“Dear Mama Monster, My name is Erika. You pulled me up on stage twice during the Born This Way Ball in Australia. First in Sydney, and again in Perth. First of all I want to thank you for that opportunity. You have no idea what I went through just to get to go to your shows. I saved up so much money and sold my entire wardrobe except for my school

“I have a fascination with Andy Warhol and the way he wanted to make commercial art that was taken as seriously as fine art. Music has gotten so pretentious that now it’s almost rebellious to be a pop artist.

As the leader of the fan community, Gaga shares her achievements but presents them as milestones that the community has achieved together. For example, on October 24, 2011, when the collective views of all the videos on Gaga’s YouTube channel reached one billion, she celebrated with fans, tweeting, “We reached 1 Billion views on youtube little mons

what I do, as long as my fans understand. . . . I just sometimes feel like a loser still, you know? It’s crazy, because it’s like, we’re at the Garden, but I still sometimes feel like a loser kid in high school. I’ve just got to pick my shit up, I’ve got to pick myself up, and I have to tell myself I’m a superstar every morning so that I can get th

Perhaps Saul best describes the idea of generating something meaningful to talk about when he says: “Customers are always more than customers. They are people. Sure you can read that and think it’s buzz speak or a cliché—but once you have shared a meal with someone and had a chat about stuff not revolving around work, you look at them differently a

“The subject line said ‘To Jacques from Lady Gaga,’” St. Pierre explained. “It said ‘click on the link below to download the video for your assembly.’ So no questions asked, Lady Gaga sent us a video. I watched it, and I started crying. I’m a huge fan. It’s kind of embarrassing because I love her so much. I couldn’t believe it.” In the video Lady G

And as Eric Ryan tells Stengel, “As human beings, we all want to be part of something bigger than who we are and what we are. When you articulate an ideal and create a cause, it gives people, including myself, the ability to do so much more . . . Everyone—founders, employees, partners we work with, consumers—finds it motivating that there’s this co

The company created a membership-only online community where crafters could set up profiles, converse with one another, and upload photos of their designs. Fiskars also orchestrates offline events that get people together who may have only met online. For example, during the first year of the program, they brought the top fifty most active and pass

For one artist, her Little Monster dream came true. Twenty-year-old Helen Green from England had been posting renderings of Gaga on her Littlemonsters.com profile for five months. One particular drawing was of a poster for a fictional Disney movie called Born This Way, with Gaga drawn as a princess with her paw up. Gaga saw the drawing and tweeted