We all long to belong (review of Mark Schaefer's Belonging to the Brand)

I've been a longtime listener of Mark Schaefer 's Marketing Companion podcast. And I've read all his books. His latest book - Belonging to the Brand - is his best, most timely and most personal.

Mark leads off his book by revealing that a bully once attempted to molest him at school. Mark got away but the damage was done. “In that moment, I transformed from a happy little boy to a 12-year-old living in everlasting terror. I spent my life at school cowering in lonely corners, a living shadow."

Mark was withdrawn, isolated and lonely. It got worse when his parents moved him to a private school. “I was ignored. I was more alone than ever and sinking into depression.”

But then on a whim, Mark audtioned for his high school musical. And he was cast in the lead role. Mark finally found his community and a place where he felt like he belonged. Community changed the trajectory of Mark's life.

“What would I have become if I had lived in a world of unremitting loneliness instead of experiencing the validating joy of this high school community? If I had not climbed out of the shadows in that very crucial moment, would I have excelled in college? Ascended the corporate ladder? Started my own business? Would I be writing this book for you?”

A staggering number of kids today report feeling unremitting loneliness. Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released results from a 2021 survey that found nearly one in three high school girls in the U.S. have seriously considered attempting suicide. More than half of teen girls - 57 per cent - reported feeling "persistently sad or hopeless". Other sobering statistics - 17 per cent of teen girls say they were bullied at school, 20 per cent say they were bullied over social media and 18 per cent say they have faced sexual violence.

And then there's this - nearly 70 per cent of LGBQ+ students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and more than half had poor mental health during the past 30 days.

Community may not be a cure-all for everyone but there are likely many lonely teens - who like Mark - long to belong. Community could be their lifeline.

While I was an introverted, painfully shy, socially awkward and super-sensitive kid who never found a community, I was incredibly lucky to have a grandfather who went out of his way to be a great and kind companion. Reading Mark's book made me realize how lucky I was.

Here's my review of Belonging to the Brand...

I realize now it was never about the roast beef and pie.

I spent two summers working for Shell Canada cutting grass, painting pipes and burying dead gophers out on the industrial end of town.

On Fridays, my grandfather would pull up in his Volkswagen Rabbit and we’d go out for lunch. We’d drive past McDonald’s and KFC and head over to the Royal Canadian Legion branch a few blocks from my grandparents' home.

The legion served a roast beef feast with a mountain of mashed potatoes, gravy by the gallon, a side salad smothered in Italian dressing and a wedge of pie. My grandfather would often smuggle back an extra dessert. I was a growing boy who apparently needed to eat half a pie for lunch – three quarters if my grandfather didn’t have room for his dessert.

I was always the youngest one in the dining hall. Yet I was probably older than all the veterans when they went overseas to fight in World War II and went years without eating roast beef and pie (my grandfather never again ate mutton after serving overseas).

No one traded war stories during lunch. The veterans sat alone and ate in silence. It was as quiet as a library.

Yet for the veterans and my grandfather, this was a community. What they’d seen, done and survived forged a bond. They needed each other’s company.?

Everyone longs to belong, says Mark Schaefer, marketing expert and author of?Belonging to the Brand.

Smart companies, organizations and entrepreneurs are figuring out how to satisfy that longing. Their move to a community-based business model is rewriting the rules of marketing, says Schaefer.

“Helping a person belong to something represents the ultimate marketing achievement. If a customer opts-in to an engaging, supportive and relevant brand community, we no longer need to lure them into our orbit with ads and search engine optimization, right? What we used to consider marketing is essentially over.”

Community was the first and is now the last great marketing strategy, says Schaefer.?“It’s the only marketing strategy people really want. Intellectually, psychologically and emotionally, customers need it.

“A customer committed to a relevant brand community doesn’t require any further convincing, coupons or coaxing to love us. They’ve become an engaged advocate for our brand, sustained through the purpose they find through our community. Moving customers from follower to audience to community is a process they will actually embrace!”

There are three distinguishing features of a community, says Schaefer. Members have a connection to each other. They have a shared reason for belonging to the community. And the community has relevance to their lives. “A community will dissolve if its purpose becomes irrelevant,” says Schaefer.

Most brand communities – upwards of 70 per cent – fail, says Schaefer. Why the high mortality rate? Companies confuse community members with customers, they sell instead of share, they talk at instead of with members and they refuse to give up control.?Companies also waste big money building their own online communities that no one visits. Use Facebook Groups, LinkedIn, Twitter Chats, Discord, Reddit or other popular community destinations instead, advises Schaefer.

Schaefer includes case studies and entire chapters on thriving brand communities, including Dana Malstaff’s Boss Mom community. It’s a community for women who want to start a business and a family. Malstaff built Boss Mom into a half-million dollar business in the span of a couple years, with no sales or marketing team. “That’s worth repeating,” says Schaefer. “Dana’s marketing budget is zero. She runs no ads. There are no sales promotions. She had reached a six-figure salary in her first eight months, and at that point her business had more than doubled every year.”

And then there are the brand community juggernauts, like Sephora’s Beauty Insider with nearly six million members. IKEA, Lego, Harley Davidson and Nike are other companies that have created hugely successful brand communities that meet online and off, discussing, reviewing and co-creating new products.

So if anyone longs to belong to a community that shares an interest in reading, writing and reviewing business books, let’s talk. Discussions over slices of pie would be an added bonus.

Bonus content

Here are 10 benefits of a brand community, according to Mark Schaefer:

Brand differentiation. Community gives you a unique way to communicate and care for your customers. “Product, price, promotions – so easy to copy. But the bond of community is an obvious and elegant opportunity to create a differentiated customer experience.”

Market relevance. “A community is a continuous conversation that reveals opportunities for new relevance.”

Speed of information. “An online community creates the platform for instantaneous and real-time data collection and information dissemination.”

Trust. “Brand communities can spread information quickly, but more important, that information is believed.”

The center of advocacy. “The customer is the marketer. Recommendations and content share dform friends and family forge the brand identity, demonstrate loyalty and drive sales.”

Brand loyalty. “Strong ties between members in a community also create a long-lasting emotional connection to the brand.”

The soul of co-creation. “Many innovative brands are stepping back as the product development authority and instead are involving customers. Through community, you can build a movement of people ready to collaborate and contribute in massive ways.”

Community as a service. “Access to a group of people is valuable enough to be considered a marketable product.”

Community connection to culture. “Younger audiences are leaving public-facing social platforms and flocking to smaller, more intimate online destinations. Digital marketing expert Sara Wilson calls these digital campfires.”

A solution for consumer data. “In the guarded walls of a brand community, customers freely express their personality, values and product preferences, creating a rich, new first-hand data source. This can be part of the solution for a post-cookie world that can enable new approaches to customer segmentation.”

And finally...I've worked for six employers in my career. Dofasco, a steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario - had far and away the strongest sense of community among employees. There was the annual Christmas party at Copps Coliseum (the downtown arena). The rec park open to all employees and home of annual Canada Day celebrations and fireworks. Incredibly generous profit sharing. And there were the people like Vytas Beniusis.

I was home with my two kids in the summer of 2005. The three of us swung by the office for a visit. I worked with Vytas, who was one of the staff photographers. He was a great photographer and a really good guy.

Vytas grabbed his camera and offered to take a few pics of my kids. A few pics turned into an hour long photo shoot in his studio. Vytas could not have been more kind and gracious to my kids. When I returned to the office a few weeks later, a stack of prints were on my desk. At some point, I'll be handing those prints down to my kids.

Vytas passed away in 2010 when he was just 63 years old.

So if someone drops by the office with their kids, be like Vytas. Be generous and gracious. Offer to take a few pics. That moment may be what your colleague remembers about you and the place you once worked together years ago with that truly great sense of community.