• Position around a niche cultural movement or emerging subculture (i.e. Boiler Room) • Articulate a point of view that makes belonging visible and repeatable (e.g., language, symbols, rituals). I have now seen the USAL camo hat in three American cities.
People advocate for what they helped create. Each of the above brands identifies new products and redefines their target customer from within.
Helping people to rebrand themselves by appealing to what an audience will pause onmember of your community attends multiple events, invites their friends, and becomes a champion for the community and the brand. While lifetime value, K-factor, and NPS scores are technical ways of evaluating this resonance, I also ask what share of sales comes from non-holiday gifting? Gifting is often a symbol of deeper brand affinity and desire to evangelize.
• Encourage peer discovery with benefits: members bring members. Many consumer apps encourage sharing with free subscriptions, credits and platform unlocks. Building a community is challenging, but the magic comes from when the community builds itself by members recruiting each other organically.
What are the benefits? Gifts? Better self or community understanding?• Host “unscalable” small dinners, salons, or retreats for early members. (i.e. USAL activations) • Turn flagship events into identity-driven rituals. (i.e. Bandit “Unsponsored Project”) • Layer physical activations with digital identity proo
The lesson: community requires deeper connection than transactional relationships. Simply putting people in the same space and calling it community doesn’t create the shared purpose, mutual aid, and identity formation that drive true community dynamics.
e lesson: Novelty isn’t community. A viral concept needs to evolve into genuine relationship-building and shared identity creation, or it becomes just a temporary trend. BeReal confused engagement with community
