December 5, 2007 by Robert Kozinets.

For some reason, I’ve been getting a ton of hits from readers in Poland. That happens to be the land of some of my forebears, which is pretty intriguing in a way. And I heard that Krakow is the new Prague, whatever that means…

Anyways, I wanted to say hi and call out to my new Polish Pals. Don’t be invisible (and on the net, it’s hard to truly be invisible). Let me know how you’re doing,with a comment or an email. And thanks for reading. Dziêkujê!

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December 4, 2007 by Robert Kozinets.

So yesterday I ended by posing this question:
What makes a brand community-able?

That is, I wonder what the qualities are of brands that inspire people to form collectives or communities around them?

I consider that we can actually think about some products that may have very low community-able characteristics but big community. I was thinking in particular of Tide detergent (which seems to be having a lot of price-based promotions lately, maybe indicating that their loyal base is eroding). Consumers love and are very loyal to Tide, as a detergent. But they sure don’t form communities based on Tide (unless they are paid to by firms like Communispace that will compensate them for forming synthetic brand communities). Tide’s just not that kind of product. And think about Snicker’s bars, or Kraft Cheese, or almost any other kind of consumer packages good (CPG) product. Hardly any of them (soft drinks and some other beverages are a big exception) have communities that form around them. That’s interesting.

Similarly, I think we see brands that can have a high community-ability (”communitability”?) but fairly low loyalty, if we consider loyalty followership or consumption that continues on into the long-term. I’m thinking of products of the entertainment industry. Say the show Lost, which was extremely popular in Season 1, seems to be such a show, and is losing ground fairly quickly, going from highs of 23 million viewers in the second season to lows of 11 million (less than half of the high) in the third season. There are numerous celebrity based examples, such as Martha Stewart or Britney Spears. They are very community-able, but not particularly loyal.

I offer a rough diagram here.

Harley-Davidson bikes clearly would have both aspects going for them, loyal consumers and a community-able brand. But consider the many products that don’t have either, like the commodity supermarket coffee market. Say Sanka, or Nescafe. No communities, and not much loyalty either.

So it seems that loyalty to a brand and it’s communityableness are orthogonal, they are independent characteristics.

That leads me to wonder more about what characteristics might make a brand community-able? For starters maybe we could consider five of the following dimensions of a brand being communityable:

• 1. Product category: maybe some product types are strongly experiential and communal (like motorcycles or cars or sports or rock concerts)
• 2. Look and Feel: characteristics of the product can evoke strong responses within particular communities that they might want to share with others, such as experiential design (like the Prada brands and store), retailing (like the service at Nordstrom), or even packaging (like the Red Envelope online gift store)
• 3. History of the brand: does it have deep local or lifestyle linkages of one kind or another?
  4. Subculturalization: did a subculture once take it into the fold and associate with it, thus communalizing it in grassroots fashion (as with the UK Mods appropriation of the Italian Vespa scooter in the 1960s, or the hippies appropriation of the VW Beetle)?
  5. Identity Contradiction-Resolution: did the brand (often due to advertising) help to resolve an important shared identity conflict (such as the current natural beauty Dove campaign drawing attention to female body image issues)?
  6. Made to Order Community: maybe some just have the community ingredient built right into the service or business model, like the YMCA, many non-profits, and of course Web 2.0 companies like eBay and Threadless

These are just initial thoughts, that I literally (I swear) wrote on the back of an envelope during a hockey practice. They await much further develop and research. I think this would be a fascinating topic for a Ph.D. student (one or more…it’s a big topic) or another scholar to pick up as an area well worth investigating. I’m going to continue to think about it more as well, and I’m interested, as always, in your thoughts. Don’t be shy.

Posted in Netnography, Word of Mouth Marketing, Communities and Tribes, Branding | 2 Comments »

December 3, 2007 by Robert Kozinets.

It’s been too long since I posted to this blog. So I hope at least a few of you are still out there. I was busy with a fascinating project for a Fortune100 client that I am delighted to say went extremely well. And I’m currently at the NHH Business School in beautiful Bergen, Norway, the famous “Gateway to the Fjords.” Thanks to the invitation of my wonderful host, Prof. Ingeborg Kleppe, I’m teaching a Ph.D. level course on the topic of Consumer Communities, the online and offline manifestations. I’m enjoying my contact with students, who incorporate and blend a bunch of global influences, including Russian, Swedish, Italian, and Taiwanese, as well as Norse.

The topic of communities has been on my mind a lot lately, and I thought we had some amazing comments to my past few entries. If you haven’t read Greg Dunlop’s detailed and amazingly helpful comment, and Renan Wagner’s provocative and insighful thoughts, I highly recommend that you do so by clicking here and scrolling down to the comments section.

I wanted to add to this discussion by re-posing and rephrasing a simple question that someone recently asked to me at a corporate research summit:

What makes a brand community-able?

That is, what sort of a brand inspires people to form communities around? What qualities would lend a brand the legendary social significance and attractiveness that would lead to communally related “badging” activities? What would lead people to communicate deeply and meaningfully about a brand, as if it played an important role in their lives?

This isn’t the same thing as gaining so-called “emotional” or “iconic” brand status. It’s more like a cult or culty brand. It’s also related or parallel to one of the big questions in Word-of-Mouth marketing, which is what makes a brand WOMmable?  But it’s definitely not the same question.

I initially answered this question with another question.

I said that it was simply another way of asking what inspires deep loyalty and great devotion to any brand. Things like nostalgia, a powerful experience, the use of attractive and meaningful colors and symbolic vocabulary. Consumers fell in love with products, they garnered great enthusiasm, they were loyal, and they wanted to share this with others and so brand communities formed out of that. But then I thought about it some more.

And I’ll tell you exactly what I think about the topic. Tomorrow.

Posted in Word of Mouth Marketing, Communities and Tribes, Branding | No Comments »