THE 9 TYPES OF BRAND COMMUNITY
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ShareThisWritten by Andrew Lockhart on April 7, 2008 in Brands, Communities, Social Media.
A couple of weeks ago, Sean Moffitt at Buzz Canuck wrote a blog post that presented 9 types of
brand community based on their positioning on two axis, one of exclusivity and one of
involvement. I found this to be a fantastic way to dissect and describe brand communities and
wanted to explore the model a little further by attempting to define the lines between the various
levels.
Exclusivity
As I examined the levels of exclusivity (low, medium and high), I attempted to identify the
divisions between the three levels and I came to the conclusion that there are actually four, which
are as follows:
1. Open - These are communities that do not require registration in order to participate.
Examples of these include message boards that allow anonymous posting and blogs that
do not require registration in order to comment. To be honest, I can’t think of many brand
communities that fall into this category as most marketers can’t resist collecting consumer
information although you may be able to make a good argument for Facebook Pages and
other similar social network groups to be included in this category as the brand creating
the group has no ownership over any of the users’ data and many do not even require the
user to join the page or group in order to participate.
2. Registration - These are by far the most common form of brand communities and require
nothing from the user but registration.
3. Purchase - These are communities that require either the purchase of a product or a
membership in order to join in addition to registration.
4. Outside Selection - These are communities where members cannot self-select
themselves into the community. They must be selected to join by the organizer of the
community or invited by an existing member. Communities in beta mode are excluded
from this as their exclusivity is either an attempt to generate buzz or genuinely a function
of technical limitations.
Interaction
As I attempted to define the lines between the levels of interaction with communities, it became
apparent to me that the level of interaction is rarely consistent across all community members.
Even in the communities where a certain level of interaction is required in order to maintain
membership, there is always a huge spectrum between the users who are performing the bare
minimum and the most active participants. As a result, it makes more sense for the model to
become an explanation of the types of brand community members rather than the types of brand
communities. In defining the differences between members’ interaction levels, I decided to use a
pared down version of Forrester’s six categories of participation.
1. Spectators - This category could be considered a combination of the Joiners and
Spectators in the Forrester model. These are people who will join a community, but will
not contribute anything, preferring to consume the contributions of others without joining
the conversation.
2. Critics - These members are people who will respond to discussion threads, tag content
and post comments as well as ratings and reviews.
3. Creators - These members are nearly always the most active members of the community
and contribute by writing articles (often as a way to start a discussion thread) and posting
their own photos, videos or artwork.
Upon initial inspection, it would appear that now I am mapping traits of a community member
(interaction) against traits of a community (exclusivity), but I would argue that the level of
exclusivity of a community also represents the level of commitment on the member’s behalf prior
to joining, with the only exception being potential members of an outside selection community.
However, in most cases I would say that the influencer status required to gain an invite to those
communities require a prior commitment far beyond a simple purchase.
Below is a diagram showing the intersections between the three levels of involvement and the
four levels of prior commitment. The arrows indicate increasing levels of potential brand impact
(both positive and negative). While it is fairly intuitive that a more involved member can do much
more to boost or damage your brand, the level of prior commitment also corresponds to the level
of brand impact because as the level of commitment increases, the exclusivity of the community
increases, thereby providing each member with a higher degree of influence (both on and offline).
For example, people are much more likely to listen to someone who they know owns a Harley
Davidson (by virtue of their membership in that owners’ community) than an anonymous post on
a Harley Davidson discussion forum or blog. Also, in addition to having more potential impact, I
would expect community members to demand more involvement from the brand as they move
upwards and to the right through the categorizations.
The above dynamic creates an interesting balancing act for those setting out to create brand
communities. I believe most brand managers if asked would say that they would prefer brand
community members in the upper right part of the chart., but before a brand sets out to recruit or
create a community of those high impact members, they need to consider whether or not they are
willing to devote the internal resources necessary to continue to feed the demands of those
members and respond appropriately if a negative groundswell does occur.