Customer Brand Fansites and Brand Community

The Customer is on Your Side: Got more examples of hyper consumers?? Tell me and I’ll post them, with a link/hat tip back to your site. (see here for the Customer is NOT on Your Side)

Some products and services have always been built around brand evangelists who love your products and services and donate time and energy and skill to building your brand with no thought of reward. And no, I’m not talking about your marketing consultant. 😛

Think entertainment. Think sports – where would *insert name of sports team* be without consumers buying tickets, wearing the sports gear, scarves and bumper stickers? In fact even minus the team, what would Nike do if people didn’t want to wear clothes with logos on ’em? Ditto Harley Davidson. You buy one of those bikes and you will want to get a tattoo on your left buttock with a heart and dagger or whatever chopper drivers have. (I haven’t checked lately. Heh.)

A brand community is a community formed on the basis of attachment to a product or marque. Recent developments in marketing and in research in consumer behavior result in stressing the connection between brand, individual identity and culture. Among the concepts developed to explain the behavior of consumers, the concept of a brand community focuses on the connections between consumers. A brand community can be defined as an enduring self-selected group of actors sharing a system of values, standards and representations (a culture) and recognizing bonds of membership with each other and with the whole. (from wikipedia)

Consumer to Consumer (C2C) is going to be huger than ever. The marketing guys are seriously involved – here’s a white paper on it all. But i’d liked to know of spontaneous brand communities where the consumers just did it for themselves. And don’t say Walmart. 😛
1. Ikea – my blog post, the sites

• Positive Fanatics – The Unofficial IKEA Web Journal
• OH, IKEA! – a weblog monitoring rumors regarding IKEA possibly coming to Ohio
• IKEA Fansite FAQ’s and Photos prima rily focusing on IKEA Kitchens
• IKEA Fansite Forums
• Lyrics to Jonathan Coulton‘s ‘IKEA’
• Lyrics to Mitch Benn‘s ‘IKEA’
• IKEA Coventry
• IKEA Hacker – a blog compiling IKEA hacks worldwide
• IKEA Tattoo – in 2003 the Austrian art group monochrom convinced a young man to have the IKEA logo tattooed on his upper arm.

Gonna find some more later. If you’ve got an example of a customer (not an agency) spontaneously starting up a brand fansite, let me know? I’ll link to it and back to you. BTW don’t get all shirty and write to them a cease and desist with using the logos and fonts letter. That will turn a very motivated, very influential friend into an even more influential/motivate enemy.

Here’s the link to the opposite – anti-marketing, anti advertising sites. Where you are at war with your customer. Never a good look.