A Dollar Spent on Fans

Bud Caddell over at Undercurrent wrote a great post about Fans and the Future of Digital Marketing. I want to share some of the thoughts here:

A dollar spent on fans:

Today, brands must learn how to earn fans. This begins with courting existing communities to earn (not fabricate) credibility. After that, brands must provide the means to connect fans and give them something to do. After all, a dollar spent on fans is a dollar spent on R&D, retention, recruitment, loyalty and longevity.

How communities are courted, not created:

here’s my rule of thumb for the question, “is it worthy of earning fans?” How many existing communities can you identify as being ‘courtable’ and demonstrate fandom? As Henry puts it, communities aren’t created, they’re courted. And if everything new is constructed from bits and pieces of pre-existing stuff (as Faris says), then you should be able to measure anything new by investigating which communities could be courted based on the stuff inside your new product or show.

Advertising is made for people that care:

Fan communities are indeed “self-organizing groups focused around the collective production, debate, and circulation of meanings, interpretations, and fantasies in response to various artifacts of contemporary popular culture.” Moreover, fan communities mobilize around unanswered questions.

Advertising is made for people who care… to pay attention. Fans care. Fans pay attention. But most messaging doesn’t create the tension that activates full fan communities. We’re still stuck on saturating a crowd of unwilling participants instead of mobilizing a community to create and spread a conversation.

Comments

[Sue Regonini]

Nice comments, Griffin. I think most of the potential is definitely in that "unanswered questions" part of fandom -- what could be, what wasn't explored initially; all those fantasy and imaginative engagements with the media property that keep fans creating and engaged. The more companies can court that strong and critical aspect of a fandom, the happier the fans will be and the more income it will make for a company.

Now to just get them to realize it...