Building A Community Around Your International Brand

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭    Business thrives when communities thrive. I was deeply moved by Jumbo supermarkets' innovative "Kletskassa" (chat checkout) initiative in the Netherlands. Instead of rushing customers through checkout, these special lanes encourage conversation and connection for people who want a slower retail experience.   "Many people, the elderly in particular, can feel lonely. As a family business and supermarket chain we have a central role in society. Our shops are a meeting place and that means we can do something to combat loneliness. The Kletskassa is just one of the things we can do,’ Jumbo CCO Colette Cloosterman-Van Eerd said.   It's a brilliant example of how businesses can weave social impact into their core operations. The reality is stark. According to the Dentsu 2025 Trend Report, the world is facing a global "togetherness deficit." Recent global events have left many feeling disconnected – particularly our elderly population. But herein lies an opportunity for businesses to step up:   1. Reimagine existing touchpoints: Every customer interaction can be transformed into a moment of connection. What's your equivalent of a "chat checkout"?   2. Create dedicated community spaces: Jumbo's "chat corners" show how businesses can repurpose physical spaces to nurture belonging.   3. Train staff as community builders: Our team members can be more than service providers – they can be connection catalysts.   4. Identify local needs: Understanding your community's specific challenges helps create meaningful interventions.   The ROI? It goes beyond metrics. It's in the strengthened community fabric. It's in being part of the solution to societal challenges. I believe every business, regardless of size or sector, has the potential to create impact in a way that people feel seen, heard, and connected.      

Big brands have a lot to learn about building community from this small East London shop. If you follow me you know I’m obsessed with pinpointing the places, moments and margins where culture appears, often outside the mainstream. Waste! is an independent store in Hackney specialising in handmade, self-published and DIY artist products that also serves as a meetup for makers and fans of the niche and novel. Big brands can spend millions chasing community. Yet genuine bonds form in the unlikeliest corners. By giving people a place to belong and a stake in the story, you can create evangelists rather than consumers. Here’s some of the playbook: → Look beyond the obvious Which subculture have you never visited? Find the one that aligns with your brand values and surprise them with an IRL activation made just for them. → Host micro-experiences Think smaller than a giant pop-up. Small scale means deeper conversations, stronger friendships and stories that spread far beyond the room. → Invite people behind the scenes Jack and Roydon modelled the shop on their childhood bedrooms. Everything feels handpicked and personal. → Celebrate genuine connections At Waste! customers aren’t just buying things. They swap ideas, share projects and spark new collaborations. Create spaces online or offline where people can connect, chill and feel like insiders. → Reinvest in your community Every penny from sales goes back into buying more stock from friends and local artists. That reinvestment shows you care about real people not just profit margins. → Turn every interaction into a collectible moment Limited-edition patches, secret passwords, custom playlists or tiny zines tie physical mementos to emotional experiences. Superfans will wear, share and trade these badges of honour. → Measure passion not just reach Track repeat attendees, social shout-outs from community insiders and user-generated content. A hundred truly engaged superfans create more long-term value than ten thousand casual followers. Sometimes the best way to build real community is the scrappy, DIY, heartfelt route ✌️💚

Slapping “community-led” into your brand positioning doesn’t magically make it true. Because if what you’re calling a “community” is really just: - A one-way email blast - A WhatsApp group with no interaction - A silent audience politely lurking because they don’t know what they’re meant to say… Then what you’ve got is an audience. There’s nothing wrong with having an audience, by the way. But don’t confuse people watching with people connecting. Real community-led brands do things differently: - They don’t just speak at their audience, they co-create with them - They build rituals and reasons for people to engage beyond product updates - They listen, tweak, involve - not just broadcast It’s not always loud and ain’t always sexy. But it’s consistent, intentional and centred around actual people - not just a content strategy or GTM feature. Look at Strava. They didn’t just build a fitness app, they built a behaviour loop. You show up because others do too. You cheer each other on. That, my friends, is community. If your people aren’t engaging, it’s not always an awareness issue. Sometimes, they’re just not being given anything to belong to. And calling it “community” without the trust, participation or two-way value exchange is simply just marketing. Again, that’s okay. But remember: you’re not building a community if no one’s talking to each other. P.S. We now have over 500+ members in our Nexus Femtech community. All built on a SHARED purpose. 🤝

Most Brands Get ‘Community’ Wrong—Here’s Why “Build a community.” That’s the advice every brand gets. And 99% of them do it completely wrong. They think community means engagement metrics. They think it means a Discord, a Slack group, or replying to comments. They think it means “involving the customer in the conversation.” And then they wonder why no one cares. The truth? People don’t want to join your brand. They want to join a world that makes them feel something. That’s what separates a brand with an audience from a cult brand that people would die for. The Problem With the ‘Community’ Playbook Most brands follow the same tired strategy: ✅ Start a social media page ✅ Create “engaging content” (whatever that means) ✅ Launch a Discord or Facebook group ✅ Hope people show up and talk about the brand And guess what? Most of these communities turn into a ghost town. They have zero identity, zero mystique, and zero sense of belonging. People don’t want another boring brand forum where they talk about products all day. They want a movement, a belief system, a new way of thinking. And that’s why the most powerful brands don’t build communities—they build worlds. The Cult Brand Playbook: Build a World, Not a Community Let’s look at brands that actually get it right. 🔥 Harley-Davidson: You don’t just buy a motorcycle. You join an outlaw brotherhood. 🔥 Liquid Death: It’s not about drinking water it’s about murdering thirst. 🔥 Apple (under Jobs): Not a tech company—an anti-establishment revolution. None of these brands talk about “engagement” or “building a customer community.” They create a lifestyle, mythology, and set of beliefs that make people feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves. And that’s the secret: Cult brands don’t chase customers. Customers chase them. How to Stop ‘Community-Building’ and Start World-Building If you want to build something people actually care about, stop focusing on engagement and start focusing on immersion. 🔑 Define a Belief System – What does your brand stand for? (And who’s the enemy?) 🔑 Create Rituals & Symbols – What actions and language make someone an insider? 🔑 Make It Exclusive – Can everyone join, or is it earned? 🔑 Give It a Mythology – What’s the origin story, the legend, the deeper meaning? If you build a world people want to live in, they’ll fight to get in. If you just build a community, they’ll leave the second something better comes along. Most brands are just a conversation. Cult brands are a religion. Your Turn Drop a comment: ⚡ What’s a brand that has built a real cult following? ⚡ Have you ever joined a brand not just because of the product—but because of the world they built? Let’s hear your take. 🚀 #Branding #CultBrands #WorldBuilding

I’ve spent the last decade building global MarComms programs within large, complex companies. Here’s what I’ve learned about activating internal partners and making quick progress toward goals: 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗿𝗴 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘁. Focus on winning allies across the organization by understanding each colleague’s objectives and finding ways to support one another. Don’t worry about empire building. On paper, you may have a team of two, but in reality, you’ll have 50 people in your corner helping bring your vision to life.   𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱. When starting a position, quickly run a situation analysis and develop a hypothesis for the change that needs to take place. Even as your full strategy remains in development, identify and share a few core principles that can immediately unite your community. 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗮𝘅𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗺 𝗳𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻–𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘀. Folks in Greece may have a different idea for bringing a program to life than the team in Kuala Lumpur or Canada. It’s important to articulate non-negotiable standards while allowing for maximum local/regional flexibility. Results will be better if local teams feel empowered. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰. Communicate openly and often about your progress. Use internal communication channels to celebrate wins and recognize key players; make them look good to their managers. Host regular meetings to gather your internal community and even consider a light newsletter to share updates. When appropriate, communicate externally on LinkedIn – this can actually yield even greater internal momentum. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝘁𝘀. Within large multinational companies, it’s common for a team in one part of the world to be wrestling with an issue that a team elsewhere has already faced. With a global view, if you can connect colleagues across boundaries, you’ll speed up problem-solving – plus, you’ll achieve goodwill, which feeds back into the community-building efforts mentioned above. #Marketing #Communications #SocialMedia #Leadership

Building a Successful Customer Community: More Than Just a Forum A well-run customer community isn’t just a place for discussions—it’s a strategic asset that builds deeper relationships, strengthens product adoption, and creates a sense of belonging among your customers. A thriving community can: ✅ Drive retention – Customers who feel connected to a brand and their peers stay longer. ✅ Enhance product adoption – Peer-to-peer learning helps customers use your product more effectively. ✅ Create organic engagement – Customers help each other, reducing support burden and strengthening loyalty. What Makes a Customer Community Successful? 1️⃣ Clear Purpose & Value 🔹 What’s in it for customers? Whether it’s networking, product knowledge, or industry trends, a great community serves a defined purpose. 2️⃣ Strong Onboarding & Early Engagement 🔹 Communities fail when members don’t know how to participate. Structured onboarding, welcome guides, and initial engagement prompts are critical. 3️⃣ Diverse Participation Opportunities 🔹 Not all members engage the same way. Offer different ways to participate, such as: 🔸 Discussions & Q&A threads 🔸 Live virtual and in-person events & expert AMAs 🔸 Exclusive beta groups & insider content 4️⃣ Encouraging Organic Conversations 🔹 A common mistake? Over-moderation. Let members shape discussions while providing light guidance to keep engagement strong. 5️⃣ Recognition & Incentives 🔹 Gamification, ambassador programs, and member spotlights keep engagement high while rewarding contributors. 6️⃣ Measuring Community Impact 🔹 Successful communities don’t just “feel good”—they drive real business impact. Here's what you can track: 🔸 Retention & renewal rates for engaged members 🔸 Reduction in support ticket volume 🔸 Peer-led referrals & advocacy participation 🔸 Expansion growth A well-structured community provides a unique, scalable way to engage customers, making them feel valued while strengthening their connection to your brand. When customers learn, share, and grow together, everyone benefits. What’s the most valuable community you’ve been part of? What made it work? #CustomerCommunity #CommunityBuilding #CustomerEngagement #CustomerSuccess #B2BMarketing #RetentionMarketing

“Build it and they will come” is outdated. In today’s noisy, oversaturated market, community should come before product. That’s exactly what Elaine Fitzsimons, founder of The Matcha Bar in Dublin, understood. Before her matcha bar even opened, she had built a loyal following of over 16,000 people! Why? Because she brought her audience along for the journey: ✔️ Documenting her trips to Japan to source authentic matcha ✔️ Sharing the behind-the-scenes of shipping delays and supplier challenges ✔️ Introducing her first hires and day-one team This wasn’t marketing. It was storytelling—and it worked. Followers didn’t just watch. They engaged, gave feedback, and felt like part of the mission. When launch day came? Lines out the door. Here’s the simple truth: If you’re serious about a successful product launch, you need to find and build a community. Plain and simple. The takeaway: Authentic storytelling builds real community—and that’s the foundation of any successful launch.

Beautiful photography doesn't sell rooms. Let that sink in. A perfect drone shot of your pool, a staged breakfast on the balcony, a sunset time-lapse over your infinity pool, none of that will fill your property. You can pump out content every day and still wonder why bookings are flat. The problem isn't the content. The problem is you never built the brand. Content without trust is noise. Content without community is wallpaper. Content without brand is just decoration. And decoration doesn't move revenue. If you already have trust, community, and brand, then yes, photography becomes rocket fuel. Video becomes a magnet. Storytelling becomes a weapon. But you can't skip to the end. You can't buy credibility. You can't shortcut relationships. Companies fade. Brands last. So how do you actually build brand in hospitality? Here’s the framework: ➡ Earn trust daily. Reply to comments. Share behind the scenes. Show real people, not just staged perfection. Every piece of content is a deposit in the trust bank. ➡ Build community like your life depends on it. Stop thinking of guests as numbers. Think of them as insiders. Treat them like family long before they step onto your property. Community scales faster than campaigns. ➡ Stand for something. Most hotels market like they're scared of offending anyone. Vanilla never wins. If you want loyalty, be bold. Take a stance. People follow courage. ➡ Stop talking about features. Start showing values. A comfortable bed is not a story. A welcome ritual that makes someone feel like they belong, that's a story. And stories spread. ➡ Consistency beats intensity. A viral reel won't build your brand. Ten years of showing up will. Brands are built in the boring work nobody wants to do. ➡ Humanize every message. Guests don’t care about your occupancy rate or your ADR. They care about connection, belonging, and memories. Build marketing around that and bookings follow. Photography then becomes a multiplier. Video then becomes proof. Ads then become accelerators. But only when the brand is already there. The best hotels in the world didn't win because of better photography. They won because of relentless consistency, clear values, deep community, and trust built brick by brick. The photos just poured gasoline on a fire already burning. If you're in hospitality and you're still obsessed with quick wins, you're playing the wrong game. Build the brand first. Then everything else gets easier. I'll say it again. Companies fade. Brands last. --- If you like the way I look at the world of hospitality, let’s chat: scott@mrscotteddy.com

Community-Led Growth, a New Gear for Business In a crowded market, simply having a great product is no longer enough. The most successful and fastest-growing companies today are building more than just solutions; they are building communities around their users. This shift lift customers from cheque writers to advocates, shareholders and supporters. CLG is not a side project. It’s a core business engine that leverages a community to drive outcomes like customer acquisition, retention, and engagement. Unlike models that build from the solution, CLG starts with the user. A business utilising a strong community-led growth strategy is defined by several key features: The Community Flywheel: A powerful, compounding cycle where growth in the community directly fuels business growth, which in turn attracts even more members. User-Centric Feedback: Feedback is not just collected; it's shared organically among members, allowing the company to capture valuable, unfiltered insights that inform product, marketing, and sales teams. Cross-Functional Ownership: The responsibility for community engagement is shared across the entire organisation from product and marketing to sales and customer success not just siloed in one department. Champion Advocacy: The strategy intentionally identifies and empowers "champions" or prolific contributors, who become powerful brand advocates through their active participation and peer-to-peer support. Focus on Member-to-Member Interaction: The primary value of the community is designed to be the connections between members, not just their relationship with the company. This self-sustaining network drives deeper loyalty and a sense of shared value. Ultimately, CLG helps businesses build a durable competitive advantage. By putting the needs of the community first, companies can transform users into advocates, improve key business metrics, and build a lasting, authentic relationship with their customers. If you are building a more open investment landscape, where community, access and strong brand stories drive momentum, you can subscribe to my newsletter here on LinkedIn. It is where I share what we are learning as more people get the chance to back the businesses they believe in.

Most brands have customers. A few have disciples. I’ve been thinking a lot about why…. I recently had breakfast with the brilliant Will Mayer from Better Half (who’s helped build remarkable brands like Equinox, Bilt or Don't Die). We talked all about Cult Brands, his obsession. I think that, in a moment when distribution and product are becoming increasingly noisy, brand becomes so much more important. Even in enterprise, and B2B. A few key learnings from my time with Will: Brands are evolving into “community marks.” From trust marks (no one gets fired for buying IBM) to love marks (Apple) to identity marks (Supreme) to today's community marks (Othership) - brands are becoming gathering places for meaning and belonging. The enemy matters. Defining what you stand against sharpens identity and filters membership. Robinhood vs Wall Street. Equinox vs traditional gyms. Clear contrast creates belonging and drives desire. Five ingredients work consistently if you want to build a “cult brand”: Charismatic leadership, clear doctrine with repeatable language, rituals and gatherings, community-driven evangelism, and strategic scarcity that makes membership feel exclusive. Exclusivity drives desire. Strategic scarcity works. Whether it's Equinox's selective membership or software's invite-only betas, making people work to belong increases perceived value. Enterprise companies need this too. DataDog, Figma and Wiz built authentic brands for designers and engineers—design taste, community touchpoints (through user conferences for eg.), "if you know, you know" exclusivity that created organic following. And the timing is perfect. As trust in traditional institutions erodes, people are searching for new sources of meaning and belonging. Brands that step into this void, not just as products, but as communities with values, rituals, and identity, have the chance to become far more than businesses. They can become movements. Bryan Johnson’s “Don’t Die” is the most recent and most explicit attempt at turning a social media following into a full-on cult. Not every startup should (or can) build a cult, but cult tactics can enrich many brands. If you want to explore the topic further, Will recommends reading Alain de Botton’s "Religion for Atheists". Or you can just reach out to him !