundraising company, has served on
influential boards in the nonprofit space, and is a thought leader for her
industry.
Her passion for fundraising started with cookies.
“My first introduction to fundraising was as a Girl Scout in McFarland,
Wisconsin,” she said. “I was the top Girl Scout cookie salesperson for my
area. It was a stroke of luck because I knocked on the door of a woman who
depended on many boxes of Girl Scout cookies to make her famous Thin
Mint pies ... but a win is a win!
“In high school, I dreamed of getting into television production.
Wisconsin Public Television was seeking volunteers for their annual fund
drive. I volunteered and ended up working there through the rest of high
school. When I attended the University of Wisconsin, the same station hired
me for their production crew. But the fundraising office needed help, and
because I was eager for any experience, I said I would pitch in. Before I knew
it, I was responsible for producing their annual fund drive ... at the age of
20!”
Alice had several leadership positions in the fundraising field before co-
founding her company, GoalBusters Consulting, in 2001. By this time, she
had worked on dozens of fundraising initiatives for nonprofits, and many had
one thing in common — trinkets.
“Fundraising has had a transactional focus,” she said. “I have something
that needs support. You have money. So, what can I give you to convince you
to support this project? There’s no real relationship. People make a donation,
and they get some premium in the mail. Early in my career, we were basically
selling mugs and VHS tapes.
 “As I moved into other parts of the nonprofit sector, it became more
challenging when we didn’t have anything to sell. I was running the
development program for Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. There
are no trinkets. It’s a private astronomical institution that’s not affiliated with
a university. It’s where they discovered Pluto. That was our main selling
point!
“I was challenged with convincing people that the observatory is worthy
of their support without selling a mug or t-shirt. What kind of impact are they
making on science through a donation? How can we feed their curiosity
about science?
“I began to explore ideas about the emotional and intellectual needs of our
donors. I wasn’t at the ‘community stage’ of my thinking yet. But my
approach was evolving. I was thinking about the role of shared meaning and
purpose when a person supports a nonprofit. I was flipping the script from a
focus on nonprofit priorities that were ‘me me me’ to the needs of our donors.
“Before I arrived, the observatory had tried wine and cheese parties. But
our supporters are a bunch of astronomy geeks. Did they really want to do a
mix-and-mingle over cheese? Not really. But if we had an astronomy lecture,
they were all over it. I could see power in bringing people together. This is
when my philosophy dramatically changed from transactions to establishing a
sense of belonging. How do we get supporters in the same place and establish
relationships and emotional connections to our people ... and by association,
to our organization?
“Through my company, I was consulting with public broadcasting stations
again, but it was time to get away from selling mugs and experiment with this
idea of belonging.
“We started hosting small community events, a series of talks called
Spirited Discussions. We booked a local venue that had food and drink and
brought in our news director and a subject matter expert to talk about a timely
topic. We had public conversations on issues like water rights, a Q&A with
the mayor, and a panel discussion with local journalists on what it was like to
cover the news. We started to attract some regulars, and they were typically
our high-end donors.
“But this interesting thing happened. As more people came to the events
and got to know each other, the amount of donations increased. They realized
there are other like-minded people in this community, and they enjoyed the
connection and discussions. This gave us an opportunity to physically see our
donors on a regular basis and form relationships with them. They got to know
us as people, they knew us by name, instead of as a stranger asking for
money. One donor at these events had been giving us about $100 a year and
now he’s giving $100 a month because of the emotional connections we
established through the community.
“One of the powerful things about building these nonprofit communities is
that when somebody cares enough to show up for an event, they are self-
identifying as a person interested in what we stand for. If they aren’t a donor,
chances are they’ll become one after they get to know us in a community.
“These events have been small by design. At a big event, you can still be
anonymous. Small events are far more impactful because people actually
connect with each other. These friendships can continue in Facebook Groups
where we get a lot of interaction with people commenting on comments.
We’re at a point where some of the community members can lead our events
or a discussion.
“Today, focusing on community and belonging is central to our
fundraising strategy. I’m on a mission to take away the crutch of selling
premiums. Rip off the Band-Aid. No more selling. We’re moving nonprofits
away from that culture of transactional marketing, and it’s working.”
 CHAPTER 6
The Culture Club

Join me in a little thought exercise.

Close your eyes and picture yourself in a room filled with all the bosses
you’ve ever had in your adult work life.
Why are you reading this? You’re supposed to have your eyes closed.
“Can’t follow instructions.” Noted.
Seriously. Think about those bosses. Now, imagine yourself telling them,
“I have a big idea. I want to devote part of our marketing budget to creating a
community that’s essentially run by our customers. This means giving up
most of the control — we won’t be aimed at hitting your quarterly sales
targets — and we’ll probably be subject to some customer criticism. If
customers have good ideas, we should pay them and share the intellectual
property rights. For months — maybe years — it could be difficult to
confidently attribute a direct financial impact to the bottom line. But this is
the future of marketing. Trust me.”
This is not a daydream. This is a nightmare! Not many of my past bosses
would be open to this. I can imagine at least one of them snarling at me!
Your company culture is your marketing. If you live in a world where you
can’t make a move without the approval of lawyers or over-functioning sales
managers, that constraining culture will show up in your brand and your
community.
Let’s pause just a moment for some straight talk about brand
communities. According to analysts at Gartner, 70 percent of them fail.53 The
reason? Culture.
Communities fail because there is a misalignment between the internal
company expectations for sales and the external expectation of a customer
community that does not want to be sold to.
The lyrics of a famous Pink Floyd song come to mind: “We don’t need no
education. We don’t need no thought control.”
If your goal is to impose a culture that educates customers and controls
them through a sales funnel, you’ll hit a wall. (See what I did there?)
But if you’re part of an organization ready to be ignited by the energy of a
community, if you’re ready to commit to a truly customer-centric culture,
then you’re in a great position to begin. If you’re not, I have some ideas for
you at the end of the chapter!
When customers belong to your brand, they’ll stick with you in hard
times, spend more, and spread your story better and farther than any
advertising you could ever buy. Community can be the world’s greatest
marketing advantage.
But it must start with an empowering culture. Let’s take a deep dive on
five cultural considerations needed to assure a thriving community.54

1. A brand community is a business strategy, not just a

marketing strategy

Too often, companies isolate their community-building efforts within the

marketing function. That’s a mistake. For a brand community to yield
maximum benefit, it must be framed as a high-level strategy supporting
business-wide goals.
Sephora is a French multinational retailer of personal care and beauty
products, and they’re behind one of the world’s greatest brand communities,
Beauty Insider. This massive site has nearly 6 million members. When I
visited, there were more than 100,000 active members having online
conversations at one time.
This community is central to Sephora’s strategy. It unifies its customer
base by tapping into the desire for unbiased, unsponsored beauty
conversations. In this massive exchange, members share their must-have
products, show off hair and makeup, and trade beauty tips in real time.
Although Sephora operates more than 2,700 stores in 35 countries
worldwide, it is still very nearly a community-based business. Blending this
massive and complex international community into its omnichannel strategy
requires seamless integration with operations, technology, supply chain, and
executive leadership strategy.
I share more about Sephora when I discuss measurement in Chapter 10.
2. A brand community exists to serve the people, not the
business

The fatal flaw of most brand communities is the overpowering need to

constantly “sell.” After all, how do we justify the ROI of this community
investment if we can’t show progress on our sales dashboard?
Recall what you’re aiming for here: When an individual belongs to a
brand community, a mutually beneficial bond occurs. The brand love
experienced and expressed in a community contributes to both individual
feelings of self-worth and positive brand advocacy.55
This magic can only be achieved when a company scuttles their traditional
sales dashboard, views community through the lens of brand-building, and
tunes their community to the needs of the members, first and always.
An example of this is M.M.LaFleur, a clothing brand for professional
women. On their Slack channel, customers discuss their busy lives at home
and in the business world. Yes, the community members post about fashion
and debate the brand’s latest product releases, but customers also share
individual successes, frustrations, and lots of photos of their pets!
“I had a question where I just needed a gut check from other women,”
Alice Ferris of GoalBusters Consulting told me. “I posted the question in the
M.M.LaFleur community. It seems strange that a clothing brand community
is the largest group of professional women that I’m a member of. But I
needed an answer from women I trust, and this community was the source for
me. I received helpful, honest feedback and emotional support. Having that
community makes me a super fan of the clothing brand.”
And yes, she will buy something. But that’s not the reason she’s there.

3. Communities create leaders from within

As Dana Malstaff of Boss Mom says so well in Chapter 4, growing a
community isn’t about micro-management. It’s about generously developing
leaders.
In any community, a small set of passionate people/fanatics will push the
group forward and expand what’s possible. Pay attention to the early leaders
and nurture them.
If you’re coming out of the traditional corporate world — or you’re still in
it — trusting others to take control can be a challenge. We get protective and
even paranoid about being “on-brand.” We worry about people “not having
the same standards” or “misrepresenting the company.”
Shift your mindset from controlling the message to servant leadership.
This is an imperative for both big and small communities because cultivating
hand-raisers into leaders isn’t just a way to lead your community. It’s the
only way communities stay relevant and sustainable over the long term. If
your community is dependent on a lone leader, it’s at risk of collapse in the
face of uncertainty and a changing world.
Exceptional community leaders act as catalysts, accelerating a
community’s ability to fulfill its purpose. Catalysts are rare. Your job is to
pay attention, seek them out, give them the structure and support they need,
and then let them fly.

4. Look them in the eye

When I wrote about the emotional continuum, I noted that most web
connections are weak relational links. Twitter followers or your TikTok fans
might like or “heart” your content, but they may not be an actionable
audience. They’re important because they enable potential opportunity,
serendipitous connections, and new ideas, but the magic of community is
building meaningful emotional bonds. One of the most powerful ways to do
this is by bringing people together in real life.
The genesis of my own community was a marketing retreat I host called
The Uprising (every marketing rebellion starts with an uprising, right?). I
didn’t plan to start a community when I brought these leaders together.
Rather, I was solving a problem. Most marketing events focus on iteration —
how to do a little better on our Facebook ads, content marketing, YouTube
views, etc. Meanwhile, we won’t recognize the marketing profession two
years from now — and nobody is talking about that! I brought together a
small group of smart friends to talk about what’s coming next.
And we did.
But something else happened.
Something incredible.
My friend Ruth Hartt of the Clayton Christensen Institute said, “I knew I
was coming to The Uprising to learn a lot. I didn’t expect I would walk away
with 29 new friends.”
Carlos Oramas, CEO of Miami-based Gems Group, told me, “When I tell
people about The Uprising, it’s hard to describe. It’s not a meeting or a
conference. It’s a bond.”
Carlos and Ruth were right, and I didn’t want those bonds to end. I fanned
the flames of these early friendships, and this was the dawn of my own
community, which you’ll learn about in the last chapter of the book.
This bond never could have formed through online events. Seeing people
face-to-face around a fire pit at night, sharing stories with them at the dinner
table, and engaging in a challenging discussion about the future of marketing
created the initial fuel for my community.
Consider how live events can inspire your first community, even if most
of your commerce occurs online.

5. Communities share control

One of the big lessons of this book is the importance of letting the
community lead itself. But relinquishing control doesn’t mean abdicating
responsibility. Effective brand stewards participate as community co-creators,
facilitating the conditions in which people can thrive.
The elements of control can vary by how a community is organized. The
type of community you create might be determined by your company
culture:56

Open: Members can easily join and leave the community as they
please. Communication between members is spontaneous, in real time,
and free from company-imposed restrictions or control over content;
the company’s involvement is transactional in nature, without much
engagement. The company participates, but only marginally, by
responding to questions and occasionally moderating. Example: Apple
Discussion Forum
Discerning: To participate, members are required to register, but this
does not guarantee that they’ll be accepted into the community.
Further, the company controls and guides the behavior of the users.
The company plays an active role in the community, frequently
participating and regulating conversations and activities. Example:
 Ford SYNC Forum
Restricted: Community membership is limited to the company’s
customers or groups of people that fulfill some requirements. New
members might pay for access. The company carefully controls the
community, promoting and editing the members’ communications and
participating heavily in the conversations. Example: Club Nintendo3

There’s a fourth type, too. There are many places where rabid fans create
their own community around a brand with no company influence. For
example, DeviantArt is home to dozens of communities devoted to fan art of
franchises like Marvel, Disney, and DC Comics. And the members go wild
with ideas! The brands have zero control of what’s happening there.
Technically, that’s still a brand community even though it’s not sponsored by
the brand.

Are you ready?

So there you have it. Do you have a company culture ready-made for
community. I hope so!
But what if you don’t?
Here is a truth about company culture: No matter how much you believe
in these ideas, there is no such thing as a grassroots movement to change
culture. The change must be supported by the person at the top who is
responsible for all departmental budgets and strategies that support the
community effort.
Here’s the good news: Most leaders urgently want to be relevant. They
know they need to move their organizations ahead and pursue innovative
ways to win in this demanding business world.
The business case for community presented in this book isn’t a Mark
Schaefer opinion. It’s an insight derived from a massive amount of reliable
expert research. It’s compelling, and it’s true. My prediction is that most
leaders will understand the opportunity I’ve presented in these pages and
enthusiastically embrace it.
Another option in the face of objections is to ask for a pilot program. The
early days of community aren’t necessarily expensive or time-consuming.
Ask for six months or a year to try the ideas in this book, to grow, to learn,
and to assess the relevance to your own organization. Look for compelling
stories coming out of the community as “quick wins,” communicate
regularly, and get people excited about the customer love percolating in your
new project.
In the next chapter, we’ll take the first step in building a community. It
doesn’t start with people or a platform like you might guess. It starts with
purpose.

CASE STUDY
A community-based approach to real estate

Summary: A community of real estate enthusiasts drove $40 million in

company sales.
Pablo Gonzalez felt stuck in his career as a green building expert when a
tragedy — the worst moment of his life — opened his eyes to the life-
changing potential of community.
“A few years ago, my brother passed away,” Pablo told me. “It was
devastating. And I was blown away when 1,200 people showed up to his
funeral. This Catholic church was his community, and they had surrounded
him with so much love and support. I had been a rebel in this regard. I grew
up super-Catholic and had this love-hate relationship with religion. But this
was a community that had made the horrible bearable. I couldn’t imagine a
greater value to my life and realized I could never leave it. This is what sent
me down this obsession of exploring community as a business model that I
still pursue today.”
In my book Cumulative Advantage, I explain how random events can
become a source of revitalizing new momentum. Pablo was about to
experience the second random nudge toward his future and his community.
His company’s CEO had been invited to speak before a prestigious
economic development agency in Miami. At the last minute, he decided to
send Pablo instead.
Now on a program with leaders from Cisco and the World Bank, Pablo
had inadvertently joined the national stage. When the program had finished,
there was a line of people wanting to know more about his views on “value-
aggregated business development” based on successful community
experiments he had accomplished with nonprofits in Miami. This led to an
opportunity to prove the model for a software startup in Jacksonville, Florida.
Pablo was experimenting with a fresh view of marketing that didn’t rely on
the heavy-handed sales techniques so common in his industry.
But it was time to paint on a bigger canvas. It was time to go out on his
own with his community ideas.

The community-based business

“I wanted to prove that community creation is the future of business
development,” Pablo told me. “I tried to sell this idea to everybody. But I
found that community was not a ‘Monday morning problem’ for people,
meaning no business owner is coming back to work on Monday morning
asking, ‘Where’s my community?’ It’s not a priority.
“About this time, I met Gregg Cohen, the co-founder and CMO of JWB
Real Estate Capital in Jacksonville, who had failed to create an effective
content strategy to scale his marketing efforts. The company is a turnkey real
estate investment firm, and he felt if more people knew about it, they would
be more successful. At the time, most of his business was coming from one
very expensive referral source, so that had to change.
“I pitched him this idea of a weekly show where we interviewed his most
interesting clients. We would use it to educate people about real estate as an
investment strategy and a route to financial independence. But the difference
was, we would do this show live on a weekly Zoom call. This way, we’re not
just broadcasting a show to an audience, we’re building relationships. We
would not be creating content in a usual way — we would be very
intentionally building a community. We set out to make people feel like they
have a piece of our stage. We’re talking with them, not at them.”
Pablo began his Zoom experiment by reaching out to the company’s
existing connections. “This is a company that has done a lot of good for
people,” he said, “so it was easy to get some early interest in the new show.
There was an initial wave of 100 people who immediately joined our
Facebook Group and about 15 people who showed up to the first show.
“In this early phase, it was important to build-in quick wins for the
community members as well as the sponsor, in this case, my client. You want
to build momentum and pride so people can see that it’s working. So, we
celebrated a lot of small victories every week.
 “By the end of the first year, we had almost 3,000 people in the Facebook
Group and about 35 regulars who came to every show. On the year-end fan
appreciation show, we had so many people tell us how valuable we had been
in their lives and how this community meant so much to them. We were
building an emotional connection to a real estate company!
“We had generated $40 million in new investment revenue, primarily
through the 25 or 30 most active people in our community, our super fans.
About 65 percent of the company’s new clients were now coming through
our community at an acquisition cost of around $500 versus more than
$6,000 they were paying for leads before.
“It was time to bring some of these amazing people together. We planned
a little meet-up in Jacksonville, and people flew in from many different
states. They told us they wanted to host their own meet-ups for us around the
country. We said, cool, let’s do it. We had events in California, Seattle,
Denver, and Pittsburgh led by our community members. Basically, for the
cost of catering, we were hosting community meet-ups and turning new
friends into clients.
“At our last event in Jacksonville, we had 50 people fly in on their own
dime to join 20 locals for a downtown tour and happy hour. These were all
people who had become friends over our Zoom calls. It was unforgettable to
see our community friends coming together in real life.
“The key enabler to success was the company culture,” Pablo said. “Not
only did JWB support my community efforts, but they also actively
participated in it every step of the way. There was never any hesitation that
the community experiment was worthwhile.”
Pablo is now making community a central part of his marketing
consultancy to a growing portfolio of companies. He said, “It’s a lot more
rewarding shining a light on great people in a community rather than talking
about how great your company is all day through content and advertising!”
 CHAPTER 7
It Begins with Purpose

Think of any community you love. It could be a church, a Facebook Group,

an alumni association, or a professional organization.
Why are you there? Is it to buy stuff? To consume somebody’s branded
content? Of course not. You’re there to gather with like-minded people.
You’re there for a purpose, not a product.
Dana Malstaff sells courses, consulting, and coaching to her Boss Mom
community. But that’s only a side product of Boss Mom’s meaningful,
consequential purpose: providing support for bold mom entrepreneurs who
yearn for success without giving up time with their kids.
This is a fascinating paradox: The future of marketing involves no
discernible marketing. At least not in a traditional sense.
In fact, if you force any hard sales tactics or marketing spin on your
community, people will run for the doors, and you’ll fail.
Optimizing community in a marketing context means letting go of many
conventional ideas and releasing the impulse to command and control.
Creating my own community meant rethinking the lessons I learned in
graduate school about goal-oriented marketing. Over time, I had to
understand that I was no longer imposing my brand on the world, but rather it
was being co-created day-by-day through others. As long as everybody was
staying within the safe “riverbanks” of the community purpose, I had to resist
the idea of steering the community toward my ideal brand direction.
Here’s the truth: You don’t have control of your brand. A brand used to be
what a company told you it was. But now almost all your sales are coming
from people talking about you online or in real life, from recommendations
and reviews, and from the testimonies of trusted friends and influencers.
Today, a brand is what we tell each other. So why not provide the safe space
for that magical conversation to happen?
There are many famous brand communities that I won’t profile in this
book because, frankly, their stories have been worn into the ground. But a
few of them are so familiar that it’s useful to identify these celebrated
companies by their community purpose to help me illustrate the important
theme of this chapter:

Harley-Davidson sells more motorcycles in the US than any other

company, but their stated purpose is to “fulfill dreams through the
experiences of motorcycling.” This is a polite way of saying, “You
wanna be a badass? OK. We’ll help you be a badass.” Literally every
function of this company from top to bottom helps customers become
cool. And as a result, they have one of the most loyal communities
(HOG — Harley Owners Group!) in the world.
The word “Patagonia” evokes images of responsible outdoor
adventure. Their Patagonia Action Works community purpose is bold:
“We’re in business to save our home planet.” In 2022, Yvon
Chouinard forfeited ownership of the company he founded 49 years
ago. The company profits are now designated to fight climate change.
Coca-Cola built a beverage empire on brown-colored sugar water. But
customer loyalty runs so deep that there are massive communities
devoted to collecting their merchandise. For many people, Coke is
much more than a fizzy soft drink. Coke’s purpose is to “inspire
moments of optimism and happiness.” Who doesn’t want to be
associated with a company that aligns itself with Santa Claus, playful
baby polar bears, and happy picnics on the beach?

What do you do?

These renowned companies have a bold, piercing purpose that aligns every
resource of the company toward one consumer goal. Not a company goal —
a consumer goal.
An effective community purpose is different than a quarterly sales
objective. If your current purpose is to:

Provide distinctive and beautiful candles

Have the best customer service in the insurance industry
Provide the lowest-priced automobiles in the region
Offer the largest selection of fresh meats in your deli
 ... then you will probably fail at community because nobody wants to
gather for those reasons. These might be wonderful and important value
propositions for your ads, but not many people see your ads anymore. So we
have a problem, don’t we?
This is one of the most important ideas in this book: Today’s consumers
will block you, ban you, and run away from you if they sense you’re trying to
manipulate them with your marketing. Instead of sell, sell, sell, you need to
help, help, help.
Can you imagine how different Harley-Davidson would seem if they acted
like a typical car dealership? In essence, their core business is the same —
selling a mode of transportation. But Harley doesn’t assault you with creepy
sales tactics, email spam, holiday sales, and bombastic ads telling you how
they will beat any competitor deal.
They don’t have to. They’re successful because they help their customers
achieve a dream through the deep emotional bond of community created by
group rides and meet-ups. They’ve had as many as 700,000 riders attend their
annual rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. For one week, this gathering is three
times larger than the biggest city in the state!
Most marketers are used to targeting consumer segments anchored in
demographics. Instead, communities should be focused on those who share
similar interests and values — communities of “shared relevance.”
For example, an in-home security firm might normally target people who
are concerned about safety or who live in a high-crime area. By surveying
their customers, they find a significant population who want security cameras
simply to watch their pets all day while they’re at work (cat cams?). The
company might find a home in communities of pet owners (or start their own)
because there is shared relevance.
This focus on relevance is especially acute for the rising generation of
consumers. Young people want to associate with brands that work toward
demonstrable change.
According to research by Edelman,57 nearly two-thirds of those age 14-17
and 62 percent of those age 18-26 say that they want to collaborate with
brands on addressing issues like racism, climate change, and gender
inequality. A stunning 84 percent of teens say that they buy based on beliefs.
They’re demonstrating activism via brand choice. By nearly a 2-to-1 margin,
they prefer to have brands “make the world a better place” over brands
claiming to make them a better person.
Defining an essential purpose

Identifying this unifying purpose is critical to your community. How do you

create a meaningful and inspiring reason for people to want to gather in your
community?
For many organizations, the reason is obvious. Your customers and
stakeholders already love you because they want to

Learn something
Change something
Feel something
Grow and become happier, healthier, or wealthier
Create shared experiences with friends
Belong to something with you because they believe in you

Establishing your purpose is essential, but don’t overthink it. The stirrings
of community purpose may already be happening in conversations all around
you, both online and offline. There are plenty of examples of spontaneous
communities devoted to favorite products and companies. Fan the flames.
Perhaps your community has started without you!
But if you’re having trouble getting beyond the sales-driven purpose of
“we sell fresh deli meats,” let me help you. Here are a few prompts that might
inspire a reason for people to gather in your community. It might help for you
to write down your thoughts as you think about the relevance of these
questions:

What is our North Star? Why do we exist?

Can we clearly articulate why the world is better with our organization
in it? What difference do we make? How can people help?
How are our founding values specifically relevant to the world today?
Who are they relevant to?
What headlines do we want to be written about us in the future?
What are some characteristics, beliefs, values, and passions that are
common to our customers?
Are those same characteristics common to our employees? How does
that impact the character of the company and why people love us? Are
our employees part of our community? Would they lead it?
 Is our company mission statement the same as our purpose? Why or
why not? Is there a seed of an idea there?
How is the world changing in a way that unites us with our
community?
Why do our customers buy our products? Is it because of a shared
belief or value system? Do our customers share a vision of the world?
What would our future look like if customers helped us build it?
How could a community serve and inspire our customers in a way
we’re not offering today?
Are there people we care about who feel isolated and could benefit
from a community?
What’s a problem we can only solve together through community?
How would a community help us practice what we preach?
Whose dreams are we fulfilling?

Perhaps this is the first time you’ve thought about these questions in a
marketing context. It might seem unfamiliar or even a bit scary because it has
little to do with selling more stuff. Or, maybe these prompts are exciting and
energizing! In any case, it takes a brave business leader to face their boss and
say, “I want to build a community that isn’t necessarily centered on achieving
our quarterly sales goals or promoting the freshness of our deli meats.”
But that’s exactly why creating a successful community is so promising.
Because almost nobody is thinking about community in a strategic marketing
context.

On-brand or off-brand?

Another way that community might stray from ideals of conventional

marketing is the idea of being “on-brand.”
In the early days of my marketing career with a Fortune 100 company, our
department had a voluminous brand playbook stuffed in a three-ring binder.
This hefty document specified every font, color, word, and characterization
that was to be associated with our corporate brand. The stylebook still exists
in some form at most sizable brands because they want to establish a
consistent tone and ideal in the customer’s mind.
A brand community, however, does not necessarily have to stay entirely
on-brand (which is probably the weirdest sentence I have ever written!).
The people in your community already know your brand and products. In
fact, just being present in that setting shows that they probably love you. You
don’t need to convince them of your worth with appropriate styles and logos
and legalistic descriptions of stuff.
Leading a brand means shepherding your products on a never-ending
journey of cultural relevance.
Part of the marketing opportunity through community is that people will
take your brand in new directions by connecting you to the diverse and
relevant issues in their lives and their corners of the world. Your community
members will “color outside the lines” and unearth emerging wants and
unmet needs.
The concept of “being on-brand” evolves. A vibrant and engaged
community can help you achieve that.

Activating purpose

I’ve often joked with my college classes that the business case for social
media can be expressed in one line: “Come waste time with me.”
It always earns a chuckle, but there’s a serious message here for you and
your community. Nobody is being forced to spend time with your company
in some Facebook Group or Slack channel. You must earn their time by
providing something so useful, so interesting, so inspiring, so unmissable, so
motivating, or so audacious that they stop playing Candy Crush or scrolling
TikTok dance videos long enough to become part of what you’re doing.
The best way to do this is to offer members an experience that will help
them see how they belong and are connected to a relevant purpose.
Communities commonly form around shared activities. Sometimes an
activity is impossible to do alone, so you absolutely need a community. Other
times, a community makes a solo activity more interesting and fun. For
example, Twitch enables isolated video gamers to interact while they play.
Fans of Instant Pot love to test recipes together. A key to the Lululemon
success highlighted at the end of Chapter 3 is the irreplaceable bond that
occurs through shared fitness activities. Ganni, a luxury fashion brand, built
an influential and loyal community of #GanniGirls who share similar values
such as women’s empowerment and gender equality.58
 You can activate community purpose through tasks, experiences, and
events. What is something your members crave that would be better
performed or experienced as a group? How would shared activities help
define and elevate the purpose of your community?
Be intentional about activating your purpose. Opportunities to gather and
collaborate should be:

1. Purposeful: Tie the activity back to why your community gathered in

the first place. What goal or outcome becomes possible only when this
specific group of people gets together?
2. Participatory: Don’t just talk at people. You gathered them because
they’re passionate, just like you! Give them the chance to contribute to
the purpose you share.
3. Repeatable: Relationships need time to flourish, and it will take a few
cycles for some folks to warm up and begin actively contributing. A
successful activity creates buzz that will get more people involved the
next time.

If your first activities fail, go back to the drawing board. Do you

understand why your community is motivated to gather? Is the design of your
activity more interesting, more fun, or more meaningful to experience as a
group? Just like anything in the world today, you’ll have to exceed
expectations with your core activity if you want people to keep showing up.

Community as experiential marketing

Great branding is about emotion, and successful communities thrive on that.

Participation in a brand-related event isn’t just a way to keep people
interested in your community; it’s also a strategy to generate strong emotions
that solidify devotion to your company and product.59
Experiential marketing is one of the fastest-growing disciplines in our
field. In a world where people avoid most marketing and advertising, they’ll
flock to fun, immersive, sensory experiences.
One of my favorite examples of experiential marketing was a promotion
that the Giant Spoon agency created at the annual SXSW conference. They
recreated the set of the HBO series Westworld outside the city of Austin,
Texas, and fans could interact with the people and places associated with the
show. By donning cowboy hats and walking the streets of the familiar TV set,
we experienced unique new emotional connections to the show. Other years,
Giant Spoon created immersive fan experiences for Blade Runner and Game
of Thrones.
I’m not suggesting that you need the outrageous budget required to
immerse people in the world of Blade Runner or Westeros. But I do think
your community must be considered as an opportunity to make experiential
marketing come alive in small and important ways.
In my community, many people had their first metaverse experience
through a joint activity planned by the members, with my help. I’ll never
forget our first event when many people who had never met each other before
were frolicking in the snow on a virtual Alpine mountain. A highlight was
my attempt to catch a ride on a virtual ski lift that ultimately moved swiftly
through my avatar’s digital head! The fun of these shared, immersive
experiences will never be forgotten, and it helped form the culture of the
community and the emotion of my brand.
If you’re only looking at community as a way to handle customer
complaints or share product information, you’re missing the biggest
marketing opportunity you may ever have: establishing strong emotional
bonds with your customers through acts of creation, collaboration, and shared
experiences aligned with your purpose.

Moving to the next step

By now you realize that finding that essential community purpose is critically
important, but don’t become paralyzed trying to get it just right.
It’s almost always more important to start than to be 100 percent perfect.
Here’s what will happen when you start your community: The people who
gather will change it ... for the better. They’ll add relevant ideas and nuances
that never occurred to you, and it will be awesome!
“I think one key to starting a community is openness,” said Mark Masters,
who has a vibrant business community in the UK. “When people are prepared
to step forward with you when you don’t have all the answers, it’s an
opportunity to discover and build together. Testing and putting ideas out into
the world is a common way to get feedback in the corporate world, but when
creating a community with people who are familiar to you, you’re creating a
shared experience.”
So even if you’re feeling a little wobbly right now, trust the people in your
community and take your best shot. Learn and grow, learn and grow.
Let’s keep going. In Chapter 8, you’ll discover how to get some customers
to board this train.

CASE STUDY
A community born from clutter

Summary: A stay-at-home mom built a thriving community-based business by

unifying people facing a common problem.
Krista Lockwood built a business around teaching people how to declutter
their homes. Perhaps that seems like an improbable business model, but it
might seem even more interesting when you learn she has 50,000 people in
her online community!
It all started with a 4,500-mile journey.
When Krista and her family moved from Alaska to Florida, she was
forced to deal with years of accumulated belongings. With four young
children, her house had been in an escalating state of chaos, creating feelings
of resentment toward her husband and even her kids that she wasn’t getting
enough support with the household. She told me that she was “drowning in
her house.”
But when the long-distance move was completed and piles of clutter were
eliminated by this fresh start, she still experienced resentment. Krista realized
that the clutter was just an excuse to bury a lot of deep feelings around
communication problems in her marriage.
“I realized we were not on the same page, and the mess in the house was a
distraction that kept me from addressing things like creating goals together,
learning to communicate together,” Krista said. “And it wasn’t just hurting
my relationship with my husband — it was affecting my self-worth as a
parent.
“On the surface, everything seemed to be going great for me. We had a
nice house, a great community, a great family. But I had all these loud voices
in my head from unresolved childhood emotions and experiences that I had to
face because suddenly, I didn’t have a pile of dishes distracting me. I didn’t
have three loads of laundry to catch up on. I started therapy and learned that
freeing myself from clutter opened up ways for me to grow as a person. I
learned that you can create more time and energy in your life if you’re not
constantly overwhelmed by pointless stuff in your space.”

The business idea is born

Meanwhile, Krista had become pregnant with her fifth child, and to make
new friends after her move, she started a “Due Date” Facebook Group for
other expectant moms.
The moms became fast friends and soon had an idea to share “house tour”
videos of their living spaces, with a promise of showing them just as they
were ... no cleaning up!
“It was my turn to show my house, and people in the group were saying
‘Hold on, Krista. You have four kids. Why aren’t there toys all over the
floor? Why isn’t there a pile of clothes on the couch?’ They could not believe
this was how I was normally living. They wanted to see every room in my
house!
“I didn’t realize it, but when we moved to Florida and started over with no
clutter, I never brought it back. I taught myself how to stop being
overwhelmed by my house so I could have more of my life back. I had
developed helpful systems to keep the clutter away.
“All of these moms were dealing with too much clutter in their homes,
and it made them feel like something was wrong with them. They were
feeling isolated, inadequate, and alone. And those feelings were being
amplified with postpartum depression and anxiety and watching their kids
grow up too fast.
“It made me think back to a time when I used to feel that way ... but I
don’t feel that way anymore. My house is in order — and I know how to do
that! A light bulb went off. I had always wanted to start a business, and I
knew I could teach these moms how to live a simplified life.
“This became my purpose. Almost every new mother is overwhelmed by
laundry, dishes, and toys. This leads to feelings of isolation because either
they’re embarrassed to invite people over or they can’t get their house in
order enough to leave the house. I wanted to teach them how to get organized
because it’s not just clutter — it’s blocking their path to freedom.”
The community-based business
The first 15 people in her new Facebook Group, “Motherhood Simplified,”
came over from her Due Date Group.
“I wanted to support moms with these common concerns and questions
with a community and a bank of helpful resources,” she said. “I help them
declutter without being a minimalist ... finding the balance of having enough
stuff for their family’s needs without being overwhelming. And I wanted to
have a business that would not take me away from my kids.
“I wasn’t exactly sure how this would work, but I just started. I relied
heavily on the people in the community to guide me so I knew how to meet
their needs. They asked me questions, I gave them answers, and that became
my first content.”
To keep the community involved and growing, Krista gave away her early
courses for free and activated group challenges like spending a few days
decluttering a space and posting photos of their success. This provided a
sense of accomplishment, pride, and friendship as the growing community
got to know each other.
“As the community grew, I knew there was an opportunity to monetize,”
she said. “I needed to grow my mailing list so I could communicate with
everyone directly. The weekly activities started coming through the
newsletter. If they wanted to get the free clutter challenge, they would have to
subscribe. Once I worked out the bugs of my email system, I knew that I
didn’t have to give my courses away for free any more. So I tested it by
charging $7 for a course, and they started buying! I did it! I was actually
making money from my community. Hey, it was just $7, but I could go buy
myself a coffee!”
Today Krista offers three paid courses, with the top class costing $300.

Growing pains
Through the shared activities and group classes, people became emotionally
attached to the community. Her members started stepping up to support each
other and take on small responsibilities to support the purpose of the
community.
She had no marketing budget (and still doesn’t) but she didn’t need one
because word-of-mouth excitement about her community brought more
members in quickly. Krista maintains a blog, podcast, and Pinterest page of
decluttering ideas to attract new members and spread her ideas.
“When I hit the 6,000-person mark in my community, I had an experience
that made me realize I needed help. One of my friends found my group on
Facebook and told me how cool it was. She recommended that I join. She
didn’t realize it was my group! That freaked me out. It was too big for me to
be recognized as the leader.
“I didn’t want my message or vision to be lost. I needed to do a better job
of deputizing people in my group, delegating responsibility. That was hard to
do. Giving up control was about the most uncomfortable challenge I’ve had.
But I needed a more mature mindset about managing a group this size. And
by asking for help, it’s worked out very well.”
As Krista looks to the future, she will be hiring a full-time resource to help
manage the community. She’s taking her own advice and keeping her
monetization strategy simple: doubling down on the most popular courses
and adding new programs, sponsorships, and capabilities based on her core
purpose of simplifying mothers’ lives.
 CHAPTER 8
Gather Your Community

Now that you have a vision of why you want to create a community, it’s time
to think about who will be there. In most cases, building a community takes
time and patience. Before you can enjoy that bonfire of business benefits, you
must start with some kindling.
The first people you involve in your community are consequential. These
early influences help set the tone and direction for the future. But you
probably don’t want your community to stagnate. Adding new members
usually amplifies the business benefits of the community. Let’s look at some
foundational ideas of gathering your first community as part of your
marketing strategy.

The foundational role of trust

Sometimes communities spring up organically without being driven by an

intentional strategy. Fan-driven clubs devoted to celebrities, athletes, and
artists are common, for example. Fan communities pop up for businesses,
too. Examples include Nutella, John Deere tractors, and even Kwik Trip gas
stations.60
“Someone started an argument about the best gas station, so I obviously
had to pitch in for Kwik Trip,” community founder Mike Testa said. “One
thing led to another, and within minutes I had dozens of likes and a few
comments saying, ‘Build it and they will come.’ I built a Facebook Group,
and they definitely came. We went from zero to 20,000 members in less than
a month.”
The community has showcased customers’ near-fanatical level of
devotion to the brand. Two group members have Kwik Trip tattoos. Another
member said that he and his fiancé would get married at Kwik Trip if his post
received 5,000 likes. It got 12,000, and the couple moved forward with their
convenience store wedding. Last time I looked, the Wisconsin Kwik Trip
Enthusiast Club had 105,000 community members. And they are selling
merchandise!
If you’re lucky enough to have something like this spring up for your
business, good for you. But it’s more likely that you need to build your
community as an intentional, systematic, and continuous element of your
marketing strategy.
With this in mind, growing your community begins with trust.
The most famous brand communities formed because of a long-
established bond with their customers. Disney, The American Cancer
Society, Manchester United, and Starbucks come to mind. These
organizations develop their products and services with an intense consumer
focus that intentionally reinforces strong community bonds.
A successful brand is not a logo, jingle, or website. It starts with trust —
the emotional connection that makes you matter to people.
I don’t know how you can gather people around you without trust. In the
new marketing world, branding is more important than ever.
Even a small business or a single person can have a strong brand. You
don’t need to make millions of dollars or have a contract with a London ad
agency. You probably have people you look up to in your life. Perhaps it’s
because they’re wise, kind, or especially fashionable. The personal attributes
you’ve assigned to people form their personal brand in your mind.
We’re fortunate to live in a digital age when all of us can amplify our best
traits in a way that creates a trusted and respected personal brand. A strong
personal brand is probably the only sustainable competitive advantage we can
carry with us throughout our careers.
It can also be the epicenter of a community. A community can certainly
gravitate to an individual. Like you!61
Having a trusted brand name does not assure community success. When a
new person enters your community their first thought will be, “Do I trust this
place?” When we join a community, we normally don’t have enough
information yet to know that it is the ideal place to spend our time. We make
a leap of faith, because in order to belong, we trust the brand, a community
leader, and eventually the other members of the community. Trust must be
earned every day.
A seat at your table

You might be tempted to create a community open to everyone, but the first
members will immediately begin to influence the progress of the group. It’s
like making a record. Even if you write the song, the abilities of your
supporting musicians influence the final results. These early community
members will likely emerge as your first leaders.
One way to get more specific about who you’re inviting to a community is
to start with your business goal in mind.

If your goal is to create a self-service community, then the doors

should be wide open to anybody who has a problem or could solve
one.
If the goal is innovation and co-creation, perhaps you sponsor
competitions to grant access to the most talented people.
If you’re trying to drive brand awareness, pay attention to the people
who are already spreading the love about you on social media.
Perhaps you want a special community for your very best customers.
You could reward their loyalty with exclusive programs and content.

My own community is about exploring the future of marketing. It was

important to find open-minded thought leaders who would inspire and
challenge each other. It also helped to rely on a few personal friends who I
knew would thrive in that environment and support the culture of kindness
and curiosity I established.

Why people join communities

As I studied the best communities in the world, a common pattern I noted is
that early members almost always come from pre-existing connections. A
group of friends. People in a Facebook Group. A book club. Loyal customers.
Subscribers to your podcast.
Who will organize around your belief system or goal? Is the beginning of
your community already in your life somewhere?
Starting a community means organizing those who are already naturally
interested in what you’re doing. There are thousands of pages of scientific
documentation on why people love communities, but the four primary
benefits to an individual are:62

Interpersonal connection: Establishing and maintaining relationships

with others creates friendship, social support, and identity.
Social improvement: Making contributions to the group can result in a
gain in status. I explore the unexpected physical and psychological
benefits of status in Chapter 9.
Entertainment value: Communities are fun!
Information exchange: A primary benefit is access to special insights
and information. The community may also help people find solutions
to problems and connections to new resources, goods, and services.

During the early days of the pandemic, I spent time connecting with
friends who were feeling displaced and lonely. I have an advanced degree in
applied behavioral sciences and was able to put that education to good use in
this time of suffering.
One lonely young man told me: “I belong to a software development
community. We meet online to help each other and solve problems, of
course, but when I was locked down, it became a place just to have human
contact with friends. I don’t know if I could have made it through the
pandemic without the social support of friends in that community.”
In this case, a technical community (primarily information-sharing) served
many interpersonal needs of its members during a global calamity. So the
reasons why people engage in your community might be a combination of
these four factors, and they can shift over time.
Consider the following two seemingly different case studies with common
ideas about building your first community.

The world’s biggest community

It took four years of twists and turns for Justin Kan to see that the first fans of
what became the world’s biggest community were right in front of him. It’s a
great lesson in paying attention to your early followers.
In 2007, Justin and three partners started Justin.tv, a 24-7 live video feed
of his life, broadcast via a webcam attached to his head.63 He was 23 years
old.
Viewers followed his life as he explored San Francisco. Sometimes Justin
had preplanned events (like trapeze and dance lessons), but more often, he
recorded spontaneous situations (like being invited into the local Scientology
center by a sidewalk recruiter). Justin’s mesmerizing “lifecasting” attracted
media attention including an interview on the TODAY show.
The young entrepreneur recognized the momentum building for the
livecasting concept and built a platform so anyone could publish their own
livestream from webcams and mobile phones.
Justin’s data revealed that his early customers loved to watch each other
stream professional sports like soccer, basketball, football, and, unexpectedly,
video games. People hooked up their Xboxes and started livecasting their
game play. He hadn’t even considered that possibility.
Video game streamers brought a new energy to the platform. They
weren’t part of his original vision, but there was undeniable momentum in
this growing tribe of gamers. By 2011, so many people were watching each
other play video games that Justin and his co-founders launched a new
platform entirely for gamers called Twitch.
Today, 8 million streamers broadcast themselves for hours playing games
like Fortnite and World of Warcraft. The streamers are also building their
own Twitch sub-communities numbering in the millions, driving enough in
merchandise sales, paid subscriptions, advertising, and sponsorships to earn
seven-figure incomes.
Members of the Twitch community spend an average of 90 minutes a day
there, making it among the largest and “stickiest” communities on earth. To
reinforce the strong emotional connections between gamers, Twitch hosts
live meet-ups at eSports arenas and the company’s annual TwitchCon events
across the globe.
A few years ago, Amazon paid nearly $1 billion to acquire the company,
and Justin will never have to work again. If you see me walking around with
a camera on my head and taking trapeze lessons, now you know why.

Pretty in pink

Starting a new community means paying attention to the needs of your fans
... even if they’re taking you in a new direction. An example of this is the
fashion brand LoveShackFancy.
LoveShackFancy, or LSF, specializes in “girlie” pink dresses (mostly) and
accessories that are feminine but not provocative. The brand is selling an
atmosphere and attitude. Founder Rebecca Hessel Cohen called it “the
ultimate girls club.”64
The brand originally sold its merchandise through Target and other large
retail outlets, but their whole strategy transformed when the company
realized that their customers were acting like fans. Women lined up in long
queues when new shipments arrived in stores. Soon, they were forming their
own fan clubs online.
When the brand created their own retail stores, fans drove from all over
America to attend an opening like it was a gala event.
The fandom was amplified during a TikTok phenomenon known as Bama
Rush. Sorority pledges at the University of Alabama shared their OOTDs
(outfit of the day). “My shoes are Shein, my jewelry is Kendra Scott, my
dress is LoveShackFancy.”
At first, the brand didn’t know how to handle their new meme-hood.
“‘Don’t show it to anyone!’ — that was my first response,” Rebecca Cohen
recalled. She was a Manhattanite who attended New York University and
didn’t understand what was happening on TikTok. “I was like, ‘We are going
to be pigeonholed.’ Then I just kept watching it and learning about these new
fans.”
The brand pivoted and encouraged this seemingly accidental fandom. It’s
no coincidence that since Bama Rush, new store openings include southern
cities with concentrations of young, affluent residents and tourists — like
Miami, Houston, and Nashville.
LSF brings their fans together at special live events like music concerts at
their stores. The company website features hundreds of community photos of
their fans wearing their favorite LSF clothes at weddings, parties, and of
course, college sorority events.
The community started as an accident, but it’s now an important source of
co-creation and new product ideas.

Key lessons

Although these examples present two wildly different products and

demographics, there are common themes in the early successes of both
Twitch and LSF. Neither had an intent to start a community, but both
followed the pull of passionate fans to quickly scale their marketing strategy.

1. The first whispers of community came from people who were already
“in the brand” — gamers for Justin and sorority members for LSF.
They didn’t need to recruit community members. The interest and
passion were already there.
2. Both resisted early fan organization efforts because they were
inconsistent with their own view of the brand. The brand meaning was
being created — or perhaps re-created — by the fans, and both Justin
and Rebecca eventually followed that lead to nurture massive
community success.
3. Finally, online relationships were reinforced in both cases by live
events that enhanced the strong emotional ties to these very different
companies. While many of the case studies in this book focus on
online communities, there is almost always a real-life, face-to-face
component at some point. Even the Kwik Trip fans have live events!

Think about the joy you feel meeting a cherished online friend in person
for the first time. When a brand is a catalyst for that special real-life moment,
it can legitimately own some of that emotional connection, too.

The struggle for organic growth

Like Rebecca and Justin, I was lucky enough to have a small but passionate
group of people seed my fledgling community. Soon, we were hosting
fascinating discussions and projects, but it was still incredibly difficult to get
new people to join.
A successful community requires a person’s time. We’re competing with
television. We’re competing with dating. We’re competing with family
activities. There are limitless distractions to fill every nook and cranny of a
person’s day.
In his excellent book The Business of Belonging, community development
expert David Spinks addresses the struggle of organic growth:
“There’s this rosy picture that people like to paint when talking about
community building. A person has an idea for a community, hosts their first
event, and it catches like wildfire! It grows and grows until wow, it’s a global
community! This narrative is misleading.
“It makes us think that if we can just set up the right circumstances — the
right message, in the right space, with the right programming — then people
will flock to our communities. They won’t. If a community grows organically
from day one, it’s the extreme exception to the rule.
“Every community builder I’ve ever spoken to talks about how hard they
had to work to get their first members in the door. Most communities start
small and stay small, never expanding beyond the first group of founding
members. The ones that get big are a direct result of leaders working to
recruit new members, spread awareness, and essentially market their
community like you would any other product or service. Behind the scenes,
you’ll find a team hustling, sending emails, hosting events, promoting
content, and doing everything they can to fill their funnel. Hope for organic
growth, but plan for manual growth. Get ready to roll up your sleeves and
make it grow.”
Here are some methods you can use to grow your community beyond the
first few members:

Fear of missing out (FOMO): The most effective idea that has worked
for me is promoting the great work of the community outside the
group. Almost every new member is coming into the community with
a comment like, “This looks amazing. How do I get involved?”
Promote in existing spaces: Are you promoting your community on
your website? Under the signature on your emails? In marketing
materials, sales presentations, and your external company newsletter? I
even talk about my community in daily business conversations and
public speeches.
Hands-on involvement: Another effective technique is to personally
advocate for your community. I interact with many different
professionals every week. If I invite them to my community, I find
they will at least try it. My personal invitation makes them feel special.
Recommendation engines: Your online platform can also be a driver of
community growth. If you host your community on Facebook, Slack,
Reddit, LinkedIn, or any large social network, you can take advantage
of their network effects and recommendation algorithms. This is
 especially powerful on Facebook where communities “recommended
for you” can reach and draw in a lot of new members.
Leverage the community: The most powerful invitation to a
community will come from those already involved. Can you give
members the materials they need to get others interested in your effort?

Let’s go a little deeper now. We’re assembling a community! But this can
be more of an art than a science, and in Chapter 9 I show how it’s also an
unconventional business strategy.

CASE STUDY
A community becomes the business

Summary: A traditional UK B2B company leveraged a newsletter audience to

create a new community-based business.
Like thousands of other marketers in the world, Mark Masters had a
moderately successful agency. From his hub in the lovely seaside town of
Bournemouth, England, he made websites, delivered effective marketing
content, and created customer strategies. He wrote a book and did a little
speaking. But nothing seemed to build momentum for his business. Pay-per-
click advertising, sales promotions, social media ... nothing was delivering a
return for his business like it used to.
“I felt like I was giving away my money to somebody else,” Mark said. “I
wasn’t building anything that was lasting, something that would stand the test
of time. I was just bumping along every day like everybody else in this
marketing space. A nobody.”
Mark needed to try something new to build an audience of potential
customers, so in 2013, he started a weekly newsletter. “I intended to build an
audience that I could sell something to because this newsletter would create
familiarity and connection,” he said. “That was the original goal: a financial
transaction. As my audience grew, some of the local subscribers wanted to
meet me. I would have lunch with them, and we became friends. I realized
that instead of creating newsletters and emails to sell products in the quickest
possible time, I much preferred nurturing these new business relationships to
get to know the people around me.”
 The newsletter connections bloomed, and soon Mark was meeting with his
subscribers in larger groups. As the number of connections and conversations
swelled, he formed a lunch club in 2016. Twenty-two people showed up to
the first meeting.
“The lunch club was a way to bring like-minded people together to
discuss business topics of interest. This was the breakthrough moment. The
newsletter audience was turning into a community because now these great
people were getting to know each other. In an audience, I was helping people.
In a community, people were helping each other.”
The discussions in his lunch club had broad appeal: learning the skills
small businesses need to survive and thrive in a fast-changing world. The
club members brought in new people, and as the lunch club grew, a
community that now called itself You Are The Media (YATM) needed a
bigger space to connect. They moved their meetings into a local event space.
Mark finally had the momentum that had been lacking in his business. It
was time to fan the flames.

Rapid community growth

Mark facilitated community brainstorming sessions and helped activate ideas
on ways the members could collaborate. He started a podcast to shine a
spotlight on his growing tribe of business experts. He created an awards
ceremony to reward the best contributors to the community. He delegated
leadership tasks to the YATM community members so they could grow more
quickly.
And in 2018, just two years after the first lunch club meeting, the
community took a giant leap forward by hosting the first YATM conference
in a historic Bournemouth theater. The featured keynote speaker was both
talented and adorable — some guy named Schaefer.
Mark Masters and his eclectic group of business professionals kept
creating new ways to connect, meet, and serve each other through

Educational webinars
Informal gatherings
Zoom shows
Friday night parties (no business talk allowed!)
Conferences and special events
Workshops
 Facebook Group
Cocktail parties
Learning challenges

Some of them even met up to swim in the English Channel every Friday at
7 a.m. And I mean every Friday morning, even in the winter!
“The thing that gets me out of bed on a Friday morning — even when we
have the lowest sea temperature of the year — is the fact that this swim is a
promise to each other,” Mark Masters told me. “Going into the sea alone
feels isolating. Going into the sea together when it’s freezing outside is
shared screaming. Everyone takes something from it — friendship, a
memorable Instagram photo, a story to tell your friends. It becomes a bond.”
A unique aspect of this case study is that Mark Masters didn’t start his
community from a position of power. He didn’t have a well-known brand at
the beginning. He built trust step-by-step as he consistently put the interests
of the community ahead of any personal or business goals.
“I was not a famous person who naturally attracted a community,” he said.
“I stood shoulder to shoulder with my community. I was merely a catalyst.
Creating a community can be a brilliant opportunity for almost anyone. It’s
not just a big brand thing!”

The blackout
As the group became more successful, a minor disaster struck. The
community had organized a significant event with a program of speakers. In
the middle of the occasion, there was a power outage, and the theater had to
be evacuated. The community immediately moved to a pub across the street
and started playing games together. “It was an absolute shambles,” Mark
said, “but nobody left. Instead of being mad, they were just happy to be
together. We had so much fun we decided to have regular game nights. A
new tradition was born — YATM Game Night!”
Instead of shouldering blame for a failed event, the community brushed it
off and came away stronger. For the first time, Mark realized that the
community was being lifted on many shoulders. They went up as a team and
went down as a team, but they always moved forward as a community. He
had shaped something that transcended a lunch club or any single event. He
was building a legacy.
“I’m at a transition point,” he said. “My community is becoming the
business. The time I spend on the community is superseding time spent on
my agency. My community knows me, and they know You Are The Media.
If I’m being honest, they don’t even know the name of my business now.
YATM is the brand.
“Frankly it’s a bit of a weird thing, building community by giving up
control. The business process of community is different than what we were
taught in the university. I’ve had to reinvent myself — adopt a new mindset
— to make it work. I’m learning to trust and to be completely transparent
about this group.
“Certainly, I’m benefitting financially from the community through the
events, consulting, sponsorships, and new customers. But everybody is
benefitting, whether that means securing a freelance project, showing up on
each other’s podcasts, collaborating on projects, or starting a new business
together. Being part of You Are The Media has bestowed status on people
now, gives people credibility.
“It’s also helped me build more self-confidence. Starting a community
from scratch is scary. But when people keep showing up to support you and
each other, it’s a great feeling. It’s helped me learn to be more open and
vulnerable because that’s what connects with people. I feel more comfortable
living in plain sight of everyone else.”

Leaning forward
The future of YATM seems both bright and uncertain. Mark created a
community-based business, but the future depends on the evolution of a
group, not necessarily a well-defined business strategy.
“I’m still figuring it out,” he said, “but I have a lot of help. When I ran a
business, I often felt very alone. But in a community, people are developing
the solutions together. It is a collective voice. A lot of the risk is taken out of
the equation because you almost always have a better solution together. It’s
still a business. It’s not some altruistic place. But it’s a lot more fun.”
Mark feels so strongly about this new approach that he has started a
YATM program at the local college to teach young people how to build their
own community-based businesses.
“I don’t know where we will be in five years’ time,” he said, “but I know
it will be better. I’d like to get to a place where I just happen to be part of the
community I started. I like the idea of growing older and being part of this
community, the people I want to be with.”
 CHAPTER 9
A new leadership mindset

If you’ve been in marketing leadership for awhile, adjusting to the mindset of

a community approach is disorienting. In fact, it can be downright weird.
In this chapter, I explore the “softer side” of community-based marketing
and why it requires a new leadership mindset. A successful community is
more art than science — just like fishing, love, and great pizza!
Deferring to a community is counter to many traditional ideals of great
marketing management. It disrupts control, power, agency relationships, and
our beloved marketing dashboards. It makes us reimagine that board-
approved annual marketing plan as a nimble feedback machine that creates
continuous relevance for our brand. At its best, community turns the
customer into the marketer.
As we explore how community contorts our traditional marketing
worldview, let’s start with identifying the most important person in your
marketing department. No, it’s not the CMO.

The community manager is a marketing manager

Among those who lead communities for a living, there are diverse opinions
on where they fit in the corporate structure. To me, the answer is clear. The
person leading your community day-to-day should report to the marketing
department.
Remarkably, less than 30 percent of brand community leaders report to
marketing.65
Ideally, your organization’s marketing leadership oversees every aspect of
the customer experience, and I can’t imagine a more profound customer
experience than community. So, the community function belongs under
marketing, no question, end of story.
The community manager might be the most important human asset in your
marketing department. They may not be the most experienced, talented, or
highly paid employee, but they are the face of your company and something
more: They become a friend to your customers.
In 1956, sociologists coined the term parasocial relationship to describe
the connection between early television viewers and a new class of TV
celebrities, including news anchors and daily talk show hosts.
“The spectacular fact about such celebrities is that they can claim and
achieve an intimacy with what are literally crowds of strangers,” researchers
wrote in Psychiatry magazine. “This intimacy, even if it is an imitation and a
shadow of what is ordinarily meant by that word, is extremely influential
with, and satisfying for, the great numbers who willingly share in it.”66
Parasocial relationships are, by definition, one-sided, but like real
friendships, they can deepen over time, enriched by the dependable presence
of the charming celebrity in their daily life. This phenomenon isn’t limited to
television. Today, anybody with a smart device can choose to be a show host,
build an audience, and attract these unintended infatuations.
Even me.
A few years ago, I started receiving very detailed and bold requests from a
young man, almost like he was one of my close relatives. I meet so many
people that I thought maybe I had unwittingly made some commitment to
him in the past, but I just couldn’t remember him. Finally, when he asked me
to train his boss on how to be a public speaker, I asked him, “Do I know
you?”
He responded sheepishly, “I’m sorry. I listen to every podcast episode you
publish. I listen to your audiobooks. Your voice is in my head all the time. I
forgot that you weren’t a real friend.”
That, my dear readers, is a parasocial relationship and the reason why
your community manager is the star of your marketing department. Your
customers probably don’t know the name of your CEO, but they may form a
significant emotional bond with your community management team.
Do not under-staff, under-pay, or underestimate this function.

Status

Another shift in leadership norms is the role of status. In a normal

professional or social setting, it’s taboo (or at least narcissistic) to talk about
status. But when it comes to community, status is everything. Status is the
fuel for the engine.
Understanding the connection between status and a successful community
starts with the foundational idea that we all need recognition to thrive as
human beings.
Will Storr, author of The Status Game, said that community status is an
integral part of our personal identity.67 “We join groups when we align with
their rules of behavior,” he said. “We follow the rules, and the better we
follow the rules, the higher we climb in status. We begin to dress like the
people in the group, talk like people in the group, read the same kind of
books, etc. We can be one person pursuing status in one group and another
version when pursuing status in another community. You can’t separate the
status game from our personal identity.”
“The research shows we’re happier and more stable emotionally, the more
groups we belong to,” Will said. “The Whitehall Study,68 conducted by Dr.
Michael Marmot, revealed this remarkable fact that the lower you go down
the hierarchy of government, the worse people’s health outcomes became,
and the greater their mortality risk. The immediate thought is, well, that’s
because rich people are so privileged, they’ve got personal trainers and
macrobiotic diets and all this stuff. But it wasn’t that, because even one step
down from the very top, a person is still extremely wealthy, extremely
privileged and yet there were different health outcomes.
“This status syndrome has been found across genders, across countries,
and even in animals,” he said. “A study showed that monkeys at the top of
the community hierarchy are less likely to fall ill due to their status. When a
monkey’s status in the hierarchy changed, their health status changed, too.
“Status in a community isn’t just about our psychological health. It also
affects our physical health.”
Every form of community has a status system either intentionally or
unintentionally built in. We join communities where we see an opportunity to
improve our status among a group that we care about. A person doesn’t have
to be at the top of the hierarchy to feel good about being there. As the leader
of my own community, I try to acknowledge and encourage people as soon as
they join.
Bestowing status is much more than a practical measure to manage a
growing community. Status creates emotional connection to the community
(and the brand), enhances loyalty, and nurtures brand advocacy.
 Status doesn’t necessarily have to come from a title. You can reward
community members and help build their esteem through:

Public recognition
Gifts
Content contributions
Access to new levels in the community
Digital badges
Access to experts
Invitations to events
NFTs and tokens

For fun, I set up a system so the most active people in my community

could work their way up to Star Wars levels like Jedi, Jedi Knight, and Grand
Master. It was all for fun, but one person quipped, “I just noticed I made it to
Jedi Apprentice. I must now hold the record for being the oldest apprentice in
anything. This might be the best thing that happened to me all week!”
Two main priorities for me as a leader of my community are: 1)
Maintaining a culture of safe collaboration, and 2) Bestowing status to my
members.

The social contract

Another unexpected aspect of community and its role in the marketing

strategy is the implied social contract.
Most marketing is ephemeral. You see an ad, or you don’t. You click on a
link, or you don’t. You see a tweet, or you don’t. A campaign runs its course
when the money runs out, and then you start something new.
But a community is a long-lasting, two-sided emotional commitment.
Google learned this the hard way.
In 2011, the company took on Facebook and aimed to become the
epicenter of global community when it launched Google+. The company
spent $600 million in its fourth attempt to establish a social network, one of
the costliest startup projects in the history of Silicon Valley.
It was an immediate success. By the end of its first year, Google+ hosted
90 million users, swelling to 540 million by the end of year two.
 Google+ had a clean design and popular new features that were perfect for
communities (called “Circles”). You could categorize connections based on
strength of relationship, host video chat hangouts, and leverage powerful
collaboration tools that integrated with other Google functionality like search.
But once fans got past the initial hype, the platform lost its allure. Much
has been written about this decline, but in my view, it came down to the fact
that people simply did not need a Facebook competitor.
There is a significant psychological switching cost to moving your friends,
games, and communities from Facebook to a new social network. While
Google+ was a beautiful, reliable piece of engineering, it wasn’t cool enough
or different enough to get most people to move. To earn massive user
adoption, Google needed to build the technological equivalent of Lady Gaga.
Instead, they built Tom Hanks. It was pleasant and safe, but it could never be
the unmissable “in place” new fans could rally around.
Millions of people dabbled with Google+ but there was nothing culturally
significant about it to keep them there. Near the end, a person spent about
three minutes a month on Google+ compared to nearly eight hours a month
on Facebook. On March 7, 2019, Google pulled the plug.
Despite the lack of mass adoption, even at the end, there were still
thousands of people who LOVED Google+ and had committed everything to
the platform. They hosted talk shows, built new businesses, and amassed
faithful communities on this platform.
And then — poof! — their communities evaporated in a single day.
My friend Scott Scowcroft was one of those G+ fans. “Being immersed in
this new platform for five years was a magical time,” he told me. “I made
lasting friendships in meaningful communities. I belonged to that place.
When Google pulled the plug, I regarded this as uncaring ... perhaps even
evil. How can I ever believe that company again? This was a breach of their
social contract with me.”
Let’s rewind that ... “a breach of their social contract with me.” Isn’t that a
fascinating description? Do any of your current marketing initiatives provide
a social contract with your customers? Probably not. Like I said, most
marketing is ephemeral.
A community isn’t simply a line item in a marketing budget. It’s a social
contract with your customers. Organizationally, this needs to be understood
and codified in the culture. Community deserves a long-term, full-fledged
commitment, like a contract.
Don’t build your own house

Almost every community will have an online component, even if it’s just to
let members share ideas between meetings and post news about upcoming
events.
Popular community destinations include Twitter Chats, Slack, Discord,
Reddit, WhatsApp, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, to name just a few. Facebook
boasts more than 10 million different Groups, and half of their users belong
to at least five communities.69 There are also dozens of community-specific
software platforms designed to help you manage the day-to-day functions of
community management.
Obviously I can’t recommend a platform without knowing your specific
situation, but I can recommend a place NOT to build your community.
Too many companies are still preoccupied with an idea that they need to
have their own custom, gated platform, repeating a fatal flaw from the early
days of the first internet communities.
Whether this obsession comes from ego or bad advice, it rarely works
(except for the most beloved destination brands like Sephora, LEGO, or
Nike). The reason for customized community failure is simple: If you’re
expecting people to login to a new place every day and perhaps even learn
the language and procedures of a new platform, you’re pushing water uphill.
It’s better to find a community home that’s part of your customer’s daily
online routine. In fact, in many cases, the community might already exist, and
you just need to join in!
Years ago, I was consulting with one of the biggest tech companies in the
world. They had already built a fantastic, gated community on their own
website. But it was empty, like standing at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
They were frustrated because nothing they tried could drag customers into
their beautiful private community.
I discovered the problem immediately. A massive group of people who
loved data security (an ideal customer!) already had a long-established
community on Slack. Why would they click on a new place and leave their
friends? The company’s customized private space wasn’t organic or relevant
to their customer’s daily experience.
I recommended that members of the leadership team join the existing
Slack community in a non-salesy and helpful way. Within 18 months, their
vice president was asked to be one of the administrators of the community.
They closed down their own site.
Does this mean they have less influence on the group if they don’t “own
it?” A community is about giving up power. The tech company leaders had
more credibility because they came in as equals and earned authority through
their helpful and generous community support.
Before you organize a community, do some research to make sure there
isn’t a natural gathering place out there already.
Now we come to the part of the book that makes many community
managers cower in fear: measurement. The next chapter presents a
straightforward answer, but you probably won’t like it.

CASE STUDY
Conquering a giant through community

Summary: Spotify activated a group of superfans by granting them status.

Today, this community is the company’s greatest competitive advantage.
This is one of the most challenging marketing problems I can imagine:
You’re the marketing leader of a disruptive app that aims to unseat a useful
and dominant application that already comes standard on every iPhone.
Spotify not only achieved that goal, but it also owns more than twice the
number of music subscribers as Apple Music.
How did they accomplish this stunning feat? A big part of the answer is
community. You’re probably not surprised. I mean ... this is a book about
community!
Spotify launched its first customer community in 2012 as a portal where
users could swap playlists and seek tech support. Just 18 months later, this
evolved into Spotify Rock Stars, a dedicated program for superfans who
answer questions in the larger Spotify community, respond to brand mentions
on social media, and identify customer pain points. In exchange, they get
direct access to the Spotify Community team in private forums, can be
involved in product research and beta programs, and earn an opportunity to
attend live music events.
Allison Leahy, Spotify’s Head of Social Care & Community, and Oscar
Osornio, a Mexico-based member of the Rock Stars program, shared four
insights about building momentum in their community.70

1. Grant status
Spotify’s community uses gamification to incentivize participation. For
example, each status rank comes with rewards like Spotify subscriptions,
merchandise, and the ability to contribute to the platform’s “What the Stars
are Listening To” playlist.
People who reach the Rock Star level meet with developers on a regular
basis and test app features before they’re implemented. Their feedback
directly shapes the Spotify product.
The biggest perk? The 10 most active Rock Stars are invited to an annual
Rock Star Jam — an all-expenses-paid trip to Stockholm where they hang out
with others from the community.

2. Focus on brand value, not sales metrics

Spotify can see that their community pays dividends in terms of brand
loyalty, retention, engagement, enthusiasm for the product, and most
important, innovation.
While those things are tough to quantify from a dollars and cents
perspective, Allison admitted, the value to the brand is undeniable. “We have
a direct line to our passionate customers around the world and are generating
value in ways that our business leaders find compelling,” she said.
They prioritize qualitative measures like engagement and new product
ideas versus quantitative measures like revenue.

3. Grow carefully
When Spotify scaled its exclusive Rock Stars level from 50 to 150 members,
it became apparent that the platform didn’t have the infrastructure or
resources to onboard new members effectively.
“Whenever you have an influx of new membership, managing that change
can be very delicate,” Allison said, “especially if you have a core group of
users who know each other very well. It takes time to build a program like
this. You want to be able to apply the right amount of attention to nurture a
program. Otherwise, it becomes transactional.”
Allison said Spotify knows there’s more value ahead if they grow the
community: “We want to unlock that potential — to give our existing Rock
Stars new ways to contribute and leverage the network effect where there’s
more peer-led and Rock Star-led onboarding and co-mentoring.”

4. Prioritize relationships among community members

While it’s obviously crucial for companies to facilitate top-down
relationships with community members, it’s even more important to nurture
relationships among community members.
Oscar developed deep friendships with fellow Rock Stars and like-minded
Spotify users from around the world, which solidified his emotional
attachment to the brand. “In the end,” he said, “what I enjoy most about the
program is meeting other people. When you meet them in person, you feel
like you’ve known them all your life, because you get to interact with them
every day in the community. Then when you get to talk to them in person,
you understand that nationality doesn’t matter — it’s more about your shared
interests and passion for music and technology.”
Many studies prove that engagement between community members results
in positive feelings that drive brand loyalty, more product purchases, and
brand advocacy.
 CHAPTER 10
The Truth About Measurement

In this chapter, I resolve a perplexing problem: How do you measure the

return on investment (ROI) of your brand community?
The world of online community management dwells in a constant state of
anxiety about proving its worth. Nearly 90 percent of community
management professionals believe their job is critical to the company’s
mission. But remarkably, just 10 percent say they can prove their worth by
quantifying the value of their brand community.71
This chronic frustration has birthed a bounty of acrobatic approaches to
measurement, including complex assessments of community impact and
value. In general, these non-traditional approaches to measurement won’t
work because they present a foreign and suspicious new language for the
accountants to understand. To achieve credibility in our organizations, we
must speak the native tongue of business.
Measurement ultimately depends on your goals. Today, most communities
are transactional, rooted in customer self-service. That’s relatively easy to
measure. If you know how much traditional customer service costs per
transaction, calculating cost avoidance through community is straightforward.
However.
This book specifically advocates expanding the role of community as a
linchpin to marketing and branding strategy. Positioning community within
the scope of marketing strategy — and reporting to the marketing department
— makes the job of measurement easier.
To quantify community value through a marketing lens, you first have to
understand the two different types of marketing and how they connect to
community and measurement.

The two types of marketing

If you love sports, you’re probably aware of the legendary product Gatorade.
The beverage was conceived in 1965 by a team of researchers at the
University of Florida. It was developed for the football team — the Gators —
to replenish carbohydrates and electrolytes the players needed when
recovering from workouts under the unrelenting Florida sun. Today,
Gatorade is owned by PepsiCo and distributed in more than 80 countries.
Gatorade is a formidable brand. It holds a whopping 75 percent share of
the $30 billion sports drink market. This massive awareness and dominance
were earned over decades of innovation and ubiquitous sports marketing. If
you watch a popular sport on television, you’re likely to see some presence
from Gatorade — on the field, near the field, or in an advertisement.
On the grocery store shelf, Gatorade is about $2 per bottle, and its biggest
competitor, Powerade, is around 89 cents a bottle. As the superior brand,
Gatorade can charge more than a 100 percent premium because of the trust
established through its brand marketing. As the upstart competitor and a far-
distant number two in the market, Powerade must deploy a different
marketing strategy and compete through discounts, pay for favorable product
placement, and maybe eke out some advantage through the powerful
distribution system of its parent company, Coca-Cola.
In this scenario, we see the two different types of marketing working in
the real world, and if we understand the differences, we’ll gain an essential
insight into measurement and the brand community.
Because Powerade is a less well-known brand, it’s forced to compete in
the trenches for more sales. It will have to devote most of its budget to direct
marketing.
Direct marketing is transaction-oriented and measurable. If Powerade runs
an ad on Facebook and counts clicks that convert to sales, that’s direct
marketing. If they have an end-of-aisle display that chugs out coupons for
shoppers who pass by, that’s direct marketing. They are moving product. It’s
relatively easy to measure.
Gatorade, on the other hand, sits comfortably atop the sports drink
kingdom as the most beloved and trusted brand. Even if Powerade develops a
new formulation that heals sore muscles or tastes better than champagne,
Gatorade will probably still outsell them because of the trust and loyalty
earned through their relevance in sports culture.
Gatorade is deploying brand marketing. Brand marketing is oriented
toward emotional connection and cultural relevance instead of direct
transactions.
The bulk of Gatorade’s marketing budget is spent on brand development
featuring superstars like Lionel Messi, event sponsorships, and brand
activations at glamorous places like the World Cup or Super Bowl.
And that marketing investment is almost impossible to measure.
One of the most beloved American sports traditions is the Gatorade bath.
At the end of a victorious match, players sneak up behind a coach or star
player and dump the huge sideline container of ice-cold Gatorade over their
head. This is always captured on TV as a cultural moment that might be
replayed by fans for years.
This jubilant scene can only happen because Gatorade is served on the
sidelines due to some team or league sponsorship agreement (that’s part of
brand marketing).
What’s the ROI of the Gatorade bath? How much Gatorade is purchased
by fans because of a league sponsorship deal that places the brand logo on
team benches and its product in giant containers on the sidelines? There’s just
no way to know.
We sense that brand marketing efforts like a team sponsorship can help us
sell more stuff, but it’s almost impossible to make a direct attribution. You’ll
drive yourself crazy trying to determine the ROI of brand marketing. But it
works. Gatorade has 70 percent market share and charges twice as much for
its products. There’s the proof ... and the problem. Brand marketing comes
down to faith instead of hard numbers, and many business leaders hate that.

A community is part of brand marketing

Time to connect the dots. Let’s travel all the way back to Chapter 3 to revisit
the list of possible marketing benefits of a brand community:

1. Cost savings through customer self-service

2. Monetization through a membership fee model
3. Brand differentiation
4. Member relationships create an emotional barrier to brand-switching
costs
5. Conversations that reveal opportunities for brand relevance
6. Insights that lead to product innovations
 7. Direct feedback on product performance
8. Speed of information flow
9. Trust over other company communications
10. Organic brand advocacy
11. Awareness of new products and services
12. Significant gains in brand loyalty
13. Positive impact on customer retention
14. Co-created products and services
15. Connections to cultural trends
16. Access to firsthand customer data

Of these awesome benefits, how many would you consider direct

marketing benefits (easily measurable) versus brand marketing benefits
(impossible to measure)?
The answer is two: Only customer care and the membership fee model are
transactional and easily measurable.
More than 90 percent of the benefits in this list are derived from the
emotional connection of brand marketing. Will you sell more stuff if
communication flows faster, you mine consumer data and insights, and
customers become organic advocates for your products? Yes, you will!
Can you absolutely measure that? No, you can’t.

The big miss

More than 70 percent of the brand communities that exist today are still
focused on customer service as a primary objective.72 Undoubtedly, it’s
because this is so easy to measure. Direct marketing, with its financial
attribution, keeps the accountants delighted. The community managers can
justify their jobs.
But the implication is that at least 70 percent of brand communities are
missing out on 90 percent of the potential marketing advantages because
those benefits are difficult — or impossible — to measure. That’s crazy! An
outdated, 100-year-old marketing measurement tradition is keeping us from
fully capturing the benefits of community and devastating our competitors.
You might sense that I’m violating the immutable laws of business by
suggesting that you commit a significant investment in a community without
an ability to directly measure the financial results ... but that is exactly what
you need to do.
There’s a new truth in the marketing world today: You can either keep up
with the pulse of culture, or you can measure. You probably can’t do both.
My teacher and mentor Peter Drucker famously said, “The purpose of
business is to create and keep a customer.” The unpredictable, bullet-speed
changes in consumer culture require sweeping new approaches to achieve
that purpose ... even if we can’t easily measure it.
As you read this, your competitors are out there asking their accountants
to determine the ROI of a customer community. They’re probably only
considering one benefit from our list, customer self-service, because they can
measure it, and I can guarantee that they’re arguing about that, too!
That is a Powerade company. They’ll have to scratch and claw for every
customer purchase, pump out ridiculous ads all day, waste money on SEO,
and try to coupon their way to glory.
But you know something they don’t know. You can be Gatorade — a
beloved, trusted, market-crushing brand focused on cultural relevance,
insight, and emotional connectivity to their customers. You have a
formidable new strategy to create and keep customers: community.
Reframing community as an extension of brand marketing is an advantage
because brand marketing is something that most companies already
understand. It’s part of the business language, part of the budget, and part of
the expectation of what a marketing department is supposed to do.
Whether you’re a Fortune 500 titan, a nonprofit, or an individual building
a freelance business, you’re already expending effort on brand marketing.
The question is: What would happen if you spent it on a community instead
of on ads that nobody sees? There will be one dominant brand community in
your niche. It should be yours.
Can you become the Gatorade of your industry?
Yes, you can. But you have to consider community an essential part of the
brand, not just a cost-saving utility.

Social sharing: The most important metric

PR firm Edelman has been conducting research on “trust” for more than 20
years. Unsurprisingly, their annual global survey has recorded a steady
decline in trust of government, media, and advertising. Who do people trust?
Other people. Friends. Neighbors. Family.
Today, this is where our brand story is taking place: through people, not
ads. Through social media posts, testimonies, and reviews. Activating this
word-of-mouth transmission is an essential component of the community
marketing opportunity and how we measure success.
This suggests that the marketer’s role is to help community members
spread the enthusiasm and joy that is inside the community to audiences
outside the community. Your customers are your best marketers. How do you
help them do the job?
The answer is simple: Give them something to talk about.
McKinsey found community activation centered on two key components:
a “hero” product, and stories that fuel conversations.73
Brands should focus their engagement efforts on a few distinctive
products designed to create buzz. Having such hero products simplifies the
conversations for consumers who can be confused by endless choices.
By now, you should know that your customers don’t want to be “sold” in
a community, but they do want to learn, experience, and contribute. Brands
can create buzz through hero products by:

Offering exclusive or early access

Involving the community in experiential interactions
Giving free samples, especially in the development phase
Creating exclusive opportunities to share the products with others
Launching interactive marketing tools so consumers can sample the
product digitally

To facilitate customer conversations, brands also need to provide a stream

of engaging content their fans can latch onto. I teach that conversational
content has five characteristics expressed by the acronym RITES:

RELEVANT: Is the content connected to an important value or passion

of the community? When a person shares content, they’re saying, “I
believe in this.”
INTERESTING: Is this something a person would talk about over
coffee with a friend?
TIMELY: People spread information because they want to look cool.
 The stories they tell reflect on their self-image. The ability to break
news to their friends helps people seem relevant to their peers.
ENTERTAINING (or maybe Exciting!): The emotion most connected
with viral content is awe. It’s something customers have never seen
before. We like to share things that make us laugh or say “wow!”
SUPERIOR: Your competitors are probably creating the same type of
content. If they’re better than you, eventually customers will move on.
Never stop improving.

Community activation through stories opens up a new opportunity for

measurement because we can easily observe at least some of the external
engagement and online conversations through social listening platforms.
Other than conversions to sales, I think social sharing is the most
important metric for communities. Fans spreading the word about your
organization and your products signifies organic advocacy. It’s true,
authentic, and believed. Customers talking about your brand is better than
any advertising you will ever buy.
Tracking customer advocacy is also an opportunity to reward your
community members with status. Those sharing your content should be the
most valued and recognized members of your community!

The engagement engine

Research indicates that creating bonds between the consumer and the brand
offers stability to the brand and loyalty.74 The path to this connection is
information flow between community members. In fact, engagement is a key
sign that there is a strong sense of belonging among members.75 Some
studies show that the primary reason people engage in a community is to
achieve this feeling.76
Nearly every community I studied considered member engagement levels
as a key metric. Although conversation frequency and member activity are
soft measures, they are leading indicators of sales and marketing success.
When members see each other supporting each other in a community, it
leads to greater affinity for the brand. There is a direct line between
engagement and brand loyalty, brand recognition, positive word of mouth,
and purchase intention.77
 So it makes sense that a key role for the brand is assuring high levels of
engagement, and especially member interactivity.

Sales and leads

In the Boss Mom case study in Chapter 4, Dana Malstaff explains that she
focused on igniting her community purpose and building a movement —
brand building. But after a period of years, the community grew and
rewarded her by purchasing her premium content and services. Revenue is
important, and it also demonstrates that she’s creating products in line with
the needs of her community.
Eventually a community can contribute to sales objectives. If you’re
increasing loyalty and awareness and reducing churn, this should happen
organically. Just remember that a community must serve the needs and
purpose of the members. If it becomes nothing more than a billboard for your
products, the community will collapse.
An emphasis on sales might also put pressure on community growth
objectives. Tread carefully. Bigger communities dilute connections and
conversations. Recall that the emotional connection to the brand within a
community is driven by the interpersonal relationships built there. Especially
in specialized B2B communities, bigger might not be better.

The Sticker Test

I’d like to end this unusual chapter of improbable advice with one more piece
of weirdness.
When writing Marketing Rebellion, I was faced with a problem: How
could I tell if somebody feels like they belong to a brand? What would
indicate that a company is creating a significant and meaningful emotional
connection with its customers?
I came upon an idea: stickers.
You can borrow my car, my clothes, and even my house. But keep your
hands off my computer and my phone. These are the sacred portals to my
digital life. And that’s the way it is for almost everyone.
Decorating one of these devices with a sticker is a remarkable symbol of
belonging. A sticker is an unmistakable sign to the world that says, “I believe
in this organization so much that it’s part of who I am. I belong to this.”
Once I gave a talk in the lovely city of Wichita, Kansas, and a group of
students asked to take a picture with me. A college sophomore raised her
iPhone to take the photo, and she had a YETI sticker displayed on the entire
back of the device.
I asked her why she would have the logo for an ice cooler company on her
phone, and she launched into a detailed description of what the brand meant
to her, how YETI aligned with her worldview, and how she was part of their
online community. She said that she always bought expensive YETI holiday
gifts for her family, even on her limited student’s budget, because she
belonged to this brand.
Yup. Stickers. They mean a lot. Even for ice coolers.
What would it take for you to build a community that loved you so much
that they put your sticker on their laptops? Wouldn’t that be an amazing
measure of community success?
In the next section, we’ll look into the future. Communities are taking
unexpected turns, and some of them will be in secret hiding places.

CASE STUDY
ROI of a 6 million-member community

Summary: Sephora significantly differentiated its company by placing a bet

on the brand marketing approach to community.
In Chapter 6, I mentioned the famed beauty brand Sephora. Their Beauty
Insider community has 6 million members, making it one of the biggest brand
communities in the world.
How does Sephora measure the absolute value generated by the advocacy,
innovation, and insight streaming in from millions of online customers?
They can’t.
They don’t.
In fact, they refuse to measure community in financial terms for fear of
ruining the irreplaceable magic they’ve created!
In an interview, Sephora Vice President Allegra Stanley said the primary
metrics for her community are membership growth and engagement with new
programs and content.
“Are they earning points and redeeming rewards? Are they engaging in
our community? Are they taking advantage of the experiences we provide?
We measure our success by the level of engagement across all the benefits
that we serve up and showcase for our clients,” she said.
Sephora’s clients are on a continuing beauty journey, so the Beauty
Insider community’s mission is to guide members through current beauty
trends and identify future developments.
“What I am most passionate about is the unique experiences we offer our
members,” Allegra said. “They bring to life the emotional component of
loyalty, which is so important and really drives the majority of engagement
with our clients.”78
Sephora calculated that members of their community are responsible for
80 percent of the company’s sales. Beauty Insider attracts customers to the
Sephora website even when they aren’t shopping. They’ve determined a
correlation between engagement and sales. High engagement creates a 22
percent increase in cross-sell and as much as a 51 percent increase in upsell
revenue.
But this finding does not necessarily solve the measurement problem.
The most active members of the community spend 10 times more than an
average customer. Are they spending more because of the community? Or are
they engaging in the community at a high level because they’re more
invested as a customer? Impossible to know. Kind of like the Gatorade bath.
Sephora places the full power of community at the heart of their brand
marketing strategy. They lean on easy-to-measure indicators like engagement
and growth as signs of progress without requiring direct attribution to sales to
justify the effort.
 CHAPTER 11
Web3 and the New Frontiers of Community

Early in this book, I identify three megatrends colliding in a way that

indicates that community is the next big marketing idea: Obsolescence of
traditional marketing strategies, the global mental health crisis, and emerging
technologies that enable community.
The only trend I haven’t covered yet is technology, but it’s no less
important in this future marketing mix. The tech world has big ideas for
community!
Traditionally, the essential function of the web has been to help us create,
connect, and be discovered. Almost anyone with a keyboard and a Wi-Fi
connection can have an impact on the world through their content, presence,
and ideas. This was Web1.
Global creativity was unleashed! Many took advantage of this opportunity
to build passionate audiences through videos, podcasts, blogs, and every
creative outlet imaginable. These innovators could monetize their audiences,
and an exciting new creator economy was born. This was Web2.
The problem was that these creator-led business models could be
manipulated by outsiders. Ad revenue came from social networks.
Sponsorship money came from brands who benefitted from their content,
personal data, and the right to cozy up to a hard-won audience. Creator
income could be impacted suddenly by changes to an algorithm or the whims
of company executives they never met. They could be knocked off a platform
or jerked away from a brand deal without warning.
Monetization on Web2 also meant compromise. I met a studio exec who
told me about partnering with a creator to promote a movie release to his
relevant and loyal YouTube audience. The studio’s ad agency laid out a
detailed promotional plan, including a Tuesday morning video contribution
from the influencer.
“I never post on Tuesday mornings,” the creator explained. “This won’t
work. My audience won’t know what’s going on.”
“We know what we’re doing, and this is what you’ll do,” he was told.
 Predictably, the content flopped, and the creator was embarrassed by
posting something to his audience that was not organic or authentic.
Creators needed to have more control of their work and revenue through
their own economic community. This is the idea behind Web3 ... or at least
part of it.
There’s no standard definition of Web3, which makes it about as clear as
mud. I prefer to look at it in this simplified way (because I am a simplified
person): The major force driving Web3 is decentralization, which means that
people, not companies, will theoretically have more control of their data,
money, and destiny through their own economic communities.
When you cut through the complex Web3 jargon, you have technology
that enables belonging and community in creative new ways. Let’s get more
specific and examine four aspects of Web3:

NFTs
Digital wallets
Tokenized economies
Metaverse

This chapter is a mere capsule launching into a vast new universe, but
you’ll catch a glimpse of what’s possible!

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

If you have any awareness of NFTs, you might think of goony pieces of art
selling (or not selling!) for millions of dollars.
NFTs are much more than that. Put simply, an NFT is a digital contract —
and sometimes a promise to a community — backed by the certainty of a
blockchain. To preserve a reasonable length to this book, I won’t discuss or
debate the blockchain. Let’s just say that an NFT at its best is a contract with
authentication, which serves as proof of ownership and certainty.
Physical money and cryptocurrencies are “fungible,” meaning they can be
traded or exchanged for one another. They’re also equal in value — one
dollar is always worth one dollar; one Bitcoin is always equal to another
Bitcoin.
NFTs are different. An NFT is non-fungible (NFT = non-fungible token).
Each has a digital signature that makes it impossible for NFTs to be
exchanged for one another, like other contracts you might be familiar with.
But that doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable. Think about what you could
do with forever contracts and the promises of an NFT within a community.
Somebody who owns an NFT might unlock special rights, exclusive access,
special content, entry to events, or a party invitation. It could have value as a
status symbol, signifying a person is the first to be part of the community, the
first to cross a milestone, a member of a special project, or an attendee at a
meet-up. An NFT can grant rights to a collaborative project and guarantee
future earnings of a co-created product.
An NFT can possess sentimental and emotional value — like digital art, a
collectible, or a video clip. Authors have offered parts of their books as
NFTs. The case study at the end of this chapter shows how NFTs can be the
very reason a community draws together in the first place.
It gets even cooler. You can always modify the contract to make it better
in the future. Let’s say somebody in your community is a founding member.
You issue an NFT with this promise: If you own this NFT, you can be a
member of my paid community for a year. To create excitement and loyalty
in your community, you later change the contract to grant free membership to
your first loyal fans forever. And later, as the community grows, you change
it again to reward your best fans with an annual party with other NFT-holding
friends.
I don’t want to go down too many rabbit holes here, but some NFTs even
multiply to have “baby NFTs” that reward you with new and exclusive rights
the longer you hold them. Can you imagine owning one that spawns Baby
Mark Schaefer NFTs? Adorable, yet nightmarish.
The point is, no matter what hype you read about NFTs, this is a
legitimate opportunity for community.
Consider how you could use NFTs to:

Create insane new value in your community

Have more fun
Share profits on co-created projects
Become more exclusive and enhance status
Grow the community
Build friendships and collaborations
Make your community unmissable
 In Chapter 9, I write about the implied social contract of community. With
NFTs, a community can become a real contract. Unless an NFT has a
timestamp “expiration date,” it lives forever. “This is something companies
have never addressed before,” said Mathew Sweezey, a co-founder of the
Salesforce Web3 Studio. “An NFT is infinite. You have to support it forever.
If you create an NFT project, you need a long-term vision and commitment.”
“Too many companies think NFTs will result in a quick and direct
financial gain,” he said. “That’s a horrible strategy, and it’s not going to
happen in a community. Community isn’t new. But NFTs can enable a new
type of community where customers are collaborating, co-creating, and
connecting in a very exciting way. It’s the evolution of loyalty. It creates a
living brand for your truest fans. It allows your customers to help determine
what they want the brand to be. NFTs aren’t just a new product line, they’re a
new type of relationship with your customer.”

Digital wallets

NFTs and other Web3 assets live in digital wallets, which can be a new
access point for communities.
Mathew Sweezey explained: “In the Web2 world, a person averages 10
different identifiers. You have IDs which access social media accounts,
logins for your cell phone, several email addresses, etc. By associating
information with these IDs, marketers can collect details about you that help
target their advertising.
“In Web3, we add one more unique identifier, which is the digital wallet
ID. In Web2, we might do content marketing to earn your email address and
market to you. But in Web3, there’s no email the brand is after, they’ll need
access to your wallet ID for information. Your wallet ID can contain public
data that is stored on a blockchain (like NFTs), and data about your purchases
such as price, time of purchase, and frequency. There will also be personal
information stored in your wallet like your name, address, preferences, and
social graph.
“For consumers this is a dream come true. Think about how often you
have to fill in information, and how hard it is to keep all of that information
up to date. In Web3, all you have to do is connect your wallet. Not only is
that information instantly passed along to a brand or community, it’s also a
living link. If you update the data in your wallet, every brand or person with
access to your wallet will instantly have the most accurate information. This
replaces the need for third-party cookies and puts the consumer in control of
their privacy.
“The digital wallet shifts the dynamic between brands and consumers.
Brands will rent access to your wallet data, and to unsubscribe, a consumer
simply disconnects the wallet. Consumers hold the power now, and brands
will be more accountable for how they use the data.”
On Web3, access to your wallet can be the key to providing admission to
your community. It can be a mutual value exchange — wallet and
information access for community access.
An example is Devcon, a community of Web3 developers. Rather than
pitch sponsors for their annual event, they created a decentralized
marketplace. Anybody could be a sponsor. A company could participate and
say, “I’ll provide you this unique value for access to your wallet.” This is a
significant opportunity for sponsors because it’s hypertargeted and avoids the
expense of a trade show booth and travel. Community members benefit
because they can opt-in to valuable utilities like discounts, early access to
software, or an NFT.79 All they have to do is claim it.

Tokenized economies

Another Web3 innovation is a community that is driven, or enhanced, by

crypto-backed tokens. In a way, this is like a company selling stock to
investors who want to share in its future success. Token ownership can
represent a stake in a person, a body of work, or a community.
Web3 creators start this process by creating a secure, blockchain-backed
token (this can be an NFT or a crypto-backed fungible currency). The token
can attract an audience of fans/owners interested in the creator. Token owners
can benefit in three ways:

Financial gain: Tokens in limited supply can increase in value when

they are in demand and supply becomes scarce. Tokens backed by
crypto can eventually be exchanged for money.
Exclusive commerce: Many creators offer art, music, crafts, and
services that can only be acquired by their tokens.
 Emotional reward: Fans may buy tokens simply to support a creator
because they love them or believe in their work.

In any case, the fans/owners have a stake in helping that creator succeed
and kickstart a virtuous cycle of content creation, community growth, and,
possibly, monetization. Everyone benefits from this tribal network effect as
the creator becomes more well-known or successful. Here’s an example from
Li Jin of the Means of Creation blog:80
When musician Daniel Allan made his album Overstimulated in 2021, he
could have done what a lot of internet creators do: spend months or even
years creating and releasing his content in the hope of eventually building a
big enough fanbase to fund his work full-time. Or, he could have shopped his
work around to traditional music labels, hoping one of them would bestow on
him that rarest of prizes — a record deal.
Instead, Daniel chose a different path: He crowdfunded his new album
through a token sale and raised $142,000 from 87 backers. In return for their
investment, token holders owned a 50 percent stake in the artist share of the
profits — and a direct line to Daniel himself. “For the first time, I owned all
of the music that I was putting out and people were assigning an actual value
to my art,” he said.
Web3-native creators like Daniel represent the vanguard of a new model
for the creator economy.
Tokens represent a powerful new tool for creators to bootstrap audiences
and capital. Instead of creating content for free with the hopes of gradually
growing an audience and monetizing it, creators can monetize and build an
audience upfront through tokens — and then use that money and that
following to produce more content and grow their business.
Web3 inverts the traditional online content creation model. It’s a
paradigm shift that will have significant implications for how creator work
gets done, how followers relate to the work of creators, and how the broader
creator ecosystem functions.
Like individual creators, an organization or company can also create a
tokenized economy. In some cases, this is reinventing loyalty programs. Even
municipalities have issued tokens to create a private economy that rewards
spending with local businesses. Benefits from a large-scale business
application might include:
 Identifying your best customers or fans
Rewarding customers for participating in activities that benefit your
business
Token-gating premium content and events
An economic basis for collaborative activities
A “tipping” system among members of the community
Using token ownership as a way to achieve premium levels in a loyalty
program
Goods and services only accessible through tokens

A tokenized economy helps create a bidirectional customer relationship.

When people in a community do generous things to support a company, it
can easily reward them with tokens as a thank you. This exchange reinforces
the emotional bond, and isn’t that what great marketing is all about?

The metaverse

Not long ago, I was at a hotel restaurant and noticed that a young man sitting
by himself at the end of the bar was attracting a lot of attention. He was
wearing an Oculus headset, talking to people in a virtual world streaming
through his device.
Although this merging of real and virtual spaces seems strange, it will
certainly become more common as the use cases for this immersive virtual
world flourish.
Billions of dollars are pouring into metaverse investments because of the
obvious potential for online commerce, but don’t ignore the enormous
opportunity for community and connection, too. For many, the metaverse will
be their preferred place to gather.
The metaverse is an immersive virtual world where people play, work,
shop, and interact with others — all from the comfort of their couches in the
physical world. It’s usually accessed through a virtual reality headset, but it’s
possible to enjoy it as a two-dimensional experience on a computer as well.
The metaverse brings together all the Internet services and platforms
you’re already familiar with — social media, eCommerce, video games, and,
of course communities — through a unified interface. Instead of logging into
those apps individually, you’d log into just one — the metaverse — and
access them all from there. Some of its most fervent believers claim it will
replace the Internet entirely.
Digital natives are rapidly adopting the metaverse. A friend of mine was
initially alarmed when his teen spent many hours each day playing the
immersive game Fortnite with his friends. But then he watched them
lounging in his basement playing, laughing, and working together to win the
game. He realized that this was their social network.
Earlier in the book I describe the negative effects of excessive screen time,
but in moderation, there are also healthy benefits of routinely connecting with
friends online. As long as we are mindful users, time online might contribute
to social well-being and positive mental health.81 The metaverse is like
stepping into a relaxing new world.
There are also specific community benefits to the metaverse. My friend
Mitch Jackson is an Orange County, California, lawyer. He and his son
Garrett are also entrepreneurs with an active metaverse community. They
point to these advantages:

Intimate connection: “Your community might not remember

everything discussed in a meeting,” Mitch said, “but they’ll always
remember how we make them feel with a unique metaverse
experience. There’s something very intimate about lifelike avatars and
metaverse interactions in unique and beautiful digital spaces. Nothing
else in the digital world comes close to duplicating this feeling and
connection.”
Team-building: “The metaverse can connect a far-flung community in
a fun way through shared virtual games, events, and experiences. In
addition to traditional offices and conference rooms, many metaverse
spaces are built in exciting virtual cities, rainforests, and beach
settings, all offering opportunities for new experiences, fun, and
exploration.”
Integrated digital world: “An advantage to metaverse meet-ups is the
variety of interactive digital media you can pull into the space,” Mitch
said. “We can let people ‘hold’ and interact with 3-D objects, step into
new worlds, or have them sit in a beautiful theater to watch a
presentation. We can manipulate video and images into interactive
experiences that often allow us to surpass what we can do in the real
world. The metaverse will reimagine eCommerce, retailing, books,
 movie streaming, and more. Haptic devices will enable a capability to
touch, and there are even developments that could allow us to smell
things virtually.”
Accessibility and inclusivity: “Anyone with an Internet connection can
be part of our community in the metaverse. People speaking different
languages aren’t a challenge with instantaneous audio-to-chat
translations. Avatars allow us to create first impressions we feel
comfortable with. They also allow everyone to be an equal part of our
community. One of our clients, Matt Hendrick, is an artist who paints
by holding the brush in his mouth. He suffered a spinal injury decades
ago and cannot use his arms, hands, and legs. When his virtual art
gallery opened, Matt, via his avatar, walked us through the metaverse
venue while sharing his work and story. You could hear the emotion in
his voice when he said, ‘I’m so excited to be able to walk you through
my gallery.’”

Moving from the internet to the metaverse will be like the days when we
moved from radio to television. It’s a colorful new world filled with potential
for community, belonging, and meaningful shared experiences.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Technically, AI — a computer simulation of human intelligence — isn’t

considered Web3, but this technology provides exceptional marketing
opportunities for the largest and most complex communities.
There are AI systems emerging to help overwhelmed community
managers sift through conversations and efficiently add value, encourage
engagement, enable personalization, and nurture new users. By taking over
the most monotonous tasks of the community manager, AI allows companies
to scale communities without adding significant cost.
But AI truly shines when it’s applied to the rapid discovery of insights.
“Communities enable conversations, centered around topics, which point
to important keywords,” said Dr. Karine Abbou, CEO of the French Content
Marketing Académie. “That’s pure gold. Collecting and sorting this complex
data set with the help of AI can inform your entire content marketing
strategy, revolutionize your approach to SEO, and help you detect emerging
trends much faster than your competition.”
AI connects your marketing, sales, and leadership teams to real-time
trends and data. This can be used to suggest product changes, define
consumer patterns, automate strategies, and even test them quickly to outpace
competitors.
All these innovations will push the boundaries of community in
extraordinary new directions. But there’s another megatrend that will also
have a profound impact on communities and marketing. In Chapter 12, you’ll
discover why some of the youngest customers are hiding from us.

CASE STUDY
Web3 and the Battle Bunnies

Summary: An artist dreamed of creating a Disney-esque fantasy world.

Finally, an NFT-based community made it possible.
This chapter explains how exciting technologies and platforms enable
business communities in remarkable new ways. I thought it would be fun to
feature a case study about a fast-growing community that can only exist
because of NFTs. Specifically, an NFT art community that gathers around
something like this:
 This is the Battle Bunnies Universe. A close community of storytellers,
creators, and art lovers are working to bring this menagerie of cartoon
animals to life in games, books ... and perhaps even a theme park.
The Bunny Sorcerers, Vikings, and Spartans are the mastermind of Frank
La Natra, a renowned artist, character designer, and tattoo industry rock star.
Frank had been imagining character-filled worlds since he was a child. He
went to animation school to make his dream come true but depended on his
tattoo artistry to pay the bills. His career took off, but Frank always felt the
pull of the creatures in his imagination.
Frank’s Disney-quality art attracted the attention of Jon Briggs, founder of
Food Fight Studios. Jon bought several pieces for his children’s bedrooms
and became a collector of Frank’s art.
Eight years later, Jon had a chance to meet his hero and suggested a
collaborative animation project based on Frank’s universe of characters.
“We had a very good pitch deck,” Jon said. “There was a lot of interest
from a number of studios because Frank’s style is so unique. It takes people
back to this nostalgic Disney era and the shows we watched as kids. But the
further we went down this path, the more we realized we were going to lose
control of the project with every step forward. We realized that if we went
down a traditional studio route, the project was going to be far from what we
envisioned. So we abandoned the project.
“Three years later, I was studying the strategy behind NFTs,” he said.
“They are a big part of the future of art and animation — one of the most
significant opportunities I’ve ever been a part of. And the key to this is
community-building.
“I had been immersed in this for about a year when I came across an
Instagram post that said Frank was dropping a new collection of art. I
messaged him and I told him I thought that NFTs were our answer. We could
move ahead with a project and have total control of the art. And I thought it
would be a lot of fun!
“We wanted to flip the model for creators upside-down. Creators used to
seek out studio executives for validation. Then, after years of development,
the creator’s story might reach consumers. We’re doing it the other way
around. We’re creating first and going straight to our community.”

The Bunnies are born

The vision for Battle Bunnies is unique. By holding a piece of art for a
unique character (as an NFT), the owner has access to a mystical world that
includes:

An ongoing fantasy story created day-by-day through the community

A VR Battle Bunnies World
Handmade, signed, and encapsulated collector cards (the beginning of
a larger collectibles plan)
Livestream art demonstrations from Frank and his wife, Christa
The Rabbit Hole, a role-playing game accessible within the Discord
community that features NFT prizes

Jon and Frank are most proud of a crowd-sourced Battle Bunnies novel.
The Harry Potter-style adventure features characters named for Battle
Bunnies NFT owners. The community even held contests to name the book’s
cities, castles, and swamps.

Come for the games, stay for the people

The founders knew their new community had to be based on transparency
and trust. Some early NFT communities were plagued by poor planning,
unrealistic promises, and “rug pulls” — founders simply shut down and left
with the community’s money.
Because both creators already had fan bases, they had something to build
on. They promised their fans transparency, uncompromising quality, and a
commitment to the long-term. This was demonstrated by their accessibility
and personal involvement in the community.
“My wife, Christa, and I spend all day online with our community,” Frank
said. “We play games, we chat, we create things. It’s all a collaboration. I
draw a few pictures and tell some stories, but at the end of the day, we’re all
just conduits for something our community is making of its own volition.”
“The art is what got me to pay attention, and it was really neat to be able
to hang out in Discord with the artists as they created it,” said Bunnies fanatic
C.O. Frost. “But then we all get talking and find out we love the same video
games. So now we have game nights together, too!”
The honesty and direct connection from the founders paid off. Within a
few weeks of their launch, hundreds of people poured into their Discord
community. More than 2,000 people followed their progress on Twitter. The
initial mint of the first 300 Battle Bunny NFTs sold out in less than two days
and raised $200,000.
Frank’s lifelong dream was to create a massive franchise like Star Wars,
but he never had the funding, connections, or team to go beyond the ideas in
his head. Through an NFT-based strategy, he raised hundreds of thousands of
dollars, built a team of collaborators, and published his first novel within
eight months because a community rallied around his vision.
“This is absolutely the fastest-growing community of friends I have ever
seen,” Jon said. “People are engaged in all kinds of fun and creative
collaborations. It’s powerful. I’ve seen people spend 15 hours a day engaging
with their friends, creating new projects, and playing games. I popped in one
day and a woman from Singapore was hosting a karaoke contest! We’ve had
live concerts streaming in our space.
“There have also been unbelievable acts of kindness and generosity. One
community member couldn’t afford an NFT to get started and a guy bought
her one. This has happened dozens of times. People come into the community
for the art and the games, but they stay for the people.”
The creative team sees their first community-created game and novel as
merely the beginning of a massive franchise. They envision more Battle
Bunnies books, a feature-length cartoon, toys, and Christa’s ultimate dream
of a character-filled theme park.
Frank has retired from the tattoo business to finally create his fanciful
character art full-time. Who knows? Maybe his Battle Bunnies will be
coming to a theater near you soon!
 CHAPTER 12
The Secret Communities

No discussion about the future would be complete without acknowledging

the sociological changes creating new — and at times secretive —
communities. Yes, the tech giants are driving obvious changes like the
metaverse, but young people are also creating important changes to the
marketing landscape as they seek safe, private, and authentic places to belong
away from the mainstream. In many cases, away from everything.
My friend Sara Wilson, a writer, consultant, and former executive at
Facebook and Instagram, studies the microtrends driving young consumers
into the nooks and crannies of the web. Sara dubs these places “digital
campfires” — closed and often more interactive online spaces — where our
customers are hidden from measurement, or even detection.
“Research shows that young people crave a respite from the throngs of
people on social platforms — throngs that now can include their parents,” she
said. “They’re hiding out in their online bunkers, connecting only to their
friends — or at least to people who share their niche interests — in more
private online spaces.”
Sara’s research identified three types of digital campfires: private
messaging, micro-community, and shared experience.

Private messaging campfires

Nearly two-thirds of people under age 30 prefer to talk in private message

threads like Messenger and WhatsApp where they can share more openly.
For the most part, brands aren’t invited into these private chats. Some have
responded by adapting similar technologies, like texting, to mimic the
intimacy of personal conversations with friends.
Although some technological solutions are emerging, this is the hardest
campfire community for marketers to access.
Micro-community campfires

Micro-community campfires are private tribes that live on platforms, like

Facebook Groups, Slack, and Discord. These campfires are not indexed by
Google or advertised on the platforms themselves, so they’re difficult or
impossible to find by traditional means.
Brands can tap into existing micro-community campfires by partnering
with influencers, or they can spark their own campfires from scratch.
One example is the soft drink Sprite, which spearheaded a campaign for
the Latin American market called “You Are Not Alone.” The company used
search data from Google to determine personal pain points among its young
customers and then set up Reddit forums, each helmed by an influencer who
had personal experience with a current, relevant issue.

Shared experience campfires

Perhaps the best example of this type is Fortnite, a multiplayer metaverse
game with more than 350 million users. I am not one of them. Every time I
play, I die right away. What’s the point?
Nevertheless, I could argue that Fortnite is the world’s largest social
network. Half of the teens on Fortnite say it’s the best way to keep up with
friends. It’s sticky, too — 64 percent of Fortnite players spend more than five
hours per week on the game.
Fortnite is entertainment, but it’s also a catalyst for a shared community
experience. Members can literally belong to the brand by dressing up as their
favorite sports heroes and Marvel characters. Like other successful
communities, Fortnite reinforces emotional bonds through live events that
feature cosplay, dance competitions, and concerts.
Twitch is another source of massive new community growth. This is
where Fortnite failures like me can go to watch talented people play the game
without dying. It’s highly interactive, with game player commentary, chat,
and even paid channels from the most popular stars.
Twitch has also pushed into nongaming categories like music and sports.
It stands alone in the dedication of its community members, who spend an
average of 90 minutes a day there. “Marketers can zero in on the right shared
experience campfires by focusing on community and cultural relevance,”
Sara said. Brands like the NFL, Marvel, and Nike have done just that,
leveraging Fortnite to reach their fan communities by selling skins (stylized
weapons and outfits for players’ in-game avatars), creating branded mash-up
game modes, and offering limited-edition product drops inside the game.

Implications for a community-based business

These online community niches present big challenges for marketers.

“At this stage, marketers just need to know what’s happening,” Sara said,
“and the implications for reaching the communities of potential consumers
who reside in these campfires. Much of the time, brands have stepped away
from knowing and understanding their audiences. How many brand leaders
are hanging out on Discord or Telegram? Do they know the new ‘language’
people are using there? It’s a time to be humble and start with research
because you’ll probably find some major surprises out there.”
“A huge part of the marketing future will be occurring in these campfire
communities,” she said. “Culture is being created there. Movements are being
created there. Brand communities are rising in the most unexpected places.
Perhaps it’s time to cut through the organizational layers and turn market
research over to the youngest people you can find. They know how to
navigate these spaces.”
The lesson is clear for marketers: Don’t assume what worked in the past
will work in the future.
“Traditional social listening platforms are deeply flawed,” Sara said,
“because they don’t even touch these new online spaces where significant
communities are forming. As a result, brands are losing sight of their
audiences.”

The campfire playbook

Over time, public community forums like Facebook will be less important as
more people migrate to these hidden community spaces. Marketers will need
to reimagine their approach to be relevant in this environment, especially
since brand trust through online communities is highest among those age 18-
24.82 Considerations should include:
1. Earning credibility
Building trusting relationships with consumers is the entry point for
community connection, especially with a younger audience. Sara suggests a
“five C” approach:83

Caring for community members: Offering campfire perks, such as

special gifts, virtual badges, and credits
Collaboration: Providing users with opportunities for co-creation
Customization: Offering customized campfire products, services, and
experiences
Content moderation: Enforcing rules for engagement and/or appointing
live moderators
Consistency: Continually acknowledging and rewarding participants

2. Creating a dedicated effort

These niche spaces will require culturally-specific teams, programs, and
content.
To connect to a younger audience, Absolut Vodka created a specific
project aimed at these campfire niches. To increase engagement and solidify
relationships with the gaming community, Absolut collaborated with Twitch
streamers to run competitions on their channels. Those competitions were
promoted on the Twitch home page to further the campaign’s reach. Twitch
worked with the brand to assure that the alcohol product promotions were
appropriate and not shown to audiences younger than 18 years of age.
Tapping into influencer talent and creating original, Twitch-specific
content paid off. The campaign generated 4 million total impressions and 1.1
million unique user visits.84

3. Narrowing the focus

“A digital campfire is not meant to replace a social presence but rather
complement it,” Sara said. “After all, your digital campfire and social
strategies serve two different but related purposes. Social media functions as
a digital billboard of sorts — establishing brand awareness, driving product
discovery, and helping place a brand within a broader cultural and market
context. Digital campfires exist to cultivate and build a core community
through ongoing, high-touch interactions.”
 An example would be American food chain Chipotle, which launched a
career fair on Discord that garnered more than 23,000 job applications in one
week. Establishing a Discord presence was outside the norm for most other
employers and cultivated a relevant core community for a specific purpose.

4. Partnering with existing campfires

One of the most effective ways to connect in these closed-off spaces is
partnering with existing platforms to build custom experiences. An emerging
strategy is building attractions inside the campfires.
Inside Roblox, shoe and apparel brand Vans launched Vans World, an
interactive skateboarding environment. It provides access to nearly 50 million
daily users who can hang out, perfect their moves, and design personalized
virtual apparel and gear. To inform future designs, the company collects data
on how the community interacts with its products. Vans World functions as a
sales driver and customer listening channel within another community.

The technological and sociological drivers of community add both

complexity and excitement to the brand marketing challenges ahead. And
that’s what makes marketing endlessly fascinating!
I hope you’ve been inspired by the vast opportunity of community-based
marketing. It’s not quick or easy. But what marketing is these days? Great
marketing isn’t about conformity and following the pack. Success comes
through nonconformity and finding a distinctive, meaningful way to earn the
attention of your customers. It’s time to get off the ad wagon and create
something so bold, so fun, so unmissable that your customers can’t wait to
belong to your brand!
In the final chapter of the book, I share some of my personal community
lessons before sending you on your way.

CASE STUDY
Hamburgers around the campfire

Summary: A fast-food chain raised a ruckus in Discord that appealed to its

late-night fans.
 America loves its hamburgers. From the biggest gourmet sandwich to the
tiniest slider, there are endless variations vying for the attention of the fast-
food consumer.
We have burger chains that are value-oriented, family-friendly, focused on
natural ingredients, and just about every other niche you could dream of. And
then there is one that is just ... a little weird.
Jack in the Box, based in San Diego, is one of the largest fast-food chains
in America. Because it’s open 24 hours, the company’s marketing is
generally directed to young gamers, students, and other night owls who crave
breakfast for dinner or tacos at 2 a.m.
And there’s no better place to appeal to a stay-up-all-night, breakfast-for-
dinner crowd than Comic-Con, the annual celebration of comics-inspired
media.
At massive conferences like Comic-Con, brands typically launch live,
immersive activations — at great expense. Jack in the Box went another route
by announcing an online “after-party” on its “Jack’s Late Night Discord” that
included giveaways, live drawings, and a performance by a superhero-themed
rock band.

For this specific event, the company hired a youth-oriented creative

agency to provide the relevant content and language. The culture-first
approach helped the brand attract 7,664 new late-night fans across the
weekend, generating more than 27,000 messages.85
 Through this unique campfire, the brand connected with digital-first Gen
Z consumers in a culturally relevant way. But it’s not a one-off. Jack in the
Box has created partnerships with youth-oriented influencers, artists, and
creators, and the brand maintains a strong presence on Twitch and Reddit as
well as Discord.86
 CONCLUSION
From Me to We

I began this book with a story of how my teenage life was disrupted by
loneliness and then revived by belonging to a theater community.
Ironically, I still live a rather isolated and lonely existence — largely self-
imposed. Although I have hundreds of thousands of social media followers
and fans, I spend most of my time alone in my office on a hill in the woods
behind my home. Writing. Researching. Helping customers.
I’m privileged to have an amazing audience around the world. A few
years ago, a stranger in California wrote me: “I start my day with you. I get
the first cup of coffee, open my email, and see what you’ve sent me from
your blog that day.”
I’m part of the fabric of this person’s life. What an honor! And yet, I don’t
know her. Never met her, probably never will. Chances are, I don’t know
you, which makes me sad, too, because I never take for granted the time
anyone spends with me and my books. And look at you! You made it to the
end. Accept my gratitude for now, until we meet.
I appreciate my audience. But it’s not a community.
As I peered into the last third of my life, I decided I didn’t want to be so
alone anymore.
I wanted to take a shot at building a community of my own.

The first communities, the first failures

When it comes to creating community, I’ve been a failure.

On several occasions, I tried to lead Facebook Groups or a LinkedIn
Group, but in the end, nothing happened unless I drove the conversation. It
wasn’t a community. It was a cult of personality. People were there for me,
not each other. There was no unifying purpose.
I tried gathering people at live events. For three years, I hosted my own
national conference called Social Slam. In the third year of the event, 700
people attended from 28 states and 12 countries. It was a wonderful
achievement, but I was miserable. It was incredibly stressful. This wasn’t a
community; it was a mob who gathered and left. At the end of each
conference, I was exhausted and felt like I really didn’t get to see anybody.
I ended it.
When I researched and wrote Marketing Rebellion, I relearned the value
of gathering people together and became determined to take another try at
community. But it had to be radically different. It had to be small and
connected, like a family reunion — without the drama and drunks.
About 30 people seemed like the right number. So I founded a marketing
retreat called The Uprising (every marketing rebellion starts with an uprising,
right?). We gathered at a forest lodge near Knoxville, TN, for three days to
talk about the future of marketing ... and something magical happened.
We wrapped up the event with a private bluegrass concert in the country.
When we returned to the lodge, my friend Jeff held me by my shoulders,
looked me in the eyes and said, “This time together was perfect.”
Nobody wanted to leave. We didn’t want the connections to end. Like
many of the case studies in this book, the beginning of community started
with a wisp of momentum. A gathering that became something more. Could I
fan the flames of The Uprising and turn this into a real community?
Yes, I could.
But the world had another plan.

Community disrupted

Based on the success of the first retreat, I immediately planned more Uprising
events.
Then the pandemic hit.
Everything in the world seemed to stop, and gathering for a live event was
impossible in the grip of that paralyzing fear.
As business moved online, I was encouraged by The Uprising friends to
keep the momentum going and create a virtual event. Nothing could replace
the wonderful food, walks in the woods, and side conversations of the live
experience, but it could at least keep us connected. The Uprising Online was
born.
 This event was a great success because it helped us stay connected and
build our friendships despite the setbacks. Because it was online, I was able
to expand the event to include many international participants who couldn’t
make the long trip to attend the live event in America.
As the “membership” grew through more events, I formed a Facebook
Group that (once again!) bombed. The Uprising attendees were
accomplished, busy people. They didn’t have time to chitchat in a Facebook
Group. We waved at each other now and then, but nothing consequential
happened. It was a cult of personality all over again, which is exactly the
opposite of what I wanted in community. That’s just another way to be
lonely.
My group had an emotional bond and a unifying purpose (learning about
the future of marketing), but we didn’t have a shared activity to hold our
attention from week to week and keep us connected.
And then the activity came to us.
In 2021, I launched a crypto-backed creator token called $RISE (as in,
let’s RISE above the noise). I had no idea what I was doing, but that has
never stopped me. My career has literally been a series of experiments, and I
never know what I’m doing, so I was in familiar territory!
But this was different from my other experiments in one important way:
With RISE, I knew exactly what I wanted the outcome to be — a community.
I thought it might be my best chance, maybe even my last chance, and I knew
that to write this book, I had to learn the lessons of community firsthand, in a
trial by fire.
And, boy, was there a lot of fire.

The storm cloud

Launching the creator coin provided an important advantage that had been
missing in my other attempts at community: a unifying purpose and a reason
to stay connected on a continuous basis. I gave away coins to The Uprising
alumni and many of my most passionate fans. Everyone seemed fascinated
by this crazy Web3 experiment and wanted to learn along with me.
At first, I held things together through email updates. I passed along the
lessons I was learning and created activities like Zoom calls where we could
talk and interact. But we needed a permanent place to meet.
 The community voted and was split between Slack and Discord. I ended
up choosing the quirky Discord platform, a go-to meeting place for gamers,
when one member said, “We’re learning about Web3 — we should learn
about this, too!” That seemed consistent with the purpose of the community.
I laid down the ground rules — the beginning of our culture. All were
welcome. Toxicity (a hallmark of other Discord communities) would not be
tolerated. When a member disrespected another member in the first few
weeks, I deleted the comment and gently scolded the offender. I was
determined that this would be a safe place for everyone. I created chat rooms
for writing projects, the future of marketing, and many other topics. Soon,
they were filled with vibrant conversations. We were all learning something
new every day.
I offered premium content and services that could be purchased with the
coin, but that became secondary to the incredible community that was
forming. The RISERS were becoming friends, collaborating, and
volunteering for roles to help me. I added to conversations but was not
necessarily leading them. The community was connecting on its own,
sharing, learning, even debating ... politely of course! We had momentum.
After six months, about 250 people were on the site, and 15 percent of
them were active at least once a week, a very respectable rate of engagement.
But there was a dark cloud over it all.
Some of the people who acquired $RISE coins had no interest in
community. Speculators — strangers to me — swooped in to buy thousands
of dollars of the inexpensive tokens when the coin launched. If the $RISE
coins went up by even a few cents, the investors could sell and make a quick
profit. My crypto-backed coin traded back and forth like a commodity. The
community was being jerked around by strangers. This was not what I signed
up for.
In the spring of 2022, a depressing combination of war in Europe,
inflation, and economic uncertainty set off what was called a crypto winter.
Bitcoin shed 80 percent of its value in a matter of weeks. Every crypto
currency sank to historic lows.
As crypto started its meltdown, my largest “investor” started a panic sale,
and within 48 hours, a mind-blowing 350,000 $RISE tokens had been sold
off. By comparison, the largest fire sale I knew of in any other creator
community up to that point had been 8,000 coins.
Although I had given away thousands of dollars of coins, many of my
friends and fans had also invested their own money. Now, any prospect for
financial gain in the $RISE community seemed ruined for many months,
perhaps years. The meltdown looked like this:

Although this was out of my control, I sent an email to the community

titled “The Cataclysm Edition” to explain the situation. I felt terrible. Even
though we were victims of a global collapse, I felt responsible for the weight
of the concern in the community at that moment. My message was: This is
bad, but I am here. I’m not going anywhere.
I was speaking at a conference in Austin, and after my speech, I went
outside to sit by the hotel pool for an hour, listen to music, and try to relax in
the middle of the stress and chaos.
And then something happened that I will never forget.
When I got back to my room, I had more than 150 email responses from
my community. They were encouraging me:

“I’m NOT SELLING. I’m here for you.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m still here. We’re all still here.”
“If I could, I’d look every other coin holder in the eye and say, ‘Let’s
lock arms and get through this!’”
“You haven’t let anyone down, and your fans, and I count myself as
one, are here because we believe in Mark Schaefer. We’re coming
back.”

Todd Smith, a professional musician, even sent me a song he recorded to

encourage me. I had tears in my eyes as I read message after message of
support. It was beyond support. It was love.
 For the first time in my professional career, I felt this wasn’t just “me” —
a creator alone in the world posting content every week to an audience of
strangers.
It was a “we.” I had a community.
When the dust settled, out of more than 1,200 people holding the coin,
only eight people had sold in the panic.
This crisis brought us together. I was so moved by the support that I
issued a commemorative NFT to all who went through the meltdown
together.
The value of being part of the community had transcended any financial
value of the token.

The human machine

A key part of my community’s success are activities that keep people

engaged, collaborating, and building relationships, including:

Parties and learning activities in the metaverse

Collaborating on a book, podcast, and other content
Exclusive educational webinars
Community Zoom meetings
Live meet-ups around the world

Although I have had a hand in some of this and I certainly help influence
the community “culture,” most of the momentum is driven by others. These
events also provide an opportunity for all-important personal recognition and
status.
At this point, our community is a friend-driven machine moving toward
bigger opportunities and collaborations. It has grown far beyond the creator
coin idea that first brought us together.
What’s next, and what’s in it for me?
Our community is a safe and nurturing place to learn about the future of
marketing. And since marketing is changing in so many unexpected ways,
our opportunities for experimentation and growth are endless. I don’t have a
specific vision or endpoint in mind because the potential is only limited by
the cumulative power of the people in the community. I just have to let the
community lead us in exciting new directions.
I’ve never had a strategy to directly monetize the community. Indirectly,
members have hired me for consulting, teaching, and speaking. But that’s not
the most important thing, or why the community exists.
On most days, I check in every hour or so to see what juicy new ideas are
circulating in the RISE community. These are my friends. They are
challenging me, teaching me, pulling me in new directions. As a curious
person, I can’t think of anything more fun or energizing.
I still spend most of my time in my office in the woods, on the hill, but
I’m no longer alone. I belong to a community.

A final thought

Not long ago, I interviewed the famed author of In Search of Excellence,

Tom Peters. Tom has been one of the most influential business writers and
strategists for more than 40 years, and my podcast recording was near the end
of his retirement tour. I asked him, “What would be your final, most
important advice for the thousands of marketing professionals listening to
this podcast?”
He paused for a moment and said, “When you come home at night, are
you proud of what you did that day? Are you proud to tell your family about
what you are doing in your marketing job?”
I thought that was such unexpected and poignant advice. His words were
always in my mind as I wrote this book because committing our careers to a
purpose-driven brand community is certainly something we could be proud
of every day. Yes, community-based marketing can help our companies and
perhaps even inspire our customers. But community is also a way to make us
proud of our life as marketers. Wouldn’t it be an amazing legacy to create the
“most belonging” company in the world?
This ends our time together, but it might be the beginning of our
friendship. If you want to know more about my community and perhaps
become active there, please visit www.businessesGROW.com/belonging for
more information. The community is free, and all are welcome.
If you appreciated my work on this book, please tell a friend.
Thank you for being here. Now, go grow your community.
 KEEP LEARNING

Belonging to the Brand is an overview of the community-based marketing

strategy, but I hope it’s just the beginning of your journey. Here are some
ways to keep connect with me and keep learning.
At www.businessesGROW.com/belonging, I have several useful
resources for you including:

A free study guide perfect for students and teachers.

Links to new articles on community and belonging.
Details on how you can join the RISE learning community.
A free research paper with foundational ideas about the psychology of
community.

If you want to get into detailed tactics of community management, I

highly recommend these excellent books:

The Business of Belonging by David Spinks

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya
Parker
Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World by
Jennie Allen
For the ultimate community geek, this research paper can be found free
online and is a comprehensive summary of decades of psychological
and sociological research on community: Online Brand Communities:
Using the Social Web for Branding and Marketing by Francisco J.
Martínez-López, Rafael Anaya-Sánchez, Rocio Aguilar-Illescas and
Sebastián Molini
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For me, writing a book is like getting another master’s degree. I research,
study, and write on a topic for two years, and I’ve also met many impactful
teachers along the way. This book, my tenth, is built on the research of
dozens of people in psychology, sociology, healthcare, and marketing. It was
my job to simply weave their hard-earned stories into a modern narrative.
In Chapter 3, I wrote about the many benefits of community. One thing I
didn’t name was friendship. Doesn’t really fit in a marketing framework I
suppose! But I could not have written this book without the encouragement
of special RISE community friends who served as beta readers of my early
drafts. For this heroic act of support, I thank:

Frank Prendergast
Giuseppe Fratoni
Samantha Stone
Rebecca Wilson
Zack Seipert
Jonathan Christian
Ruth Hartt
Karine Abbou

My production team includes researcher Mandy Edwards, editor Elizabeth

Rea, editor Evelyn Starr, designer Kelly Exeter, and audio editor Becky
Nieman. Iris Rojas is the lovely voice introducing my audio book.
Dana Malstaff, the Boss Mom hero of Chapter 4 spent many hours with
me teaching me the nuances of her community success. She also graciously
recorded her chapter for the audio version of this book!
When writing a book, I become obsessed and somewhat unpleasant. Every
day, and with every sentence, I picture you (yes, YOU!), and I think, “I
cannot let them down.” I have to deliver something worthy of your time … a
book that is beautiful, bold, and filled with truth and hope.
In this obsessive writing mode, my promise to you thunders in my head
for months. I fall asleep with it, dream of it, and wake up remembering things
I need to do to make the book even better. The patient supporter of my life in
this semi-zombie state is my wife Rebecca. She is more than enduring and
understanding. She enables my vision.
If you made it this far, you are a truly remarkable person. Thank you. I
appreciate you.
All my gifts come from God. My prayer is that this book has glorified
Him in some small way.
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark W. Schaefer is a globally-recognized keynote speaker, college

educator, marketing consultant, and author.
His blog {grow} is one of the top marketing blogs of the world. Mark’s
Marketing Companion podcast has been among the top 1 percent of all
business shows on iTunes for more than a decade.
Mark has worked in global sales, PR, and marketing positions for more
than 30 years and now provides consulting services as Executive Director of
U.S.-based Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He specializes in marketing
training and strategy with clients as diverse as Dell, Johnson & Johnson,
Adidas, and the U.S. Air Force.
He has advanced degrees in marketing and organizational development
and is a faculty member of the graduate studies program at Rutgers
University. A career highlight was studying under Peter Drucker while
earning his MBA.
Mark is among the world’s most recognized marketing authorities and has
been a keynote speaker at many conferences around the world including The
American Bar Association, National Economic Development Association, the
Institute for International and European Affairs, and Word of Mouth
Marketing Summit Tokyo.
 You can stay connected with Mark at www.BusinessesGROW.com and
by following his adventures on Instagram and Twitter: @markwschaefer
 NOTES

1 Over 10 years, McKinsey & Company documented a dramatic shift in

consumer behavior, beginning with “The consumer decision journey,” by
David Court, Dave Elzinga, Susan Mulder, and Ole Jørgen Vetvik
(McKinsey Quarterly; June 1, 2009) and then followed up by “Ten years on
the consumer decision journey: Where are we today?” (New at McKinsey
Blog; November 17, 2017).

2 In Marketing Rebellion, I reported that based on thousands of customer

interviews spanning dozens of industries, CEO Adele Revella of Buyer
Persona Institute concluded that there is almost no evidence that marketing
influences a B2B buying decision.

3“105 Online Community Statistics To Know: The Complete List (2022)”;

https://peerboard.com/resources/online-community-statistics

4Cox, Daniel. “Growing Up Lonely: Generation Z.” Institute for Family

Studies. April 6, 2002. https://ifstudies.org/blog/growing-up-lonely-
generation-z.

5Statistics in this section are from “The Blindness of Social Wealth” by

David Brooks. The New York Times. April 16, 2018.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/opinion/facebook-social-wealth.html.

6 Zetlin, Minda. “Millenials are the Loneliest Generation.” Inc.

https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/millennials-loneliness-no-friends-
friendships-baby-boomers-yougov.html.

7 Murthy, Vivek. “Work and the Loneliness Epidemic.” Harvard Business

Review. September 26, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/09/work-and-the-
loneliness-epidemic.
8 Morris, Tom. “Just what’s happening with the metaverse?” GWI Blog. May
3, 2022. https://blog.gwi.com/chart-of-the-week/metaverse-predictions/.

9Holt-Lunstad, Julianne, Timothy B. Smith, Mark Baker, Tyler Harris, and

David Stephenson. “Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for
mortality: a meta-analytic review.” National Library of Medicine Journal 10,
no. 2 (March 2015): 227-37.

10 Holt-Lunstad et al., “Loneliness and social isolation.”

11Twenge, Jean M., Jonathan Haidt, Andrew B. Blake, Cooper McAllister,

Hannah Lemon, and Astrid Le Roy. “Worldwide increases in adolescent
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12 Twenge et al., “Worldwide increases.”

13 Dua, Andre “How Does Gen Z see its Place in the Working World? With
Trepidation.” McKinsey Newsletter October 19, 2022
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growth/future-of-america/how-does-gen-z-see-its-place-in-the-working-
world-with-trepidation

14 Kramer, Stephanie. “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in

single-parent households.” Pew Research Center, December 12, 2019.
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than-children-in-other-countries-to-live-with-just-one-parent/.

15 Cox, Daniel A. “Emerging Trends and Enduring Patterns in American

Family Life.” Survey Center on American Life. February 9, 2022.
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enduring-patterns-in-american-family-life/.

16 Cox, Daniel A. “Emerging Trends.”

17 Richtel, Matt. “‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S.
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18 dcdx. “2022 Gen Z Screen Time Report.” https://dcdx.co/2022-gen-z-

screen-time-report-download.

19 Twenge, Jean M. “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The

Atlantic, September 2017.
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20 Richtel, Matt. “The Mental Health Crisis.”

21 Mineo, Liz. “Good genes are nice, but joy is better.” The Harvard Gazette,
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22 Waldinger, Robert. “What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest
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language=en

23 First Round Capital. “State of Startups 2019.”

https://stateofstartups2019.firstround.com/

24There are dozens of research papers proving the benefits of online

community membership, but a nice summary is provided by Hyun Young
Lee, Doo-Hee Lee, Jong-Ho Lee, and Charles R. Taylor: “Do online brand
communities help build and maintain relationships with consumers? A
network theory approach.” Journal of Brand Management 19 (December
2011): 213-27.

25Ahuja, Kabir, Fiona Hampshire, Alex Harper, Annabel Morgan, and

Jessica Moulton. “A better way to build a brand: The community flywheel.”
McKinsey & Company. September 28, 2002.
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insights/a-better-way-to-build-a-brand-the-community-flywheel.

26Goldin, Kara. “Ashley Sumner: Founder & CEO of Quilt.” The Kara
Goldin Show, September 29, 2021. Podcast. The quotes from Ashley Sumner
come from a YouTube video interview by Kara Goldin published on Nov. 8,
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27Baer, Chris “The Rise of Online Communities” GWI Chart of the Week,
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28 Hall, Tiffany. “The Advertising Industry Has a Problem: People Hate

Ads.” The New York Times, October 28, 2019.
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29 McConnell, Ted. “How blank display ads managed to tot up some

impressive numbers.” Ad Age, July 23, 2012.
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30 Brooker, Katrina. “How cult brands like SoulCycle and Airbnb are actually
kinda cult-like.” Fast Company, October 22, 2019.
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soulcycle-and-airbnb-for-what-they-really-are-cults.

31Talbert, Molly. “The WELL — Where Online Community Began.” Higher

Logic Blog, February 4, 2016. https://www.higherlogic.com/blog/the-well-
where-online-community-began/.

32 Botticello, Casey. “105 Online Community Statistics To Know: The

Complete List (2022).” PeerBoard. Updated January 24, 2002.
https://peerboard.com/resources/online-community-statistics.

33 Bell, Elizabeth. “Reduce Customer Support Costs the Community Way.”

Higher Logic Blog, September 5, 2019.
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community-way/.

34CMX. “2022 Community Industry Report.” https://go.bevy.com/rs/825-

PYC-046/images/cmx-community-industry-report%202022_update.pdf.

35 Trend Hunter. “2022 Trend Report.” https://www.trendhunter.com/.

36 Botticelli, Casey. “105 Online Community Statistics.”

37Fournier, Susan and Lara Lee. “Getting Brand Communities Right.”

Harvard Business Review, April 2009. https://hbr.org/2009/04/getting-brand-
communities-right.

38 Botticelli, Casey. “105 Online Community Statistics.”

39 Ahuja, Kabir, Fiona Hampshire, Alex Harper, Annabel Morgan, and

Jessica Moulton. “A better way to build a brand: The community flywheel.”
McKinsey & Company, September 28, 2002.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-
insights/a-better-way-to-build-a-brand-the-community-flywheel.

40Lee, Hyun Young, Doo-Hee Lee, Jong-Ho Lee, and Charles R. Taylor.
“Do online brand communities help build and maintain relationships with
consumers? A network theory approach.” Journal of Brand Management 19
(December 2011): 213-27.

41
Keller, K. L. “Building Customer-Based Brand Equity.” Marketing
Management 10 (2001): 15-19.

42The Community Roundtable. “The State of Community Management

2020.” https://communityroundtable.com/what-we-do/research/the-state-of-
community-management/the-state-of-community-management-2020/.

43 Botticelli, Casey. “105 Online Community Statistics.”

44 Robinson-Yu, Sarah. “20 Stats About the Benefits of Online Community

Forums.” Higher Logic Blog, February 12, 2020.
https://blog.vanillaforums.com/20-statistics-about-the-benefits-of-online-
communities.

45Wilson, Sara. “The Era of Antisocial Social Media.” Harvard Business

Review, February 5, 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/02/the-era-of-antisocial-
social-media.

46 Cicmil, Jovan. “Community-as-a-Service: A Business Model for the 21st

Century.” Medium, May 13, 2021. https://medium.com/swlh/community-as-
a-service-a-business-model-for-the-21st-century-b7e0612e7095.

47Wilson, Sara. “Where Brands are Reaching Gen Z.” Harvard Business
Review, March 11, 2021. https://hbr.org/2021/03/where-brands-are-reaching-
gen-z.

48Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup

Behavior” in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by S. Worchel and
W. G. Austin. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1986.

49Burnasheva, Regina, Yong Gu Suh, and Katherine Villalobos-Moron.

“Sense of community and social identity effect on brand love: Based on the
online communities of a luxury fashion brands.” Journal of Global Fashion
Marketing 10, no. 1 (January 2019): 50-65.

50 “Why are Lululemon Leggings So Expensive?” Runner’s Athletic Blog.

https://www.runnersathletics.com/blogs/news/why-are-lululemon-leggings-
so-expensive.

51 Hill, Laura. “How Lululemon Uses Ambassadors To Foster Customer

Engagement.” Welltodo, July 3, 2017.
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customer-engagement/.

52Hum, Samuel “4 Tactics Lululemon Uses to Leverage Word-of-Mouth For

Their Brand.” ReferralCandy Blog, June 30, 2015.
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53 Morand, Tatiana. “Why Most Online Communities Are Destined to Fail.”

Influitive Blog, June 9, 2017. https://influitive.com/blog/why-most-online-
communities-are-destined-to-fail/.

54Some of these foundational ideas are based on research found in “Getting

Brand Communities Right” by Susan Fournier and Lara Lee, Harvard
Business Review, April 2009. https://hbr.org/2009/04/getting-brand-
communities-right.

55Burnasheva, Regina, Yong Gu Suh, and Katherine Villalobos-Moron.

“Sense of community and social identity effect on brand love: Based on the
online communities of a luxury fashion brands.” Journal of Global Fashion
Marketing 10, no. 1 (January 2019): 50-65.

56Gruner, Richard L., Christian Homburg, and Bryan A. Lukas. “Firm-

hosted online brand communities and new product success.” Journal of the
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57Edelman,Richard. “Brand Trust; The Gravitational Force of Gen Z.” June

20, 2022. https://www.edelman.com/trust/2022-trust-barometer/special-
report-new-cascade-of-influence/brand-trust-gravitational-force-gen-z

58Kent, Sarah. “Ganni’s Guerrilla Approach to Global Growth.” Business of

Fashion, October 14, 2019.

59 Ho, Hui-Yi and Pan Hung-Yuan. “Use behaviors and website experiences
of Facebook community.” 2010 International Conference on Electronics and
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60 Anderson, Lauren, “Cult brands: How companies build a fanatical fan

base,” Milwaukee Business News, November 25, 2019,
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davidson/.
61 If you want to learn more about developing your own personal brand, I’ll
refer you to my book KNOWN, which provides a detailed road map.

62 Dholakia, Utpal M., Richard P. Bagozzi, and Lisa Klein Pearo. “A social
influence model of consumer participation in network- and small-group-
based virtual communities.” International Journal of Research in Marketing
21, no. 3 (September 2004): 241-63.

63Some of the details for the Twitch story come from Get Together: How to
Build a Community With Your People, by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh,
and Kai Elmer Sotto.

64 Testa, Jessica, “A Pink Parade at the End of the World,” The New York
Times, April 14, 2022,
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65CMX. “2022 Community Industry Report.” https://go.bevy.com/rs/825-

PYC-046/images/cmx-community-industry-report%202022_update.pdf.

66 Keiles, Jamie Lauren. “Even Nobodies Have Fans Now.” The New York
Times Magazine, November 13, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/13/magazine/internet-fandom-
podcast.html.

67Harris, Sam. “Status Games.” Making Sense, August 31, 2022. Podcast.
(Quotes have been edited for format and clarity.)

68Marmot, Michael. “The Whitehall Study.” The Center for Social

Epidemiology. https://unhealthywork.org/classic-studies/the-whitehall-study/.

69 Botticello, Casey. “105 Online Community Statistics To Know: The

Complete List (2022).” PeerBoard, January 24, 2022.
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70Wilson, Sara. “How Spotify Built A Digital Campfire For Its Super-Fans.”
The Digital Campfire Download, October 25, 2022. Podcast.
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71CMX. “2022 Community Industry Report.” https://go.bevy.com/rs/825-

PYC-046/images/cmx-community-industry-report%202022_update.pdf.

72 Botticello, Casey. “105 Online Community Statistics To Know: The

Complete List (2022).” PeerBoard, January 24, 2022.
https://peerboard.com/resources/online-community-statistics.

73 Ahuja, Kabir, Fiona Hampshire, Alex Harper, Annabel Morgan, and

Jessica Moulton. “A better way to build a brand: The community flywheel.”
McKinsey & Company, September 28, 2002.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-
insights/a-better-way-to-build-a-brand-the-community-flywheel.

74Sasmita, J., and N. Mohd Suki. 2015. Young consumers’ insights on brand
equity. International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management 43(3):
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75Zhang, M., and N. Luo. 2016. Understanding relationship benefits from

harmonious brand community on social media. Internet Research 26(4): 809–
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76Scarpi, D. (2010). Does size matter? An examination of small and large

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77 Mahrous, A., and A. Abdelmaaboud. 2017. Antecedents of participation in

online brand communities and their purchasing behavior consequences.
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78 Danziger, Pamela N. “How To Make A Great Loyalty Program Even

Better? Sephora Has The Answer.” Forbes, January 23, 2020.
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retail-loyalty-program-even-better-sephora-has-the-answer/.

79 Schaefer, Mark. “Three significant NFT case studies for marketing.”

Marketing Companion, October 31, 2022. Podcast.
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80Beller, Morgan. “Building A “Community-First” Company.” NfX, October

2021. https://www.nfx.com/post/community-first-company-building. (The
case study originated here and has been slightly edited to make it more
compact.)

81 Roeder, Amy. “Social media use can be positive for mental health and
well-being.” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, January 6, 2020.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/social-media-positive-mental-
health/.

82
Keller, Ed “The 4 Types Of Everyday Influencers That Consumers Trust.”
Marketing Insider, May 09, 2022

83 Wilson, Sara. “Want to Build Intimacy With Customers? Get to Know

Digital Campfires.” MIT Sloan Management Review, November 29, 2021.
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/want-to-build-intimacy-with-customers-
get-to-know-digital-campfires/. (Many of the ideas and examples in this
section come from Sara Wilson’s article.)

84 “It’s in our spirits.” Amazon Ads.

https://advertising.amazon.com/library/case-studies/twitch-absolut.

85 Alessio, Alessandro. “3 Times Brands Used Discord for Branding And To

Engage Communities.” Rock Content, July 4, 2022.
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86 Kelly, Chris. “Why Jack in the Box hosted a Comic-Con afterparty on

Discord.” Marketing Dive, August 3, 2021.
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con-afterparty-on-discord/604357/.