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The tidal wave of content that is expected of a consumer-facing brand in 2020 is intense and only growing by the day. Just how much content are the fastest growing brands putting out?
Brands post on Instagram 1.5 times per day on average, with videos getting 38% more engagement than static imagery. The experts recommend posting 5-10 times per week on Facebook and up to 20(!) times daily on Twitter. Bigger brands are posting multiple times per day to their blogs and sending weekly emails to various segmented lists.
In the search to create all this content, brands usually resort to adding headcount to their in-house teams or outsourcing to expensive agencies. The result is often highly-polished work that may or may not land with your audience.
Think of the recent A/B test in content creation that played out on a global stage this year:
There were two companies.
One that provided the infrastructure and tools for a community to create content for each other and then got out of the way: TikTok.
Another that raised nearly $2 Billion from every major entertainment brand in L.A., hired the most popular creators on Earth and… you know how it ends.
It’s not a perfect apples to apples comparison, but one key difference is a focus on the community that is being served. A brand’s existing community is one of the most overlooked sources for stories, ideas, and brand evangelists that will actually resonate with the people in that tribe.
There are lots of ways a beloved brand can work with their community to create content that goes above and beyond. In this piece we’ll focus on three key ways to do this:
1. Telling stories from the community
2. Recruiting and supporting community ambassadors
3. Idea generation
Let’s look at some examples of each.
Highlighting Homegrown Heroes
“A Good story, well told, can change the world”
-Jeff Skoll, Founder of Participant Media
Your customers are full of experiences that can be turned into incredible stories that position them as heroes and show what your brand is all about.
Airbnb has a massive community of hosts and travelers that they tap into to find narratives around connection and adventure. These experiences are aggregated on a dedicated community stories page, showcased through their print magazine and shared on their highly active YouTube channel. By taking the time to understand the people on their platform, Airbnb has created a deeply human brand that inspires people to ditch hotels and connect with local hosts.
A less traditional example of community storytelling is the overnight superstar Nathan Apodaca, who sent Ocean Spray cranberry juice sales soaring with his TikTok that captures him cruising and sipping to Fleetwood Mac. The brand quickly and smartly hopped on board and gifted him a brand new truck (his had just broken down) packed with… more cranberry juice. Since the video first gained attention, Ocean Spray shares have doubled and Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams has launched to the top of the Billboard charts for the first time since 1977.
Nathan Apodaca, the mastermind behind Ocean Spray's viral moment
Building up Brand Ambassadors
Red Bull Ambassadors off to quench thirst and build brand affinity
One of the standouts in this category is Red Bull and the Red Bull Wings team. If you’ve spent more than a little time on a college campus, you’ve definitely seen one of their branded mini-coopers or backpack-clad college students hawking free drinks. Why has the program been so successful? They know their market (people 18-34, lots of college students) and let people in that market do the selling for them. On top of that, they compensate them and provide them with all the tools they need to draw attention and convert people into customers.
lululemon also launched a brand ambassador program over the last year in partnership with Tongal that allowed them to continue programming their social channels in the midst of the pandemic. They did this by having their ambassadors film at-home workout videos, which were then edited into professional finished products by the Tongal community. Given the increase in at-home workouts during quarantine and a general need to de-stress amongst these angsty times, the campaign has been a welcome hit for lululemon’s highly motivated community of customers. The key to this campaign’s success was that it was made by the community and provided something for the community that created real value in an authentic way.
Generating Ideas from the Crowd
The best branding moments typically come from real customers doing real things. One way to uncover the best content is by actively listening on social and seeing what resonates with your community.
A recent example from TikTok shows that the crowd’s creativity often wins out over internal marketing teams by simple virtue of scale. Postmates noticed the popularity of food creations on the platform and leveraged their restaurant partners in L.A. to team up with TikTok to bring them to local customers.
Some examples include pancake cereal and the incredible-looking “cloud bread” seen below. The response on social media has been predictably positive and generated a lot of buzz for both brands.
Cloud Bread from the master chefs of Tik Tok
However, social media success is hard to predict, so it often helps to create the garden for great ideas to grow. Tongal’s ongoing partnership with the LEGO Group shows how creating your own platform for your community to collaborate and generate ideas can scale the ideation process and build excitement amongst your fan base. Since launching in August, LEGO World Builder has resulted in over 1,000 unique fan-sourced original LEGO worlds, with more added every day.
The Takeaways
We’ve seen the power of the crowd to provide show-stopping content. What can top brand and marketing managers learn from these examples? These are brands that have invested time and money into knowing their most valuable customers.
Do you know where your customers aggregate online? Can you spot the most influential among them and elevate them as community leaders? Are you listening with an open mind to find the memorable stories that will resonate and then engaging with them in a way that fits your brand's narrative?
Once you’ve developed a strong understanding of your community, you can build an infrastructure to ensure the best stories rise to the top.
