The Fast-Foodification of Everything

Individual personalities are often key to building community-first brands. Think fitness brand Peloton, which cited superstar instructors such as Robin Arzon in its IPO filing as key to its success. Other brands might fulfill this objective by behaving in ways that are simply more human, like Steak-Umm with its distinctive personality-driven Twitte... See more

The goal is to make people feel like they’re a part of something — and like you’re part of their identity. And the payoff — if all goes well — is in the form of fierce loyalty, word-of-mouth promotion, organic curiosity and attention, higher lifetime customer value and share of spend, lower acquisition costs, etc.

community members should “feel a sense of belonging (membership), feel like you make a difference to the group and that the group makes a difference to you (influence), feel like your needs will be met by other group members (integration and fulfillment of needs), and feel that you share history, similar experiences, time, and space together (share... See more

if people now cultivate their own personalities in order to sell products and build a community, brands need to figure out what it is that they are doing. Originally created by companies to give selling a face and a human emotion, retailers are getting killed by their own customers. People are increasingly more likely to build their own brand — and... See more

Let’s recap: as content creation and distribution tends to infinity, community emerges as true internet-native media. Community is an exercise in cultural production, and communities filter content proliferate a specific point of view. The role of the community, then, is to create and curate cultural artifacts in-line with their collective point of... See more