Building Brand Communities: How Organizations Succeed by Creating Belonging

BUILDING BRAND COMMUNITIES

ALSO BY CHARLES H. VOGL

The Art of Community: 7 Principles for Belonging

Storytelling for Leadership: Creating Authentic Connection

Building Brand Communities

Copyright © 2020 by Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles H. Vogl

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First Edition

Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-8661-0

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-8662-7

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-8663-4

Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-8665-8

2020-1

Production manager: Susan Geraghty; Cover design: Nola Burger; Interior design and composition: Westchester Publishing Services; Copyeditor: Michele D. Jones; Proofreader: Cathy Mallon; Indexer: Rebecca Plunkett; Author photos: Ruby Somera [Carrie Melissa Jones]; Tony Deifell [Charles Vogl]; lllustrations: Dianna Brosius

From Charles to Kep.

In whatever way is yours,

may you bind others with purpose

in ways that both inspire and heal them.

From Carrie to Marcella.

Your mother taught me everything

about connection. Follow her

and you will always remain near to hugs,

a table full of friends,

and a community to guide you.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

PART 1: Brand Community Foundations

1: Recognizing Community, Brand Community, and Belonging

2: Supporting Organizational Goals

PART 2: Building from the Beginning

3: Distinguishing Community

4: Starting at the Beginning

5: Team Selection

6: Growth Principles

PART 3: Deeper Ideas

7: Leaders’ and Managers’ Roles

8: Creating Shared Experiences and Space

9: Content Strategy

10: Motivation and Encouraging Participation

11: Measurement and Metrics

LAST WORD

APPENDIX A: Brand Goal Practices

Innovation Community Practices

Talent Recruitment and Retention Recruitment Practices

Customer Retention Practices

Marketing Practices for Community

Practices for a Support Community

Practices for Supporting Movement Communities

APPENDIX B: Worksheets

Worksheet 1: Selecting Founding Members

Worksheet 2: Selecting and Training Leaders

Worksheet 3: Campfire Experiences

Worksheet 4: Identify a Brand Community’s Purpose

Worksheet 5: Encouraging Engagement

NOTES

GLOSSARY

FURTHER READING

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

—Dorothy Day

The most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

—Kurt Vonnegut

PREFACE

A Note from Charles

Readers of my book The Art of Community know that my journey toward community expertise began with my own lonely years wondering if I’d ever create the friendships that I wanted or find a place where I knew that I belonged. It took many years and travel through several time zones in Africa and Asia to get to a place where those thoughts no longer distract me. On the journey, the miles were less important than the wise words from mentors, examples from my now heroes, and too many embarrassing experiments to remember.

The journey never ends. It’s a daily practice to remain connected to the people I love, reach out to the people I want to know better, and ensure that I’m supporting people important to me. My personal community is a dynamic creature that needs attention, feeding, hugs, and occasionally a shoulder to cry on. This of course is normal and the best-case scenario.

It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to learn that the principles distilled in The Art of Community have inspired dinners, rituals, retreats, family reunions, heartfelt speeches, and long deep conversations across continents. Thank God for you who gather people you care about.

When starting this book, we aspired to write a guide that would speak equally to and embolden leaders in nonprofits, businesses, civic agencies, faith organizations, and political movements. Indeed, we believe nearly every principle discussed will serve all of these leaders equally.

We educate and encourage leaders to invest in authentic brand communities that both serve organizational goals and also enrich, support, and even heal participants. In our aspiration, this will replace misguided, shortsighted, and exploitative efforts.

As we developed this book, it grew apparent that the language of business and nonprofit leadership is different enough from that of social, cultural, faith, and political movements that we could not write a single book that speaks to both audiences equally well. This is disappointing.

This book speaks directly to businesses and nonprofit leadership in applicable language because they will continue to invest astounding resources to both connect to and gather people for the foreseeable future. In fact, we personally consult with organizations that collectively touch far more than one billion people, and their influence grows daily. Such investments will accelerate as organizations adapt to our growing experience economy¹ in which customers seek appealing experiences that connect them with brands.

For those considering this resource to support movements making our era safer, more welcome, honest, and connected, please take what serves you. It’s here for you, and our hearts go with you.

This little book is an offering to help everyone working toward more connection, healing, generosity, love, safety, and joy in a time that really needs it. We promise it is the best we could do at the time.

May all of us who pick up these ideas teach the next generation to conquer the loneliness and disconnection of our time.

Go get them and Godspeed.

Charles Vogl, M.Div.

Beautiful Oakland, CA

A Note from Carrie

When I was ten years old, a teacher asked my mom if I was mute, and my hand shook when I raised it in class. Speaking up was painful.

Yet my silence hid a deep hunger for connection. I wanted someone to ask me, How are you? and then wait the five minutes I needed to offer an answer. I both wished for and feared what might happen if others knew my inner world, so I kept my mouth shut.

But when I turned fourteen years old, my father set up a hand-me-down computer in my bedroom. Little did he know that plugging in those cables sparked a career that would lead me to one day connect people around the world—employees, customers, and innovators—and would eventually lead to this book.

At that time, emo (emotional) music—filled with screaming about unrequited love—offered me a safe container for my angst and loneliness. At first, I listened alone in my room. With that new computer, I discovered that I could listen with others. I found forums sponsored by my favorite musicians. They felt magical to me: a place where I could find my voice. We talked about music, but more often, we talked about our lives. I dropped my emotional armor online and, for the first time, felt confident that I could speak up and be known.

The forums helped me connect to both my favorite musicians and others around the world. My online friends lived in the Philippines, Florida, England, and New York. We chatted until the wee hours and made phone calls when tragedy struck. These friends taught me how to accept and be accepted. But only from a distance, online.

One night, my childhood friend Samantha called. I listened to her cry before a word came out. Gasping, she asked to meet outside my house. This was the first time someone asked for me in a crisis. Outside, she fell into my arms and then, on my street curb, she shared the painful and vulnerable hurt inside. Just as I shared with others online. I knew to sit and listen.

She then asked if I was OK. For the first time in my life, I answered honestly. I shared feeling alone and broken, forgotten and invisible. I hadn’t yet processed personal family tragedies or my own loneliness with anyone face-to-face. Then I too cried. And she too remained and held me.

Our friendship, cemented that night, got me through high school safely.

Only as an adult do I now recognize my teenage depression, anxiety, and traumatic stress. Then, I saw only a dark pit of loneliness before experiencing being held and accepted. Those musicians, those fans, those concerts, and those forums connected us as lifelong enthusiasts. They taught me how to create community online and then to extend it into my neighborhood and school. I now recognize that we made a life-changing brand community.

So, with hard-won lessons, I now choose to be in connection. Even when (especially when) it hurts. I recognize the importance of a place, online or physical, where fans, friends, colleagues, neighbors, classmates, or anyone else can discover that someone cares. That someone will remain.

Now I help others create this within organizations around the world. There is no cause too small to gather around. Playing with makeup, mobilizing a social movement, and resurrecting a rural school are all great reasons to join together.

Many mistakenly assume that strong community always looks touchy-feely, like emotional blathering and directionless wandering. In real-world practice, community is a key to unlocking many critical outcomes, such as innovation, crisis response, and policy change.

Measurable outcomes and relationship building are not opposite ends of a spectrum. They’re connected. Most people just don’t know how to connect them. I hope that through this book you will discover what many are missing.

Welcome.

Carrie Melissa Jones

Seattle, WA

INTRODUCTION

If you’re reading this now, it’s likely that you want to bring people together in a new or more powerful way. Kudos to you. The world needs more people like you. We wrote this book to make you more effective, become a stronger community leader, and help you avoid bad and potentially hurtful mistakes.

Over years, miles, and time zones, many people have approached us seeking help to build communities for their organizations. This includes numerous schools, political advocacy groups, professional collectives, religious organizations, and, of course, for-profit companies spanning the globe. All want to invest in bringing together the people important to them. These include employees, customers, colleagues, political and artistic collaborators, and volunteers. These leaders all aspire to build a community that serves both their organization and the envisioned members. Doing this in a way that honestly enriches members and delivers organizational benefits looks like mystical enchantment to many.

Many professional community managers have also shared their longing for something that articulates what they already do and for wisdom to make them better.

Both the words community and brand lack singular definitions in leadership writing. Although several definitions may be useful in differing contexts, the discrepancies create much confusion. We use our own working definitions in this book.

We define a community as a group of people who share mutual concern for one another. A brand is any identifiable organization that promises value, no matter its size or mission. A brand can serve for-profit, nonprofit, political, social, artistic, faith-based (or any other) purposes.

It follows that a brand community is any (real) community that aspires to serve both members and (at least one) organizational goal.¹ They’re often started by, inspired by, or managed by an established organization, but not necessarily so.

Although brand communities will (1) look and feel very different from one another, (2) work toward different goals, and (3) address different maturity stages, many core principles remain the same no matter where or who makes them, or what their purpose. You will recognize these principles by the end of this book.

Many aspiring leaders don’t even know how to articulate the ways imagined communities will serve their organization. They often assume that community is (probably) better than no community. It’s also often hard for them to articulate how their community will enrich members within it.

We’ll discuss the most common ways authentic communities serve organizational goals and thus warrant meaningful investment:

Innovation: creating new value for stakeholders

Customer and stakeholder retention: keeping customers and stakeholders involved with the organization and providing value to the brand

Marketing: informing the market of offered value

Customer service: helping customers/users with the brand service or products

Talent recruitment and retention: attracting and retaining the people your organization needs for success

Advancing movements: creating a fundamental shift in the culture or business

Community forum: making the brand a destination for a specific community

Building Community (versus Promotion and Mobilizing)

We use the term building community to mean facilitating, accelerating, and supporting the individual relationships that together form a community. Authentic community building is a pointillistic endeavor. A community exists as a network of relationships made up of participant pairs feeling trust and appreciation between them. Each relationship is like a point in our bigger view of community. If we facilitate enough authentic interconnected relationships and nurture them over time, we create a community. We think of this metaphorically as growing relationship threads that knit together into community. (See figure I.1.)

Some resources use the term building community to refer to promoting events or mobilizing groups. This includes instructing organizations in what social media platforms to leverage, posts to write, and photos to share (promotion), and how to leverage established connections to coordinate action (mobilize). Although both promotion and mobilization can be compatible with community building, and are often important, we make a distinction between each activity, for several reasons.

First, tools and strategies for promoting are well known and accessible. Please use the best honest tools to promote your events and community programs.

FIGURE I.1. The Network of Connections

Second, you can both promote many events and mobilize thousands of people while building little or no community. Film screenings, park concerts, and trash pickup days do this all the time, with no criticism from us. For community builders, focusing too much on promotion or calls to action can mean overlooking the principles that grow connections when and where people show up.

Third, believe it or not, public promotion isn’t always necessary for a successful brand community. Many robust communities don’t need to promote or even grow membership. We know of brand communities that remain invitation-only and keep the admission process secret. They know that size and intimacy are inversely related, and they want a tight-knit, effective, dare we say elite membership.

Unfortunately, many mistakenly believe that if you just bring people together (e.g., at a concert or bar), enduring relationships naturally form. Although you may get lucky, this rarely happens without proper supporting principles at play.

Our Lonely Era

Research indicates that you (and everyone you know) live in the loneliest era in American history. Nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone. One in four Americans rarely or never feel as though there are people who understand them. And two in five Americans sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful and that they’re isolated from others.²

This isolation trend has been getting worse.³ Teens in the US today are now less likely to get together with friends in person, go to parties, go out with friends, date, ride in cars for fun, go to shopping malls, or go to the movies than the generations before them. To be clear, teens do gather differently, but they are more isolated overall than seemingly ever before.⁴

The trend is sharply affecting mortality rates. When we look at large populations, there is a positive relationship between loneliness (disconnection) and suicide.⁵ Said bluntly, the more loneliness, the more suicide. Teenage suicides are at an all-time high.⁶ In fact, the number-two cause of teenage death in the US is suicide. The number-one cause is accidents, which includes all car, firearm, drowning, and poisoning events combined.⁷ The rising rate of suicide, although affecting certain groups and intersections of groups more than others, is occurring across gender, class, and ethnic categories. We live in a time when the wealthy city of Palo Alto, California, must create a Track Watch program to hire patrolling security guards to prevent teenage suicides along rail lines.⁸

Loneliness at Work

The growing loneliness trend doesn’t apply just to our teenagers. We Americans spend more time at work than with our families. Yet loneliness at work is such a crisis that the Harvard Business Review has published a front-page article with the unsubtle title Work and the Loneliness Epidemic: Reducing Isolation at Work Is Good for Business, by former US surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy. Research indicates that strong social connections at work make employees more likely to be engaged with their jobs and produce higher-quality work, and less likely to fall sick or be injured. Without strong social connections, these gains become losses.⁹

Research also indicates that there is a link between loneliness and low organizational commitment among professionals in fields as diverse as hospitality, education, and medicine.¹⁰ Lonely people disengage, and such disengagement costs organizations of all types in many ways, including almost 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents, 16% lower profitability, and a 65% lower share price over time.¹¹

Our work-based communities are disintegrating. Among non-self-employed Americans, the number of those who regularly work at home has more than doubled since 2005, and these workers frequently state loneliness is a major concern.¹²

Moreover, loneliness has profound health effects. Loneliness is as bad for your body as smoking as many as fifteen cigarettes a day.¹³ It causes stress and thus elevation of the stress hormone cortisol, which at high levels is connected to inflammation, heart disease, digestive problems, and sleep regulation problems, among many others. Loneliness can erode our thinking, including our analytical ability, concentration, memory, decision-making skills, and emotional regulation.¹⁴ So if you care about the people you work with (socially, professionally, politically, philanthropically) remaining emotionally, mentally, and physically capable, then attending to how connected your teams grow is important to you too.

Technical and Digital Context

Despite this reality, when we speak to Americans, most mistakenly think that we’re in a more connected era because of the new digital tools for reaching others. The truth is, we’re all far less connected and way more distracted. Distraction caused by digital devices is so powerful that just putting our digital devices in our view distracts us from full enjoyment in social interactions.¹⁵ Research indicates that even using digital devices for conveniences (such as Googling walking directions rather than asking a stranger) reduces social connection.¹⁶

Those who turn to digitally connected communities for relationships experience at least two shortcomings that often go unresolved. The first is that most social media connections are, at best, only weak ties. And every minute spent entertaining weak ties is possible time taken away from creating or deepening strong ties. Over years, the distraction of social media–based weak ties radically changes the number of strong friendships we can turn to when we need friends most. These needs range from pet-sitting to shoulders to cry on.

Charles, for example, has more than fifteen hundred friends on one social media account. Far fewer than one hundred showed up to help him move across the country. He’s not confused about the difference between real and social media friends.

There are many well-intentioned organizations that connect citizens and neighbors to share information such as local crime incidents, town hall events, and civic alerts. They serve real needs and provide convenient, even lifesaving information. But let’s recognize that past generations received similar information from friends and neighbors in regular conversations. They met new neighbors by knocking on their doors. Although new technology offers a lot of information, relying on these tools doesn’t grow the relationships that used to form among citizens and neighbors.¹⁷ Either we learn to invest differently in such relationships, or they won’t form.

Organizations Want to Invest

Smart for-profit and nonprofit organizations recognize that there is a widespread hunger for connection and are investing to address it. Many seek a way to profit by addressing the new isolation.¹⁸ We don’t object. We do object to the amount of rhetoric about community compared to actual community building.

Marketing departments and C-suites continue to use the term community to label wide-ranging organizational investments, including neighborhood events, charity partnerships, online forums, and even simple email lists. But a closer look reveals that most (and sometimes all) of the community-building measures are superficial or even irrelevant to real community.

In fact, the term community has been used by brands to refer to so many ideas over the past twenty years that the word has lost whatever shared meaning it once had—a loss for the organizations as well as the individuals within these so-called communities. We call these so-called communities mirage communities: groups that organizations may label as communities, but that a trained eye can recognize are not. (We will discuss mirage communities further in chapter 1.)

When we ask individuals inside organizations how they define community and how they understand its importance for their roles, most are hard pressed to define the term for their work. Often the best they can come up with is, Community is good for people. The answer is hollow at best and meaningless at worst.

Although brand communities do not and will not totally resolve this era’s isolation crisis, they can address many hungers:

How individuals grow and form friendships that support one another

How we grow beyond our own individual and team limitations

How we restore feelings of agency and efficacy

How we gather to form meaningful relationships

How we set up future generations to avoid our era’s loneliness

Although successful brand communities must serve organizational goals, to build an effective brand community, you must begin by rejecting the premise that everything an organization does or offers must serve profit or exist in a transaction. Real communities are made up of relationships. Always. Relationships exist in the realm of personal experience, and although they may include transactions, they are never purely transactional. They include some generosity, at least the kind where we help others without calculating the return