How to Create Authentic Community and Consumer Loyalty by Making Brands More Human
The consumer mindset has never been as ripe for engaging with brand communities and this is only expected to grow. Brand communities are about human relationships and your brand is a human too. To create a successful brand community delivering on your desired KPIs, consumer psychology lecturer, Chief Behavioural Officer and Founder Kate Nightingale says you must adopt a human-centric approach.
“The human brain views brands as human beings and therefore expects human-like relationships with them. Intimacy, trust, self-identification, reliability, commitment, love and passion, interdependence and authenticity are just some of the ingredients of successful consumer-brand relationships.”
Community is a web of relationships amongst all stakeholders of the brand, serving one main relationship – that between a customer and a brand. Keeping that purpose in mind when creating and executing your brand community strategy together with a deep understanding of relationship dynamics is the key to creating a successful brand community.
A lot has changed in the world over the last few years and we seem to be in a whirlpool of drastic socioeconomic changes coming at us in clusters. This fundamentally affects human basic needs of safety and belonging. These needs have been most affected by the Covid pandemic and subsequent socioeconomic turmoil, from wars to recession and the cost-of-living crisis, becoming the strongest drivers of consumer behaviour globally.
Our sense of safety is crucial not only to our psychological well-being but also to our physical health, like our immune system. 70% of customers globally worry about their personal safety and 73% view brands that increase their sense of safety and security as more attractive. A sense of control has the strongest positive impact on our sense of safety, and keeping brands accountable, engaging in co-creation, social activism and personalisation feed into that sense of control.
Belongingness, where relationships, intimacy and trust are some of the most important goals, has also been heavily undersupplied over the last few years. We are social animals and relationships and trust are necessary to our survival and sense of safety. Yet, 18% of Europeans feel socially isolated, according to the 2019 European Social Survey, and 6% of UK residents experience loneliness with researchers such as Snyder & Newman (2019) indicating loneliness as one of the strongest motivators of joining brand communities.
Belonging, relationships with like-minded people, a sense of safety and innate trust are some of the most important reasons for engaging with brand communities, yet it is the sense of ownership over the brand and a desire to influence it that when supplied by a brand creates the best results on brand loyalty, word of mouth, repurchase intention, brand advocacy and brand equity. Brands belong to people (customers & employees). This is a fundamental attitude shift that needs to happen in your organisation for your brand community to succeed.
Build strong, loyal and lasting relationships with your customers
The human brain views brands as human beings and therefore expects human-like relationships with them. Intimacy, trust, self-identification, reliability, commitment, love and passion, interdependence and authenticity are just some of the ingredients of successful consumer-brand relationships. Two of them are especially good to build through brand communities: intimacy and self-identification.
People choose brands that are similar to them in personality and values, the same way as we choose friends or romantic partners. Accentuating these human qualities in your brand and allowing customers to express themselves authentically in your community is a great start. But it is the recognition, feeling seen and heard that really makes a difference. UGC campaigns are a brilliant way to achieve that, with UGC being 9.8 times more impactful and seen as 2.4 times more authentic than brand content (Nosto).
Intimacy is mutual and takes time to build. It is through consistent and authentic sharing of who your brand is that you can build a strong intimacy and the benefits are amazing: brand loyalty, positive brand perception and even superior product perception. Notice however that the most intimate details about your brand are often reserved for brand community members rather than all customers. Intimacy is something to be earned, so don’t give it away for free. Make them sign up, get their data and then share something about you. The best example of that I have seen is a little female-founded laundry detergent start-up called Tallow & Ash. Their Instagram is a masterpiece in brand community management and intimacy.
Strategies for a successful brand community
There are many elements to a successful brand community strategy, but three key aspects hold the foundations: co-creation, brand advocacy and your employees.
Co-creation stems from our need for safety fuelled by a sense of control, increasing sense of ownership over the brand and leading to loyalty, emotional engagement, word of mouth, brand attachment and even brand love. LEGO Ideas is still one of the most successful examples of co-creation, a platform where LEGO enthusiasts can submit their designs and if voted for by the community, these are produced and sold with a commission going to the creator. 90% of all designs are sold out in their first release! Customers also view co-creative brands as 81% more authentic and 86% more trustworthy, qualities especially required to feed our sense of safety.
92% of customers trust recommendations from friends and family compared to other advertising, making it 50 times more likely to trigger a purchase. With 88% of customers naming brand trust as important or a dealbreaker when it comes to choosing brands they buy from, taking advantage of people who ‘own’ your brand (customers & employees) has never been as important. At Humanising Brands, I define brand advocacy as ‘a positive attitude towards a brand that leads to customer’s commitment to a brand and builds a lasting relationship, resulting in customer action such as advocating and protecting the brand’. Identifying specific customer actions you desire and reverse engineering what attitude, commitment and relationship will lead to those amongst most of your customers is a starting point to developing a strong brand advocacy strategy.
Never forget about your own people. They are the most authentic, real and intimate representatives of your brand. We all know TikTok accounts by store teams are way more popular than the main brand account, and that live streams are continuously growing as the best sales tools. It’s the intimacy, trust and self-identification that are here at work. People buy from people, and that has never changed. You are not only looking at way more engaged customers (if only 3% of your employees reshare your posts, that explains 30% of engagement), higher sales, but also more loyal and satisfied employees making them 20% more likely to stay in their jobs.
Are you ready to relinquish control over your brand?
Remember, brands are not any longer owned by companies, but rather co-created by their customers and employees. Your brand equity is what your people believe your brand is and, more specifically, what you allow them to make it.
That deep sense of ownership, commitment and attachment is driven by our need for safety and belonging and is only predicted to grow. The benefits, however, are tremendous, like loyalty, advocacy, trust, sales, growth and much more. All you have to do is be ok with not being in charge.
Your people are. It’s their brand, their identity, their values, their world they are creating with your brand as a tool. All you need to do is allow them and of course design clear game rules. People need logical rules and subtle priming to ensure that they are ultimately going in the direction you want to take your brand.
You don’t control the journey, but you are the guide. Relinquish control and embrace empowerment.
Author: Kate Nightingale, Chief Behavioural Officer and Founder
Kate Nightingale is a consumer psychologist working across brand strategy, customer experience, design, and innovation, for brands like Swarovski, Dowsing & Reynolds, Klarna, Harvey Nichols, Samsung, Disney, Crowd DNA. Kate is also the Founder of Humanising Brands: a strategy and innovation agency for challenger brands, with a mission to create a better world by making brands more human.