CHAPTER 4

Examining the Principle of Community

Creating a Forest from a Single Seed

In 2000, Greg Glassman set out to change organized fitness—specifically the way humans increase their strength, endurance, physical capacity, and athletic performance. He developed workouts that contain a variety of unique exercise movements, including everything from doing push-ups, lifting weights, and rowing to flipping tires, shoveling snow, and pulling sleds. CrossFit has become a monster-size brand—one that has turned the world of organized fitness and training upside down. Today, there are more than 8,500 CrossFit gyms around the globe. CrossFit has built a community with hundreds of thousands (and perhaps even millions) of members covering virtually every square inch of the planet.¹

How could a company experience such dramatic growth so quickly? The answer, quite simply, is that CrossFit embraced the principle of community from an early stage and has constantly improved, evolved, and increased how its community interacts—both online and off-line. What started with a single website and a small component of what we could consider a virtual community, CrossFit has evolved to include meet-ups, gatherings, and competitions where CrossFit names the “Fittest Man (and Woman) on Earth.” The CrossFit brand encompasses a for-profit journal with high-quality content, a thriving discussion board, and, of course, more than 8,500 independently owned and operated gyms around the world.

CrossFit literally took on a life of its own—one that not even Glassman could have slowed down if he had wanted to. In this case, the community grew the brand; the brand didn’t grow the community. Most companies aren’t fortunate enough to have their communities grow their brands to this magnitude, but even a small business can create a vibrant community.

WHY SHOULD YOU BUILD A COMMUNITY?

Organizations that successfully build customer communities experience remarkable benefits from their efforts. More to the point, however, I believe companies no longer have a choice—particularly not if we want to excel and experience exponential growth. As our customers are becoming more interconnected, they are naturally beginning to build elements of community on their own. Furthermore, if you don’t create a strong customer community, you can be guaranteed that your competitors will.

Creating a winning customer community takes time and money. There’s no doubt about it. But remember what I told you in Chapter 1? So much money is wasted on customer acquisition escapades when it could be better invested elsewhere. It only makes sense to spend that money (at least a good portion of it) on deepening your relationships with existing customers. This is what community is all about—building and strengthening those relationships.

I have to tell you right upfront: Pulling it off will take a massive companywide commitment. And you can’t give up when the going gets tough. But if you do it right, your community will become the linchpin of unbreakable customer loyalty and an unmistakable competitive advantage.

In my work with clients, I’ve come to recognize five distinct benefits that come from building customer communities. They are:

1.   Dramatically Improved Customer Value. Quite simply, with increased customer loyalty, increased perception of your brand, and improved connection with your customers comes greater revenues and healthier profits.

2.   More Effective Referral Generation. Many organizations attempt to foster word-of-mouth through their marketing programs. My experience has shown that organizations with strong customer communities experience more authentic and organic word-of-mouth. In a nutshell, your customers begin to do the work you used to do.

3.   Greater Understanding of Your Customers’ Voice. If your community is thriving and your structures allow for open and ongoing dialogue, you’ll have a true understanding of your customers’ experiences, thoughts, and feelings about your company. This type of insight allows executives and management to make effective decisions, at every level of the organization, in line with customer feedback.

4.   Improved Customer Service and Support. Here’s an interesting phenomenon: As connection to the brand and community increases, customer support and service requests may actually decrease. Customers often take on the role of problem solver or service provider. Furthermore, they are more likely to brush aside a bad experience as an anomaly, more willing to forgive and forget, and far less likely to spread negativity.

5.   Increased Customer-Focused Culture. As you begin to build your customer community, you’ll find your employees will become clearer about and have greater understanding of your business’s character, which in turn creates an increasingly customer-focused culture. Those within the organization will work together to solve customer issues and create a greater and more enriched customer experience. Entire departments will begin to work together. A fierce customer community ensures that everyone within the organization knows what customers are saying and why. More important, your customers understand that they’ve been heard and that their opinions are valued.

As you can see, some pretty powerful outcomes can result from building a customer community. I hope that I’ve convinced you to stop asking, “Should we build a customer community?” and instead gotten you to start asking, “When, where, and how do we start?” If so, read on! But before you begin creating your community, you need to know what a community is—and, more important, what it is not.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TRIBE AND A COMMUNITY

Marketers love to talk about “tribes.” Prolific author and thought leader Seth Godin first used the term as a business analogy in his book of the same name (Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us). There he argues that success in an increasingly connected world comes from finding and cultivating your tribe—your legion of followers. Godin suggests that the future of companies and individuals will be determined by how well they build and connect with their tribes. I respect Godin tremendously and have learned much from him over the past decade. While having dinner together a few years ago, he quizzed me about my own tribe. Since that night, though, I’ve wondered whether he really meant “communities” when he said “tribes.”

Alan Weiss—probably the most prolific consultant on the planet, author of more than fifty books (as well as the foreword to this one), and a thought leader of the same caliber as Godin—confirmed what I was thinking. He suggested to me that Godin may have painted himself into a corner by using the wrong term. Weiss believes that tribes are homogenous, whereas communities are heterogeneous. He wrote a very interesting post that elaborates on his view:

Tribes are exclusionary. They recognize their own members’ similarities and common background, and tend to take captives or slaves, generally seeing others as enemies at worst and inferiors at best. A famous experiment with devoted Starbucks users and Dunkin’ Donuts users found that no one in either group would agree to switch brands or environment—they were true tribes, derogatory and condescending about the other. (“I felt I was intruding in someone’s fancy living room in Starbucks.” “Do you realize that in Dunkin’ Donuts you can’t get soy milk in your latté?”)

Communities are inclusionary. They are characterized by common attitudes, interests, and goals. Religion, beliefs, kinship, and opinions can differ starkly in communities and, in fact, give them vibrancy and dynamism, allowing for continued experimentation and growth. They do not hold long-term animosities against other communities, and those within them shift in opinion and allegiance as time goes by and learning occurs.²

Godin and Weiss both make interesting points, and I actually think they are both right. You can build a tribe, or you can build a community. However, you need to be deliberate in your actions because they are not the same, and each requires very different tactical and strategic considerations. This is not generally understood. In fact, most otherwise-savvy marketers who talk about their tribe-building efforts are actually building communities or vice versa. Confused? Don’t be. You’ll start to understand as we examine one well-known and popular tribe.

Learning from Abercrombie & Fitch—a Quintessential Tribe

If you’ve ever walked into an Abercrombie & Fitch store, you know immediately whether you fit into its tribe. Real people stand in the windows, acting as live mannequins; every employee somehow looks the same (guys are buff, with chiseled chins, and the girls seem to have come straight out of Seventeen magazine); music pulsates through the store. Like McDonald’s, an Abercrombie in Detroit looks no different from an Abercrombie in San Francisco. These affectations are deliberate attempts to make certain people feel comfortable and energized, and others excluded.

Abercrombie goes to great lengths to build its tribe in this manner. And it works. Every time I’ve entered one of these stores it is packed with teenage boys and girls who are piling the debt on Mom and Dad’s credit cards. Most of the kids shopping at Abercrombie resemble the employees who are helping them find the right size pants.

For me, walking into an Abercrombie is not a comfortable fit. Will they take my money, as an outsider? Sure. A&F is more than happy to have a transactional relationship with someone like me. But I’ll never associate and connect with the tribe like someone who matches the corporate character that Abercrombie is working to have a relationship with.

Marketers who want to build a tribe use aspects of the principle of character. They know it’s not as important for their company to resonate with everyone as it is to ensure that it resonates with the customers with whom they are trying to connect. They are very clear about who fits well into their group, who they are marketing to, and who has the greatest potential of becoming loyal to their brand. These marketers take great care in tailoring their customer experience toward the ideal customer. There’s no mistaking it; Abercrombie is entirely sure about its intent. This is tribal mentality at its best, and it’s hard to argue with the success of Abercrombie & Fitch.

The Tribe Leader’s Mistake

Rewind a few years. Abercrombie & Fitch, a company with a long history, found itself on the brink of bankruptcy close to the date of its 100th birthday. Limited Brands purchased the company and decided to make apparel the main focus. The new management hired the young, energetic Mike Jeffries and put him in charge of reinvigorating the brand.³ Jeffries knew exactly the type of company he wanted to build: He became obsessed with generating a “sexy and emotional experience” for customers. According to one article, “When he took the reins of the company with the moose logo in 1992, thirty-six stores generated approximately $50 million in annual sales. By 2012 the company had grown to include more than 1,000 stores with annual sales surpassing $4.5 billion.”⁴

The rise was astonishing. Jeffries, however, took his obsession a bit too far. He made headlines in early 2013 when some shocking things that he had said a few years earlier made their way into the media. In 2006, Jeffries had commented that Abercrombie specifically marketed only to “cool and good-looking people.”⁵ While remarks like this seem odd, harming, and disgraceful—which by any stretch of the imagination they are—he was actually simply saying that Abercrombie is exclusionary. This, by definition, is the very nature of a tribe.

On the surface, Jeffries’s comments may have simply been honest; he was articulating the customers he wanted to attract and develop a long-term relationship with. His critical error, though, was that you can’t be super obvious about your intent when you’re solely focused on building a tribe, unless you are able to do it altruistically. Being exclusionary is okay, and in some cases the more exclusionary the better, but to outright say that “we don’t want a huge segment of the population to shop here because they might not be their ideal weight, super popular, or the best-looking kid in the class”—this kind of comment does more damage than good to the well-being of the brand.

Prior to Jeffries’s comments, Abercrombie’s success was impressive. Early 2014 revenues, however, show a decrease in sales.⁶ The company announced it might have to cut pricing to try and win back teenage customers in an intensely competitive environment. Has the tribe leader’s mistake caught up with him? Time will tell. Thankfully, there’s a better way.

THE CROSSFIT COMMUNITY

So let’s get back to Greg Glassman’s story. When he founded CrossFit Inc. and CrossFit.com, he did so because he believed strongly that traditional organized fitness was broken—and he was determined to change things. Glassman’s response to the problem was the CrossFit model, which he developed based on “constantly varied, high-intensity, functional movements.”⁷ My jujitsu instructor first introduced me to CrossFit in 2006. After my first workout, which consisted of a half dozen rounds of 200-meter sprints and 21 kettlebell swings, I vomited all over the road.

My puking episode is considered to be an initiation ritual into the world of CrossFit. In fact, CrossFit’s own mascot is named Pukie. Pukie is a cartoon clown who, having just completed a CrossFit workout, is crouching over and vomiting violently. Another caricature, described as Uncle Rhabdo, shows a clown who has contracted rhabdomyolysis, or “rhabdo.” (Rhabdomyolysis—which occurs when muscles are worked so hard that the fibers break down, releasing the protein myoglobin into the bloodstream—is a health concern that’s become associated with CrossFit over the years. In extreme cases, it can lead to kidney failure.) Badly bruised and totally exhausted, Uncle Rhabdo is shown hooked up to a dialysis machine with his kidneys and intestines hanging out.

On the surface, you might not consider these to be the best character portrayals of an organization, but here’s the interesting thing: Loyal fans and “customers” of CrossFit recognize these characters as satirical caricatures designed to remind them to slow down and not kill themselves while following a CrossFit training regimen. In short, CrossFit’s community has embraced these two clowns.

How CrossFit Built Its Community

The CrossFit model is simple. Every day, people from all over the world visit CrossFit.com, where Glassman and his team post a Workout of the Day, or WOD. Anyone can look each day (at Crossfit.com, for free), complete the workout, and share results. You don’t need to be a paying member to take part in the community. Many CrossFit junkies still complete their daily workouts in their home garages and enjoy all the benefits that come along with participating in the community. Others prefer to pay to visit one of CrossFit’s independently owned CrossFit gyms. As CrossFit’s community grew, so did the size of the brand—exponentially.

In the early days of CrossFit, the daily workout was posted on the website (referred to as the “main site”—you’ll see why this is important in a moment). Individuals completed workouts on their own and then reported back to CrossFit.com, sharing their times or scores on the individual tasks. As months passed, members started to benchmark themselves against each other. Then they discussed movements, form, and technique. And then—while members remained competitive and mostly self-interested in the massive personal gains they derived from taking part—they started cultivating a natural instinct to push each other, to hold each other accountable, and to strive for the greater good of others. The community was born.

As the CrossFit brand grew, the model morphed, but it continued to rely more on the people and less on the equipment. For example, organized CrossFit gyms routinely meet in a local park, parking lot, or track. It doesn’t matter. Can you imagine paying a monthly gym fee and going to an empty warehouse with nothing more than a couple of pull-up bars, some weights, and a lot of open space? This is part of CrossFit’s brilliance. There are no mirrors, no vast lines of elliptical machines with built-in channel changers, no televisions, no “healthy smoothies” to be consumed after your workout.

When members go to CrossFit, they are there to do two things: Complete a WOD and take part in the community. They’re not there to increase just their own strength, but also the collective strength of the community. CrossFit members pay hefty fees to their gym, but they also take pride in their ownership of that space. They clean up after a workout and keep the place tidy and clean. And when a member is the last person to complete the WOD, he or she doesn’t need to fret. Soon a dozen people will be cheering their fellow CrossFit member on. I’ve seen it happen, numerous times.

Glassman started CrossFit in 2000 with a bare-bones website and a single gym in Santa Cruz, California, with very limited equipment. (The website hasn’t drastically changed, by the way, nor has the process; you visit the website, you do the workout, you post your time.) In 2006 there were eighteen CrossFit gyms in the United States. As of this writing, there are more than 8,500 gyms worldwide. That’s a 47,122 percent increase in just eight short years. This community started from a single seed and grew into an incredibly lush forest.

Cultivating Tribe Lingo

During its community-building endeavors, CrossFit embraced certain aspects of a tribe mentality. For instance, tribes often use very specific language, which simultaneously generates a sense of connection and exclusion. Only members “in the club” truly understand what the language means and how to use it. CrossFit has done this exceptionally well. Examples of CrossFit’s language include:

•   WOD: Workout of the Day. “Have you completed the WOD yet?” “Today’s WOD is …”

•   AMRAP: As Many Rounds/Reps As Possible. “Complete AMRAP of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 16 squats in 20 minutes.”

•   Fran, Angie, Barbie, Cindy, Grace, and others: The Benchmark Girls. These workouts, with female names, are some of the hardest CrossFit has to offer. Cindy, for example, requires you to complete 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 15 squats with AMRAP in 20 minutes.

•   Box: A CrossFit facility. “My box has about thirty members. You should come check it out.”

•   Main Site: Crossfit.com. Many of the 8,500 affiliate gyms also post a daily workout. When one CrossFitter asks another if he or she has completed the daily workout, the other person typically asks whether the fellow CrossFitter is following “main site WODs” or another source.

It’s important to keep in mind that the language shared by a community often isn’t created by the company, but rather by customers interacting with the brand. That said, if your customers create the language, it’s up to you to be aware of what’s happening and to begin using the language as a part of your daily lexicon. Do your customers use specific language and lingo during their interactions with your organization? If not, could you build words, short forms, or phrases around your products and services?

Embracing Tribal Tactics

Similar to Apple, CrossFit maintains a stringent “us vs. them” mentality that creates a more tribal than communal atmosphere. CrossFit has maintained a long-standing battle with the standard organized fitness industry. Its members refer to normal, everyday gyms as “globo gyms”—the typical big-box gym where guys spend more time looking in the mirror doing bicep curls than they do actually getting into shape. Brand communities derive power from being exclusionary. It’s important to be insular. But real power comes from also remaining open and welcoming to newcomers.

Those who are even mildly enchanted by the idea of CrossFit are usually hooked after the first WOD. There’s something special about a workout that takes your body to the brink of exhaustion. I was both an avid and a rabid member of the CrossFit community for years. My wife maintains that it seems to be more exclusionary, cult-oriented, and tribal than community-focused, but I disagree. CrossFit’s strength as an organization lies in the fact that it employs community structure using tribal tactics. The pain created by doing a four-minute Fran WOD, or pushing a tractor tire down the road, creates fierce camaraderie among CrossFit members. In return, they refer everyone they know and are relentless in trying to get them to join the community.

Okay, I guess that does sound like a cult, but CrossFit has done what most businesses wish they could do. CrossFit has created a devout community that in turn has translated into greater customer retention, incredible word-of-mouth, rapid growth, and extreme profits. It’s hard to argue that this isn’t a worthwhile goal for any organization. The question, though, is whether there is a systematic formula that an organization can follow to build a similar brand community.

The answer is yes, and I’ll show you how it’s done.

BUILDING YOUR CUSTOMER COMMUNITY

The success of customer communities comes from strong leadership, a forward-thinking vision, and the execution of a strategic plan. I’m going to help you develop your own roadmap.

Step One: Define Your Strategy

If you were to imagine a future where your organization had a thriving customer community, what would that look like? Here are a few questions to ask when developing your community strategy:

•   What are your long-term objectives for your business? How do you envision a customer community helping you reach those objectives?

•   What are your objectives for building a customer community?

•   What would reaching those objectives mean to your organization? How would your organization benefit from a customer community?

•   Who are the key decision makers within your organization that need to be on board with your community-building strategy?

•   Is everyone within the organization committed to your customer community objectives and your desired future state? If not, how are you going to convince them it’s time to get on board? (Besides giving them this book!)

•   What issues or barriers might prevent you from building a customer community? How can you address those challenges?

•   Whose budget will support building a customer community?

•   Who will initially manage your community-building efforts?

The strategy for building a thriving customer community must start at the top and trickle down into every facet of your organization. This is why it is important to identify the decision makers who will drive this process—be they department managers, key executives, or others in the company. It’s also why you must define your character first. Your corporate strategy is important, but your positioning, key character traits, mission, and values will drive your community efforts much further. Once you have defined your vision, you will more easily be able to define what community structures you need in place, and why, and how to effectively manage them.

One of the most famous examples of a successful brand community is Harley-Davidson. When Harley-Davidson found itself struggling in the early 1980s, a group of executives made a bid to purchase the company. Those executives decided to embrace the communities that already existed. They recognized how motorcycle club members and enthusiasts were attached to their motorcycles. They realized that a culture of loyalty already existed for the product, but not necessarily to their brand. Harley-Davidson sought to build itself as the company that not just made motorcycles, but that also truly understood the motorcyclists and the culture of riding.

This strategy and vision had legs—or perhaps wheels. But much like the CrossFit community, the Harley-Davidson community evolved on its own. Employees were required to run customer events, and this experience gave them a greater understanding of the customer’s needs, desires, and aspirations. A direct line of customer feedback was born. Harley-Davidson embraced the relationship, showing customers what it really meant to be loved, and customers responded. Harley-Davidson is the largest motorcycle company in the world, with annual revenues in the billions of dollars. More important, by truly coming to grips with its own character, and with an accurate understanding of its most valuable customer, the company was able to put the structures in place to build one of the most emulated customer communities of our time.

Step Two: Choose Your Tools

Much like chasing the Holy Grail, many companies chase the Next Big Thing when it comes to building their communities. In today’s day and age, social media is the Next Big Thing. Many experts out there promise organizations that social media will be the savior to all their customer communication goals. I have serious issues with sweeping assurances like that. Social media is important, yes—but it’s not the most important consideration when crafting your community. Building a customer community doesn’t mean you simply hop on the Web, create social media profiles on all the big sites (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest), or add a discussion forum or blog to your website and call it day. Yet these are the types of knee-jerk reactions made by leaders of organizations or folks in the marketing department when they decide that their companies would benefit from building a customer community. Many brands actually end up hurting themselves by jumping on the social wagon and using the tools to incessantly blast customers with new products and promotions.

Many social media experts claim that social media closes the feedback loop by providing us a way to be in touch with our customers and their needs, desires, and aspirations on a 24/7 basis. The problem, though, is that this logic confuses community building with customer feedback. Both are important, but they are entirely different animals. Obviously, a more effective feedback loop allows for a greater customer experience, and better customer service, but this is a poor substitute for building a customer community.

Online community building should, most likely, be only one small component of your overall community-building efforts. (Remember: The CrossFit community was primarily built off-line, and Harley-Davidson’s community was built long before we had Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.) The most important question to ask yourself is: “Does this product/service/tool help us reach our overall community objectives?” If the answer is yes, by all means do it. But also ask yourself what else you can do to broaden the reach of these efforts.

The key here is simple: Don’t be fooled that social media, or even the Internet for that matter, will be your shining light toward building a strong customer community. Understand the business you’re in and the type of structures that would allow your brand to create a greater sense of community among your customers. It might all happen off-line. Don’t be tricked into ignoring the humble local newspaper. Don’t be tricked into ignoring the power of direct mail or a printed newsletter, either. The Web offers us tools, to be sure, but it is not the be-all and end-all solution.

Step Three: Cultivate Your Community (Not Just Your Brand)

In Chapter 3, I introduced the principle of character and said that it was similar to the concept of positioning, which brand experts have been talking about since before I was even born. The concept of positioning is simple: Companies need to find a way to differentiate their brand from those of their competition and continuously present that differentiation to customers in a way that connects and resonates with them.

Typically, communities are cultivated by bringing people together around shared interests, values, and beliefs, and that’s fine. Take an online discussion forum, for example; there are millions and millions of them. You can find a group of people connected around any specific hobby, value, or belief that you could possibly imagine. Traditional brand “communities” are built under the assumption that it’s enough for customers to simply be connected to a brand—that this connection, in and of itself, can serve as the driving force for the community.

I believe this logic is fundamentally flawed. If you’re a mustard company, my love for mustard simply isn’t enough to keep me engaged in your community long enough to build my loyalty, regardless of what sort of community-building efforts you employ. I believe there’s a more powerful way to bind your customers and cultivate stronger customer community. For instance, when I’m connected to other mustard lovers, and we’re able to discuss what mustards we’ve tasted, or how we’ve last used mustard, or what we’re going to do with mustard tomorrow, then the community starts to form. It evolves because of human connection. The secret is to put the right tools and systems in place to allow those shared interests, values, and beliefs to spread from one member of the community to another.

Step Four: Let Go to Grow

Remember when I said that the best communities are insular and present an “us vs. them” mentality while also being open and welcoming to those who are new? Communities aren’t always meant to be corporate-owned structures where the conversation is dictated and controlled. They are meant to grow organically and every aspect (from discussions to levels of participation) should be allowed to grow organically as well. Communities should be dynamic and shaped by your customers—not by you.

Here’s an example: Earlier this year when I purchased a new Audi Q5 SUV, I found myself with a couple of questions not answered in the owner’s manual. A quick Google search led me to AudiWorld.com, a private community created and operated by Audi aficionados. As of this writing, the site had 277,890 members, 23 million individual posts, and more than 2.7 million discussion topics. Even if Audi wanted to, it probably couldn’t create a community like this. Well, in any event, it would be challenging. But that’s okay. A forum that isn’t created by your organization carries a more powerful level of authenticity than one that is. If your company gets to a point where your customers are creating their own forums to discuss your products and services in a positive way, then congrats! You’ve discovered the Holy Grail of online community building.

Some corporate entities would run to legal to try and have everything shut down. This is a control issue. But more important than having ultimate control is understanding that when loyalty to your brand has grown to a point where customer evangelists have taken it upon themselves to encourage participation and discussion—about you and without you—have the courage to let them run with it. Sometimes, you have to let go to grow.

The same phenomenon has happened with companies such as Jeep, Dell, and Disney. Letting go can be scary and daunting, but it represents one of the most powerful aspects of community growth. Don’t dictate; participate. Your community will be built by real people with real human emotions. This undoubtedly means that disagreements will occur, and tempers will flare. It’s to be expected; your goal is to do your best to keep things civil—and trust the process.