Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

A com­mu­nity is a place where peo­ple come to gather, do things for each other and orga­nize around com­mon ideals and goals. In com­mu­ni­ties, peo­ple build trust and cre­ate rela­tion­ships that hope­fully last life­times and maybe even gen­er­a­tions. Does this sound like your busi­ness? Maybe or maybe not. But it can and prob­a­bly should.

My grand­par­ents drove GM cars and passed that on to my par­ents. Well, until the 70s gas cri­sis but that’s another story. They also shopped at Sears for Ken­more appli­ances and crafts­man tools. Now my whole fam­ily uses Apple prod­ucts (although it took my wife awhile to warm up to Office for Mac.) We often dis­cuss how we feel about the prod­ucts we use with each other and our friends – I’m sure your fam­ily is similar.

In the old days these dis­cus­sion only hap­pened in homes, stores, bar­ber­shops and the break room. Now they extend to the inter­net onto cor­po­rate web­sites and to social networks.

This exten­sion pro­vides the oppor­tu­nity for a national brand to cre­ate the kind of com­mu­nity that used to only hap­pen in bar­ber­shops and bar rooms. This com­mu­nity won’t always dis­cusses per­sonal things but it can have  hon­est and open dis­cus­sions about people’s lives and the prod­ucts they use.

You’ll find these online com­mu­ni­ties like this on the Ford web­sites, Ebay and organic com­mu­ni­ties like Lugnet, a Lego users group.

But com­mu­nity can also be built around some­thing as sim­ple as a pair of scis­sors.

Why would you want your brand to be a community?

Peo­ple will share their expe­ri­ence with your brand.

Peo­ple will give you direct feed­back on your prod­ucts and services.

Peo­ple will solve each oth­ers user issues (impor­tant for com­plex product.)

Peo­ple will build inter­est for your brand on their own.

Cre­at­ing com­mu­nity online or offline won’t make or break a brand or com­pany. Besides hav­ing a com­mu­nity strat­egy, you also have to have a busi­ness strat­egy that can live beyond an eco­nomic cri­sis. Just look at all those com­mu­nity banks that went under. And what about Sat­urn? Clearly some­things are big­ger than a com­mu­nity strat­egy. But com­mu­nity can sure help a busi­ness weather the storm. And soon, build­ing com­mu­nity may be required as a cost of doing business.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

• 

This entry was posted Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 1:01 pm and is filed under advertising, marketing, social media. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.