A Look At Brands That Have Built Successful Communities
Community is the next frontier for brand building and activation.
Marketing has evolved through the years. In the advent of advertising, brands first built their presence through mass media such as newspapers and billboards which offered broad reach. As commerce and services moved online, brands capitalized on data and digital channels to target customers in ever more personalized ways.
Today, brands seek to connect with customers in the communities they participate in. This is partially driven by the cost efficiency and data privacy challenges associated with highly targeted advertising. More importantly, it is also motivated by a desire to connect with audiences in authentic ways that can generate greater emotional resonance.
Exacerbated by the pandemic, the individual is increasingly isolated. Brands that successfully play a catalysing role in fostering belonging amongst their audience have an opportunity to build long-lasting relationships with customers.
While many brands have tried (and failed) at building a community around their own brand, there are certainly some that have succeeded at doing so. In this article, we’ll look at some of these brands that have successfully built communities around themselves — and why they did so well.
Lululemon
Lululemon is a Canadian yoga-inspired athletic apparel retailer founded in 1998. The brand’s popularity can be largely attributed to the rabid support they have inspired amongst their customers.
Lululemon built a community centred around a clear purpose: to inspire individuals to live the sweat life every day. Their community delivers on this goal to make active lifestyles more accessible by offering 3 key value tenets to their members: inspiration via ambassadors, exercise classes and content, and peer-inspired motivation.
Ambassadors
The brand’s social media is synonymous with their ambassadors. These comprise two groups selected from the community: Global Ambassadors who are advocates that lead active lifestyles or have sports-centred careers, and Store Ambassadors who are instructors that conduct classes for members.
These ambassadors share relatable personal facts, content, and stories. The brand specifically curates a diverse profile of ambassadors, to help as wide a range of members as possible find specific figures that they can identify with. By shining a spotlight on these ambassadors, the brand provides real-life examples that other members can look up to and be inspired in their pursuit of personal fitness growth.
Classes and content
The brand empowers their members with exercise guides on their website which can be easily followed. The content is published by both an in-house team and ambassadors.
Across selected physical outlets, members can also gather to participate in free fitness classes which offer an opportunity to meet and bond with likeminded individuals.
The brand offers a paid membership option for members who want to more concertedly pursue a more active lifestyle. The membership entitles them to a wide repository of online classes conducted by ambassadors and experts. It also provides them entry into partner studios where they can join physical classes of their choice.
Peer-inspired motivation
Across their various media channels, Lululemon seeks to actively have members contribute user generated content (UGC), particularly photos and captions. UGC is then repackaged and used in various places to showcase actual customers living out their own versions of an active lifestyle. By actively commenting on these members’ social media posts, the brand also makes these posts discoverable by other members.
This serves to help other members find authentic motivation through people who lead lives that may be like theirs. By providing a constant feedback loop of UGC, the brand inspires self-expression and provides members with a platform to express their personal achievements.
Takeaway: Lululemon’s clear community purpose is consistently expressed through all its spaces: stores, website, and social media. It actively cultivates a network and content that offers members genuine value that aids them in achieving their own personal fitness goals. In so doing, the brand becomes closely intertwined with members’ pursuit and ac
Harley Davidson
Harley Davidson is a great example of how community can significantly drive business performance. In the early 1980s, the brand was facing an existential crisis. Today, its motorcycles are top-of-mind in their automotive category due to a community strategy which revived the brand.
It all began with the Harley-Davidson Owners Group (HOG) that was launched in 1983. The HOG was comprised of smaller local clubs called chapters. Each chapter had a company senior executive and office that was in close contact with the chapter’s leaders. These chapters became a place for bike owners to come together and share new experiences.
Events
Each chapter organized and managed a calendar of events. On a regular basis, owners would gather to go for long rides together. Notably events also focused on charity work which gave members the opportunity to give back to their society together.
These events cemented love of the brand among owners as they built a close camaraderie amongst each other. Swarms of Harley owners riding together became a highly recognisable sight to outsiders and drove advocacy for the brand.
The HOG proved popular with membership numbering close to 100,000 by the end of the 1980s. In the 1990s, the first European chapters were created.
Magazines
One of the perks of membership was a quarterly HOG magazine. The magazine was crafted as an experience itself. It featured motorcycle photos, from roads and landscapes to early looks at the latest Harley Davidson models.
Each issue would showcase member stories that documented memorable biking adventures from short day-trips to once in a lifetime journeys. It would also include selected profiles of members from various chapters.
The magazines were a way to continuously feed rich storytelling that helped members feel more affinity for the brand and other members. The content would also spark desire and aspiration among members to create their own personal experience on their Harley. These magazines succeeded in creating such strong resonance that members treated them as collectibles.
Physical identifiers
Entry into the HOG came with a physical membership card that allowed them to participate in any HOG events. In addition, riders were given a patch that they could sew onto their jackets.
These patches became a hallmark of the community. Members could be easily identified by their biker jackets which would prominently display the Harley patch. It became a way for members to recognize fellow riders regardless of where they were, with many instances of members helping each other out on the road.
Takeaway: Harley Davidson’s community focuses on maximizing the joy of riding. Events serve a crucial role in fostering a sense of belonging. Content and identifiers further entrench the community into members’ own personal identity, which drives them back to participate in further events.
Sephora
Sephora is a retailer that stocks beauty and skincare products from over 300 brands. They have become a household name on the back of their community which offers beauty enthusiasts a space to learn about new products and trends, and connect with other similar individuals.
Dedicated online space
Sephora offers a dedicated forum on their website where members talk about all things beauty with other enthusiasts. Members support each other by contributing product reviews and answering questions posted by other members. Members also share skincare routines and looks via photos.
For those registered for Sephora’s loyalty programme, they get access to a mobile app that broadly mirrors the forum experience but with more interactive features that aid with topic and member discovery.
These online spaces serve as a platform for members to develop trusted relationships that aid them in their beauty decisions, from purchases to skincare.
Exclusive rewards
By participating in the community, members benefit from being able to choose from a large rewards catalogue. Members earn points for purchases. In the United States, members can also earn points by participating in virtual events and playing games.
Rewards extend beyond products into experiences. Members can redeem for private beauty chats and exclusive parties. These experiential rewards reinforce key community benefits: staying on top of beauty trends and social connections.
Takeaway: Sephora’s community adds value to its members by helping them navigate the fragmented beauty category through trusted content and relationships. By providing a space for members to help each other, Sephora effectively delivers customer support at-scale while providing emotional attachment through privileges and social connection.
Conclusion
It is evident from these 3 case studies that there is no singular recipe for building successful communities.
Nonetheless, a common thread is their single-mindedness in delivering against a clear purpose for members. Members need to easily understand what the community stands for. After which, the brand plays a crucial role in providing resources that helps members achieve their personal and collective goals within that community. Over time, a community becomes increasingly self-sustaining as members come to identify with each other and engage in reciprocal altruism.
A thriving community becomes natural advocates of the brand’s products, even without explicitly doing so. For example, the Harley Davidson chapter gatherings naturally attract attention, and incites curiosity that culminates into likeminded individuals joining the community. In the process, the brand benefits from its community investments by higher utilization of its products by the community, and organic word-of-mouth customer acquisition.
Communities have always been a fixture in our lives. In the next decade, we think more and more brands will follow in the footsteps of successful pioneers in finding creative ways to engage relevant communities.
