
What Crypto Marketers Can Learn from Tough Mudder about building Tribes
TL:DR; Community is great. Tribes are better. The crypto projects that win will build passionate tribes of believers. Tough Mudder provides a good playbook for how to get it done.
In the crypto world, we talk a lot about “community.” It’s a critical concept and one that received a lot of attention in the Decentralized Marketing Organization book.
Really, a better concept is that of a “tribe” which Seth Godin first introduced to us 10 years ago.
I was thinking about this recently because I have been reading a book called, appropriately enough, It Takes a Tribe, by Will Dean, the founder of Tough Mudder. I have done two of them (mostly because I wanted to prove the first time wasn’t a fluke). You can read about them here and here.
What Tough Mudder did brilliantly from the outset was to make everything about the tribe.
There’s a pledge and a code of conduct.
There’s a unifying piece of clothing (the headband you get when you finish).
There’s an ethos.
There’s a belief system.
And there’s a culture.
There’s a clear recognition that Tough Mudder isn’t for everyone….and that’s ok.
We’ve talked before about the need for values in a crypto brand, particularly since it’s open-source, there’s no customer lock-in, and it’s forkable.
The idea of tribes is already alive and well within parts of the crypto world. All you need to do is watch Rodolfo Novak and Roger Ver’s tweetstreams to know that.
There’s BTC vs BCH.
There’s BTC vs. ETH
and so on.
That’s fine, but many of them are are kind of Hatfield-McCoy type feuds.
I think you’ll start to see highly differentiated crypto brands emerge that emulate the experience of Tough Mudder-like tribes.
There will be rituals, oaths, and a clear sense of “we’re in this together.”
It’s not about hating the outsider. It’s about appreciating those who want to be insiders.
Very different.
Though not the most well-written book of all time, It Takes a Tribe provides a really good set of directions as to what you can do…in crypto or anywhere else.
