Last night, while grabbing pizza for my family, I caught one of the new Ford Broncos out of the corner of my eye.
Not one of those Bronco Sports, mind you, but the big, full size version with a rare paint job and rim combo. The kind that’s specifically designed to catch your eye.
There are a couple of us here at Repeat who get excited about seeing Broncos, so I walked across the parking lot, took a couple pictures, and dropped them in a Slack DM to the biggest Bronco fan here.
There’s nothing remarkable about this, per se, except there were other cars in the parking lot, including the new Land Rover Defender and a Porsche 911. But I didn’t notice them until after I traded DMs about the Bronco. They were an afterthought.
(In retrospect, this was an excellent parking lot.)
Everyone, it seems, is talking about building community right now. (In fact, we’re building one ourselves.)
There are, though, multiple ways in which a brand intersects with community.
There are two worth calling out.
As an asset to the business. In some cases, a brand can create a community and own it as an asset to the business. It can create connections around a shared interest in a brand. This is largely what you hear being discussed in relationship to Web3.
As an asset to an existing relationship. In others, a brand can create a product or brand that’s so remarkable to people that it can become another layer to an existing relationship. It can strengthen connections that already exist, but the brand does not, in actuality own that community as an asset to the business.
The latter is more commonplace today and, one could argue, is the by-product of a great brand. (We’d agree with this.)
Though we’re not interested in debating whether one has more merit than the other, it is worth discussing who primarily derives value from each version and the implications of that.
Briefly, then:
If a brand’s community is primarily an asset to the business, then the business (in this case brand) would likely want to consider the community as a product extension to maximize value for the business.
If a brand’s community is primarily an asset to consumers in that it deepens existing relations and trades largely on brand interest, then the business would likely want to continue focusing on building and/or maintaining the brand and the core product line to maximize value for the business.
Depending how you look at it, one may be viewed as distracting from the core business and the other may be viewed as short-sighted.
In both cases, though, the business benefits from an active community, and that community is largely activated by brand. The mechanics may be different, but the foundation is the same.