3 things your brand might be able to learn from social activists.
Or: Unlikely inspiration for building better brand loyalty.

“Where were you before this?” We have this conversation frequently at work. Most people talk about their former companies, start-ups they founded, departments and campaigns they worked on or led.
“I was studying activist movements fighting for water and sanitation and housing rights in Mumbai slums,” I say, and then I follow it up with something like: “I’m passionate about getting to the ‘why’ of human behaviour through ethnographic research.”
As if that neatly sums up the complicated transition from working with marginalized squatters to whiteboarding ideas in glass-enclosed towers. The research skills translate, so that’s good enough for most people to believe I’m qualified to do my job, I guess. Same research methods. Same theories and ideas behind methodologies. Observing, interviewing, building trust, understanding power dynamics, etc. etc. I used to try to explain why marginalized communities do stuff; Now I try to deduce consumers’ motivations so we can build products that solve real human needs.
A resident of a Mumbai slum couldn’t be more different from a coveted HENRY (High Earning, Not Rich Yet), delivering high expected CLV (Consumer Lifetime Value) to enterprises through decades of expensive purchases. And yet, what attracts people to social movements fighting marginalization has lessons for building loyalty among the world’s wealthy. People are people. The things that motivate their obsession, sacrifice, and dedication are not as different as you might think.
Did I go to Mumbai to learn from social activists how to engender brand affinity among upper- and middle- class Canadians? Obviously not. But for what it’s worth, here are three things I learned, and how I think they apply in what I do today.
1. Belonging matters more than results.
Slum residents told me about their fight to keep their houses, to get water and toilet blocks for their neighbourhoods. A well-known activist, I’ll call her Asha, united people from various slums throughout Mumbai in a fight for these basic things. Asha’s followers are very committed: they go to protests, stage hunger-strikes, even go to prison for protesting. Some people, like these activists, rise up, organize, and demand access to basic necessities when others — who have the same struggles — don’t. I wanted to understand why. What motivates this extreme loyalty?
Before I really started my research, I assumed that activism gets people access to the basic things they fight for. Surely, I thought, they must go to protests and petition government officials and take on the risk of violence because it’s been proven to work for them. In other words, fighting for better access to resources must get people better access to resources. Their efforts must produce tangible results, I thought.
Super naïve assumption, it turns out. Activists readily admit they aren’t far better off materially than they were before they joined Asha’s movement. There are adhoc, limited ‘wins,’ but on the whole, their position remains as precarious as it was before the movement began over a decade ago. They don’t have more toilets, better sewers, or permanent houses. Some of them are jaded, but a lot of them stay militantly committed to Asha and her movement.
Why are Asha’s followers so committed? Because results aren’t the only thing that inspires loyalty. Asha is a person, but she’s also a brand. She ‘works’ for her followers in a few key ways. Asha’s brand inspires loyalty even when it doesn’t deliver its basic promises.
For North American consumers today, belonging and community are in flux. My grandparents moved from Europe to Canada as refugees on a boat over 50 years ago. The journey took many days, and the adjustment period took years. I’ve moved back and forth between Canada and other continents at least three times in the last few years. It took a day, maximum, each time. And the adjustment period was way shorter because internet, phones, social media, etc. keep me connected to other worlds. Oceans are much smaller for me than for my newly-emigrated grandparents in the 1960s. The side-effect is that we often feel like we’re living in two or more worlds simultaneously, for a long time. I have a lot of friends who have similarly-confused identities when it comes to home and belonging, because moving is so easy and frequent. Primary communities of belonging are changing, too. My grandparents cultivated a community of like-minded Europeans in Canada, people that still make up their social group. It’s not the same for their kids, or their grandkids.
We’re loyal to things that make us feel ‘at home’ even when we’re not exactly sure what that means anymore. It’s about a sense of belonging. We want to think we’re super rational actors who choose to buy stuff and invest in experiences because of logical calculations, because those choices get us the best return, the best results. In reality, I think we choose belonging. And we’ll pay for it — with both our time and our money.
2. We need to be ‘seen’.
Asha recognizes her followers’ plight and fights for them. That’s what her ‘brand’ is known for. There are a lot of agencies working in Mumbai slums — government people, foreign and local humanitarian NGOs, non-profits and charities, other activists, criminal networks. People who live in slums interact with all of these organizations, and usually align themselves with more than one at the same time. Asha’s defining feature is that she sees her followers’ struggle from their perspective, not at an arm’s length. She meets them on their level. She takes the time to drink tea with them. She visits them in their homes, even though her middle-class upbringing means she doesn’t need to do any of these things. She could just start a foundation and never visit. The fact that she does, that she enters their reality, is what makes slum residents loyal to her.
People want empathy. We need to feel understood. A five-minute negative interaction with a poorly-optimized chatbot or an incompetent helpline employee makes a big difference. A kind, empathetic listener representing the brand can make an even bigger difference. Actually implementing the changes that consumers suggest is the best– it says ‘we hear you.’ The day-to-day is where our struggles live. Experiencing that from consumers’ perspectives is indispensable. That’s where I think brand strategy and product design should start: with ‘I see you.’
3. We’re attracted to the larger-than-life, yet accessible.
Asha is called a devi, which means goddess (even though she’d never call herself that). People tell me they pray to her. Asha is also called Tai, or sister. She’s larger-than-life, metaphysical, divine — and totally accessible at the same time. People talk about Asha with reverence, like they want to emulate her but can never achieve her greatness. At the same time, they call her a member of their own family. Asha is something untouchably special and elevated — something more-than-just-human becoming accessible. A goddess you are friends with, who roots for you. There’s something to this in building movements. Make the divine accessible, convince human beings there is something more than mundane here, and you might just win.
Appealing to the parts of us that love unattainable, untouchable heroes pays off. Doing this while at the same time staying humble, appealing to the everyday struggles and banal intimacy that dominates consumers’ lives — that’s even better.
“If you have a body, you’re an athlete,” said Bill Bowerman, co-founder of Nike and designer of the first pair of Nike sneakers. It’s become the accessible slogan for the brand endorsed by professional basketballers, Bella Hadid, and virtually everyone else. The Nike Flyease was designed because Matthew Walzer, a 16-year-old with cerebral palsy, wrote an open letter to Mark Parker, the CEO of Nike. Here’s a picture of him smiling next to LeBron:

I bet you can’t think of a better way to embody ‘larger than life’ and ‘accessible’ at the same time.
Charles Duhigg, in his book Smarter, Faster, Better writes about how innovation is really just taking ideas or concepts from one context and applying them somewhere new. An effective way to jump-start innovation and creativity, he says, is by “taking proven, conventional ideas from other settings and combining them in new ways.” He quotes researcher Brian Uzzi: “A lot of the people we think of as exceptionally creative are essentially creative middlemen…They’ve learned how to transfer knowledge between different industries or groups.”

I can’t overemphasize the importance of not conflating or diminishing the complex social factors surrounding my past context and my current one. It’s something I think about all the time.
There’s nothing similar about the struggles HENRYs have and what slum residents in Mumbai’s marginalized neighbourhoods deal with. Fighting over a good parking spot vs. fighting the municipality to extend the water main to your neighbourhood. Waiting in line for a good table at brunch vs. waiting in line to use the communal toilet block. Totally different struggles. Some of them obviously more real, deserving our true sympathy, the others firmly in ‘first world problems’ territory.
But speaking as a middle(wo)man, it’s possible that building a successful brand is a bit like growing a social movement. That doesn’t mean next time your team is hiring a growth hacker, you should recruit a grassroots activist. But translating her thought process isn’t a bad idea. And, who knows, maybe sometimes it could mean that…
