The other morning while reading WSJ I was reminded of a topic I have been toying with in my mind and there it was. The article in the journal talked about an organization endorsing one of the candidates running for the US Presidential elections, I am not a political junkie but I do have some strong opinions and very defined preferences while I obviously don’t wish to voice on this forum but I would love to play with the idea of organizations and membership to those organizations as a they apply to brands.
Last year I presented someone with a very eclectic and premium watch. I was very proud of myself when I presented it and hoped the master piece will receive some airtime. During a conversation recently I found out that hardly happens for the fear of being damaged, lost or stolen? The idea got me thinking about premium brands the likes that celebrities consume and brand managers love to broadcast in the hope that it will generate fan following and clout for the brand itself. The implicit assumption is consumption of the brand automatically puts you into a community of users that share common values and a club that is limited to the brand users. But what happens if the celebrity is no longer seen consuming the brand or even worse seen consuming a different brand? Does the community still exist, given the flagship has fallen?
I always believed that the brand user community is a movement, one that embodies the brands mission and helps drive the vision and purpose. Every consumer is a latent ambassador that advocates for the brand as an unofficial spokes person. It is paramount as a brand steward to know your segment and target them so the brand resonates, a phenomenon that has a multiplicative effect versus additive; the contrarian view is the wrong target segment dissonates a form of chaos with no direction or growth for the brand. Simply put, it is a self reinforcing spiral, grow the right target community, the brand grows by leaps and bounds!
