Community is the inevitable future

Quick Snapshot: Per Gallup, people who feel connected to a community report 2.5x higher life satisfaction than those who feel isolated. And as algorithms continue to push into silos, our human-to-human connections will be even more important to our happiness. Brands will become instrumental in fostering these relationships.

Brand and Individual marketing has fundamentally shifted, forever. You’re probably like, “well duh.” And yeah, well duh. But I’m not talking about AI or influencer or consumer identity. I’m more talking about all of it and… none of it? Cryptic. What I mean: marketing is no longer about the product, idea, talent, service, etc… it’s about the community being served. Audience-first strategies isn’t novel, but it’s more than that. It’s a paradigm shift at the DNA level. The most successful brands are now a vessel for connection, creating a space for people to engage, with a nice little product or service to add in there.

Marketing has evolved quite a bit since the Mad Men days. In the before-times, you’d have men (and a few women) study a product, find an audience, write some compelling copy, create some product-forward commercials, and boom, marketed. And slowly over time, they started investing in brand building, telling stories, creating emotional connections, and nurturing loyalty. And then the internet came along, and everything went hyper-speed with data-driven targeting, personalization, hundreds of channels, influencers, endless content, etc etc. And today (and tomorrow), the proliferation of AI will only exacerbate the speed and sophistication at which marketing will happen. And with that comes a lot of stuff (faster turns, more content, more channels, more influencers, more and more of everything). Some of it good and a lot of it overwhelming, frustrating, disturbing, just bad and pointless.

Because of this, we’ll instinctually turn to intimate, human connection. The most important thing to us will be our community. It won’t be the products we own, the services we get, even the experiences we have. It’ll be the people we surround ourselves with. The brands that get this are making big shifts to their strategies, the brands that don’t… well, maybe you sell electricity or crops or something else undeniably important (and good on you for it).

In those before-times and then throughout the past several decades, building and nurturing community was a tertiary, nice-to-have tactic… TACTIC. It was a small (and often forgotten) piece to the bigger puzzle. A Facebook group here, reacting to social comments there, a few Reddit threads, a loyalty card, hosting a live event…The strategy was about keeping consumers engaged and making them feel special with the end-goal being retention. That strategy is done. These moments are the whole game now. Sure, lots of brands are touting community and values, but it feels more like a marketing gimmick, like something they should say because they know it’s something people want to hear. And it’s something people want to hear because it’s something people want. Hard stop.

It used to be (and still is for sure) that consumers bought a product because it made them feel something and helped them be better. They joined a gym not because they love gym architecture but because it’d help them transform their bodies. They bought makeup because it’d help them be more confident. They bought a certain car because they knew it would give them an ego boost to be better than their friends who couldn’t afford it. Product selection was about access to a deeper, individual emotion. And I believe that brands, products, marketing are still about that… but it’s bigger and more important than that. It’s about access with others that underlies it all. Community, belonging, togetherness is the bedrock on which everything else builds. I only feel better about my body, my confidence, my ego BECAUSE I now have community, too.

It’s giving Maslow’s hierarchy of needs… this is stability and safety, superseding everything else. And brands cannot ignore this fundamental need we humans now feel. It is everything.

Okay, I’ve diatribed (made that up) long enough about the importance of community-first marketing, now I want to share some thoughts on how brands can stop just saying they’re about community and structurally changing their business to support their actual product… their communities…

• Orgs (especially big ones) have lots of hierarchy and for some departments, that makes sense. But for marketing orgs, hierarchies impede innovative thinking and slow down the process. We should be flattening internal hierarchies so we can be more nimble, responding quickly and directly to our communities and making more monumental, substantial organizational shifts that mean more to what we’re hearing and what they’re experiencing.
• Make our marketing much more conversational. Community is the family you choose. And you talk to your family. There’s a dialogue, a back and forth. It’s not one of us talking and the other just listening. Or come to think of it, lots of families are like this… but not families we want to be part of. We’re in a close relationship with our consumers, we call them fans, but we should treat them like friends… regularly engage on social, interact casually on Reddit, check in via email, create inside jokes, share memes, etc. etc.
• May feel a bit awkward at the start, but we need to be making our employees (those that want to of course) brand channel influencers. Influencers (capital I) have really changed the game of creator-audience expectations. Their more intimate, less curated approach is what people resonate with. It’s this style that creates community because they feel part of something. It’s the access that builds these bonds. In order to connect at this level, brands must provide a different level of insider-insight, one that’s led by real people, doing real things, sharing real stories, building real human-to-human connections.
• We have to make our brand and branding feel larger than “just a product.” It’s a little cliche, but we have to be thinking about our brand as a movement, something with deeper and larger impact. We’re not the island, we’re the ocean (terrible). We need to be giving our audiences something to emotionally believe in and root for. And trust, people don’t root for products or services, they root for other people, for change, for betterment.
• Get into the chat (and by chat I mean the DMs, the group texts, the slack threads), wherever people connect with each other. Make good reasons to be there. And I don’t mean like bypass people’s device security and embed some branded texts or deploy a geo-targeted notification,  I mean create and react to culture that’s so interesting (and possibly controversial) that it breaks through all the way down to local, 1:1 engagements. This is hard, sure, but it means pushing ourselves and our content beyond our traditional boundaries and thinking, what’s really going to get people talking to each other about us… and it’s not a stylized picture of a T-shirt. What’re we doing to really create dialogue. And even better if that dialogue is about how the brand is supporting these folks in some way. As if they were just the impetus for the conversation but the conversation itself is about something more. And it doesn’t have to be an earth turning move, it can be niche and just for your fans, think small but arresting.
• Communities are intelligence systems - brands have so much data and most of that data is being used to understand their audiences so they can make better marketing or sell more. Instead we should be using that data to foster better connections and engagement. Like what do they care about, how can we make things and put ideas out there that get them activated and excited.
• Somewhat hand-in-hand to responsibly mining data (i think that’s possible), let’s bring our consumers (our community) in as collaborators. This is a reciprocal relationship, always has been, but in the past we’ve heavily lopsided towards one side gives and the other side gets. No more. This is a give-and-take-and-a-take-and-give. We’re co-creating content, inspiring each other, making new things together. Our consumers are active participants in our story, helping us shape our collective world, giving them ownership in what we’re building, and deepening the stakes.
• Give up control. Much easier said than done. Our brands are precious to us, we want to nurture and protect, but sorry, we live in 2025. It’s a scrappier, cringier, someone-will-always-have-an-issue world and we can’t control everything. So why try? Reject that natural instinct, train yourself out of it. Our communities grow when we empower people to grow their own communities and give them the autonomy to do it the way that makes most sense for them. Sure, let’s create some standards and guidelines, but let’s hand over some reins and let them fly (I guess like Santa in this metaphor?). Not only will communities grow, but this makes us more credible and trusted when we have quality brand advocates actively engaged, a win-win.
• Give folks a safe space to just… be. Brands ask so much of their consumers, like they already gave us their dollars, what else should they give us? Let’s stop asking them to do things (post this, show up for that, give us feedback, help us XYZ). Sure, a lot of what I said above implies requests, but let’s lower the pressure. Let’s invite people to give what they want to give. Let’s setup the environments where folks are excited to give. It’s not just a messaging thing (although, the messaging is definitely a big part of it), it’s also a vibe thing. Our spirit should be inviting and we’ll take whatever you can give us, thank-you-so-much energy.
• I’m landing on curation. Curation is a brand’s most important act of service. Whether or not consumers know it, they feel it. And they will soon really appreciate it. Laying all the groundwork of establishing a clear purpose and identity, building a relationship based on authenticity, developing trust, etc, has all led to this moment. A moment where there is just so much stuff (call back to earlier). It’s hard to take it all in, so many of us just shut down completely. All of this stuff has not only pushed us to need more human connection but it’s also created a desire for curation. Consumers are looking to brands (and people) that can help them sift through all the noise. They trust you to help them navigate through the digital trenches and give them value. Handle that with the utmost care.

Ooooof, this was a long one, and if you hung in there, I appreciate you, human-to-human. I’m not asking you to DO anything, I promise. But I will invite you (see what I did there) to be part of my community. I’m making a concerted effort to not only consistently share my thoughts and insights on marketing, community, culture, and other stuff (hopefully getting folks informed and thinking along the way), but I hope to more deeply engage with folks. Ideate together, collaborate, make cool things with people (just as I think brands should do). Not only because I think it’ll help my business (which I think it will, Dreamer Doer if you’re nasty) but I feel strongly that it’ll help me. Building and nurturing my own community will make me smarter, happier, and more fulfilled (or at least I hope it will, I guess we’ll see). So DM me, text me, email me, beep me if you wanna reach me. I’m here.