Why brands are so obsessed with community

0:07This episode of Stylish is made for summer, not some damage. Let's stop normalising sun tanning and end the trend.

0:20Hello, we are back with another Friday episode. If you're new here, I am Madison Sullivan Thorpe and I am joined by my lovely co-host Rhiannon Joyce, otherwise known as Bad Girl Riri. As you may know by now, this is the corner of Stylish where we dive a little deeper into brand, marketing and career stories. Riri, happy Friday. Happy Friday. Also, Silly Season is seriously here. It's seriously here. And we're pretty much spending every weekend in the lead up to Silly Season together. Literally. I can't escape you. Well, you keep inviting me places. I know. So, you know, use your words wisely. You're so fun.

0:59If you see us out, guys, say hi. We did run into a few listeners at the pub on the weekend. Yeah, they were down from Sydney. Down from Sydney. Shout out to our Sydney listeners who are down in Melbourne at Mount Erica. Great to see you. Our girls and also had a spare tampon for our girl, Ray, which is always great. Oh my God. Talk about girlhood. Yeah. Saved my life. There's nothing worse when you're out and about and you don't have any tampons and it's that time of the month. Thank you. Thank you so much. I know. And I'm always the girl that has a bandaid and a tampon and I had neither because someone needed a bandaid and someone needed a tampon and I had nothing.

1:29That's okay. The girls at the pub rallied. Yeah. Thanks, stylish listeners. We love seeing you at the pub. But yeah, as Ray said, come have a chat. Okay. Word of the week. Mads, it's your turn this week. It is my turn this week. And in true Rhiannon Joy style, I'm just not really giving one word, but if I was to, I'd just say Pantone. But to extend on that, Pantone, as we know, each year release Color of the Year. And this year it was Cloud Dancer, which I mean, I read somewhere, I believe it was a New York Times article that that sounded like an 80s one hit wonder song. And I'm inclined to agree.

2:03And if you're sitting there thinking, what the hell is cloud dancer. You're not alone. I think the rest of the internet was like, what does this even mean? It's essentially just an off shade of white, which I mean, the internet responded like tsunami style. Heavy, heavy response. Some people deepened it to the point of, is this signaling our political climate? Others were saying, is this just signaling where we are in the world of fashion right now that we have no point of difference or point of view that our favorite color is white? Like, I just, I was fascinated by this choice from Pantone, particularly because it kind of feels like Oxford's word of the year.

2:43The internet usually eats this up. But I pulled a quote where Pantone described it as a lofty white whose aerated presence acts as a whisper of calm and peace in a noisy world. Interesting. It feels quite whimsical for me. It felt too whimsical for me and it kind of, sorry, Pantone, it felt like a cop out. Yeah, it's a bit lazy. Yeah. Jinx. I actually think it reminds me of a pair of running shoes. Oh, yes. I think it's the on running thing. Cloud dancer. The cloud dancer. I do love my cloud on. So instead of running, it's for dancing. That could be their next shoe. Yeah, just a strange one for me.

3:20Yeah, I did see a lot of discourse about this online. To be honest, I didn't really indulge in a lot of it. I saw the announcement and thought, huh, interesting choice. Feels a little bit one note. It's a beautiful colour. but it's also... Is it actually a colour? Is it even a colour? Yeah. That's my gripe. Yeah. That's my word of the week. I'm just, maybe my word of the week is confused followed by Pantone's colour of the year. Yeah. I think they could have definitely gone for something a bit more bold or a bit more interesting, as you said, particularly off the back of the previous years. Definitely a choice.

3:53Definitely a choice. Definitely a choice. All right, Rhi, what are we chatting about this week? Okay. Something a bit more colourful than cloud dancer. This was really colorful researching this. Kate, our senior podcast producer said she had a lot of fun researching this topic. I did as well. I know you did, Mads. So this week, we're going to explore why brands are so obsessed with community right now. We were actually in Slack talking about doing this episode a few weeks back, but then the dupe conversation really hit the zeitgeist and we said, no, we're going to do this. Yeah. Emco ripped off Sephora and that just did it in for us.

4:27Yeah, we've got to be topical. We've got to be timely. But we did want to really, really focus on the conversation around community, particularly right now, because it does feel like every single brand is fixated on building a community. It feels like community would be the buzzword in almost every boardroom right now. And I always say, and this is kind of a bit of a sledge, and I don't mean it to sound like one, that once it gets to the CEO, it's hit the mass. And I feel like every CEO would be like, what are we doing to build community? What are we doing to build community? Rhi, I guess an interesting place for us to start is that obviously we both work for Shameless Media in two different capacities, both as hosts, but you also as head of business development.

5:11And look, there's no denying that Shameless has cultivated an incredible community, both for Shameless, the podcast, Shame More, but also the other pillars being Stylish, Inherited and E-Hass, as well as the Shameless. Yeah, don't worry. Sorry, sorry. Let her take a breath. Please, Louise. And look, I guess I get to say this as someone who originally was a Shameless and Shame More fan and, you know, now in the Shameless ecosystem. And look, Ray, I can say this because I think I sit in and outside enough of Shameless to say that it does feel inherently different to other communities that we are seeing, you know, being built by brand.

5:51Can you tell us a little bit about the Shameless community as a media business? Yeah, look, I even think you can look at it beyond Shameless. I do think podcasting as a medium is inherently better designed to build in communities. Yeah. And there's a few reasons why I think that is. First and foremost, it's inherently more intimate. You're listening to your weekly podcast. You're plugging in. It feels like they're in your ears. You're laughing out loud. I do this all the time on my morning walk or when I'm running, I start laughing and people like look at you. And I love that. And I think that's what makes it first and foremost feel like you're connected to these people.

6:28You feel like you can build that parasocial relationship and it feels like a conversation with friends. The second piece to me is a lot of the time when you're opting into podcast content, you're opting into something based off your interests, your values, you're showing up to listen. And by design, that community is then being presented and created organically. Yes, because you have shared interests and values as the fellow listeners, you assume, you know, it's like-minded people listening to like-minded things, right? That's exactly why I think podcasting as a whole. Yes, I would say that we do it very well, particularly in the Australian landscape.

7:01And I'm not ashamed to say that. I'm going to say it with my chest is mad. It's because we have always valued content and community over money. Yeah. And any single time, you know, even beyond the content that we create that you guys listen to, you're listening to right now, when we do in-person events and we tap into those third spaces, which I will deepen a little bit later when we get into the conversation around how this community trend has evolved. But for the time being, you know, we have always created events. We started off with live shows, very, very host dependent. Then we've transitioned away from that and actually really focused on community events where, you know, for a live show, your community is still showing up, they're experiencing, they're engaging.

7:39It's really good to have that intimate connection in a physical setting. But what's really powerful and amazing and something I'm really proud of that we do really well as a business is actually being able to gather our community together without it being necessary for a host to be there. Yeah. And I want to talk about the Shameless Book Club for a sec because I feel that is the best example. The one you thought I was going to miss. Yeah. That's why I really jumped on that. I was like, and the Shameless Book Club. No, but the Shameless Book Club has, you know, always been incredibly community focused, even back in the days of it being a Facebook group originally.

8:10That was the core model and how people could connect over a shared love of literature. Real sign of the times there though, isn't it? Real sign of the times. You know, we had the podcast, we paused that for the time being, but we've still been able to sustain the community and the social presence. But more importantly, through our partnership with Club Sup. Yeah. And I think Sophie, who is the founder of Club Sup, has been able to really harness and capture community in a way that no one else is in Australia. It's so authentic. So when we partnered with Sophie on the Shameless Book Club collaboration and the Club Start partnership, which was, God, I'm going to say almost two years ago now, it felt really genuine.

8:45And it felt genuine because Sophie really understood our values of it being connection at its core. It's not built around brands. Yes, we integrate brands in a way, but there's a clear value exchange. So the people that are attending these events, it's at the end of the day, they're connecting over a shared love of literature. They're trying to make friends. So many girls leave these events. They exchange handles on Instagram. They create their own book clubs where they read the Shameless Book Club pics. Like it's so beautiful. I love that. It's so nice. I think what I love about that as well is in having sat front row at stylish events as well.

9:18Shout out to the series we did with New Balance at Gracie's Wine Room. But I mean, I think I was the last person to leave there because Kelsey was like packing up glasses and I started helping and I realized the time that it was. But so many people do come alone, hoping that, as we just said, like-minded people listening to like-minded things. I'm like introducing people to other people and someone's telling you they work in government, someone else is telling you they work in government. You're like, you two need a meet. And it really does foster friendship. We've spoken at length about this.

9:48As an adult, a lot of people express that being really challenging as well. Really challenging. And fundamentally for it to work from a brand perspective, that needs to be part of your business strategy, not your marketing strategy. Yeah. And I feel that's what podcasts do really well. I think that's what Shameless Media does really well. But there are so many others. I mean, happy hour touring at the moment. Shout out to Nikki and Lucy. They are pulling serious numbers. And their tour looks incredible. So entertaining. So fun. It looks like I want to go. I absolutely want to go. Also, Darling Shine, who did a Melbourne event recently.

10:19I was on the phone to Elliot Garneau, friend of the podcast who we had on the other week. he was saying it was like nothing he'd ever seen. He was like, I felt like I was at a Beyonce concert. It was infectious and everyone was dying to see them in real life. And people were laughing, people were crying. He was like, people were locked in. I love that it can foster such connection. Yes, but I don't think every brand does it well. Well, a perfect segue, Rhi, because we're going to get right into how brands become fixated on building community, how they do it well and times when they do it not so well.

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12:09Together we can end the trend of skin cancer. Thank you so much to the Cancer Council and the Australian government for making this episode of Stylish possible. Okay, so community does feel co-opted at the moment, but I do want to just establish what we're, what we define community as. For me, it's, isn't just about people clustered together, it's shared identity, shared attitudes and shared passions. We've always known it matters, but brands didn't really grasp this until the early nineties. I do want to talk about a brand who I feel is the OG and I'm really going back to my uni days here. Should we get in our time machine?

12:46Because this brand was often used as a case study at uni when we were talking about the original brands who were built on community and that is Harley Davidson. For this episode, we actually did a bit of a deep dive in a Harvard Business Review study. It was called Getting Brand Communities Right. We'll link that in the show notes for you guys. Harley Davidson didn't build a community. They actually recognized one. So they had a pre-existing community that they really wanted to tap into. They were called the Brotherhood of Riders. At the time, it was a really hostile market. Harley Davidson were losing a lot of share to international manufacturers, Japanese manufacturers, and their market share actually collapsed from 78 % to 23 % between 1973 and 1983.

13:29So a big drop. Not the stat you want over a 10-year period, is it? No, but it didn't last too long because what they actually did was they identified that the Brotherhood were basically their ticket to getting back their share. So what happened in short was they put the community inside the company. So the people who formed part of this Brotherhood, they started off as volunteers, then they ended up employing them and they became brand advocates from a word of mouth, just a genuine interest into actual employees. And what that did was actually seeded out this really beautiful culture, so much so that Harley actually required execs to spend time with riders, staffed events with employees.

14:06They treated the community as the rightful owner of the brand. It just goes to show, Ray, that community can lead to commerciality return because what we then saw was Harley-Davidson go back to its former glory of being known as the motorcycle brand. We didn't think about these, you know, Japanese bikes that were suddenly coming through. We were back to going, think motorcycle, think Harley-Davidson. I love that they kind of identified who their ideal customer was and then created community and momentum around that. I feel like we've really moved away from Harley-Davidson being the blueprint. Why do you think community has become the new buzzword for brands lately?

14:44Because the customer has never been less sticky. I think that consumer loyalty and advocacy is completely out the door. People are addicted to newness and consumerism and you're desk scrolling on TikTok and you're not reading the same magazine that you would always religiously read. We're getting so much information. We're seeing so many brands and so many products. I do think that the ability to remain loyal or the desire to remain loyal to a brand is flippant. And so now I think brands are identifying that there is great opportunity for them to foster a really loyal customer, to bring them in, to create friendships, connection, momentum, and really create a moment, but also a commercial opportunity to foster that loyalty.

15:34And, you know, it's funny to me because I'm like in branding, right? So I am both a marketer's dream and the ultimate skeptic. I love buying into marketing, but I'm also looking at it with like one eye open. Squinting. Yeah, absolutely. Like, that's an interesting choice. And I think for me, like I loved what you said, that community shouldn't be a marketing metric. It should be a brand metric. It is a brand value. And so community to me shouldn't just be defined as in real life events. And I really can't emphasize that enough because I think when people think community, they think live events right now.

16:10I absolutely love this point from you, Mads. And it's a really, really important distinction because right now I do think community equals events. Yeah. And I do believe, this is my hot take, this is because of the rise of the trend of third spaces. Yes. It's subsequently brands jumping on that trend and really trying to hijack these third spaces in a way where they can co-opt their brand and integrate them that feels authentic. I think there are definitely times when that works. I'm not going to sit here as a marketer and as someone as head of business development at Shameless Media and say that brands can't be integrated into third spaces or in events in a way that feels authentic and meaningful.

16:51They absolutely can. Yes. But I think the conversation at the moment, the reason why community is so buzzy is because there are a lot of brands who aren't doing it very well. I agree. And I also think it's buzzy because there's been a lot of hate on press events and influencer events in probably the last two to three years. I mean, at the top of that pyramid, I would put the Tarte trip. I literally was thinking Tarte cosmetics. We could probably do the fallout from there, probably go to Coachella as the next level and then keep going. But I do feel that, you know, a lot of brands like Fate, the label, we've had beautiful Brittany Saunders on here before, who's spoken about, you know, creating community events and doing things like that.

17:29I think there are a lot of brands looking going, huh, a lot of positive online sentiment for that one. And then it's sort of snowballed that every brand's jumped on. To your point, there are some brands where this perfectly is set up, you know, for the third space or for you to tap into a pre-existing community. Yes. You know, I feel very passionately about this, but it's very, you know, it's become a little clearer where it feels authentic and where it feels like it's become a marketing KPI. Definitely. And I do think there are brands who are doing it really well. Who do you think is doing it really well at the moment?

18:02Okay. So there were so many brands that I thought of, and I've got a list a mile long, but I want to start with two that I think are doing a really good job of it. One is an OG example that I think have kind of come back around in their second season. And that is Glossier. Like it's such a throwback, but you think of those pop-up stores, they were not for influencers. They were not created for that. Those experiential spaces were ultimately created for their community. And if I get you back in your time machine, we're not going to go all the way back to the seventies and talk Harley Davidson. But if you go back to 2015, I was working in beauty at the time.

18:39And obviously, Glossier was on every vision board of every beauty brand that existed at that time. But they had a really, really loyal customer base. And I would say community. It was like, if you saw another girly with that pink bubble wrap like pouch, you were like, ah, fellow Glossier sister. And they had a really loyal customer based on how great their products were. And they were at that time, really innovative, cool, minimalist products. And they launched this mascara and their customers fucking hated it. And I mean, hated it. And so what they did was they responded really swiftly. They reached out to every customer that had provided negative feedback individually, invited them to product test all of the next rounds of innovation, and then mailed out early lab samples to each of them and use that as part of their campaign.

19:29That is not an event. That is not a pop-up. That is not a run club, but that is ultimately community. Okay, without you, we are nothing. So we want to bring you in on this development. We need to get this right because we can't fumble with you guys again because your loyalty is what keeps this business afloat. So that was my first. My second is actually Kik. So keep it cleaner. Laura Henshaw and Steph Clare Smith, who have built an amazing online platform. I would say a health platform. Like you can do everything from mindfulness to workouts to recipes, but they do these incredible run clubs and, you know, they've got the kick running program.

20:09And I think they've done a brilliant job of fostering community. And there's been brands who have come on board to tap into that pre-existing community. So New Balance has been one of those brands. I believe they did something at Arborea Float, which is in Melbourne? Yeah, so it was interestingly timed around the Melbourne Marathon. So there was definitely a bit of market. What is it? Marketing adjacent? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're not the name sponsor, you can kind of run sidelining as well. Yeah. So simultaneously during the festival, what they actually did was they did a walk run club. So you could opt in depending on your speed.

20:44It was very, very community bring a friend's focus and just people in the kick community. They ended up at Arborea Float and then had a bit of a DJ. I think it was DJ Tigre Lily. I mean, yeah, it was. And it looked like a bloody hoot. It went off. Back to the fact they had a walking club and a run club. Everything about what Kik stands for to me is come as you are. You don't need to have a six pack and you also don't need to have worked out yesterday. You can be a year out of exercise and go into that app. And I think having those two options at their community events goes to show, no, no, we're not doing two laps of Melbourne's tan and you've got to be able to run seven kilometers.

21:21Come however you are right now, you're welcome. The door is always open. What I also really like about this is it is the community first, the brand second. Yes, New Balance were the major sponsor. Yes, they had brand integration. I know Laura's worked with them before. She ran the New York Marathon with them. It also makes sense for New Balance to be partnering with Kik for a run club because they're also trying to acquire their audience. And one thing that we always talk about, Mads, is that audience acquisition play. Again, we're in marketing. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that there isn't a strategy to try and acquire new people to join your community.

21:52It's two pronged for me because an audience acquisition play doesn't just benefit the brand. It does obviously benefit the media outlet or whoever it is, whose community that is. If they're wanting to grow their community and they can get added exposure through that brand partnership, go off. That's amazing. It's a mutually beneficial relationship and it's okay for that to be the case that both parties win out of it. That is the North Star for both brand and community-led platforms. Absolutely. It should be the North Star, especially when you're considering that integration has to feel authentic.

22:25This makes sense to me. It's inoffensive. This summer, let's stop normalising sun tanning. It has never been so important with two in three Aussies now being diagnosed with skin cancer in their lifetime. And this isn't just from hours laying on the beach. In fact, just 15 minutes in the sun is enough for the damage to start. Every single day should start with sun protection, summer or not. It's the most important step of your AM routine and we don't just mean SPF on your face. Remember to slip, slop, slap, seek and slide. Together we can end the trend of skin cancer. Thank you so much to the Cancer Council and the Australian government for making this episode of Stylish possible.

23:08Rui, like as we said, you spend so much time sitting in community, discussing community, cultivating it, sustaining it, growing it. Who are your favorites? So I'm on the run club train. I knew you were going to say this. I just knew. Without even looking at our notes, I knew you'd go here. I do find it really interesting. There is a massive run club boom and it feels new, but it's not new. Run clubs have been around for decades. I've been a longtime runner, never actually participated in a run club though. I'm a solo runner. You kind of said that with a bit of pride. Hey, you run with Lou every now and then.

23:40I do run with my husband every now and then. I run with a couple of girlfriends, but it's usually one person, not a big group, but I'm all for them. I really like them, particularly because they foster different types of runners. I want to talk about two brands that I feel are approaching run clubs quite differently. The first is Nike. Full transparency up top, I have worked with Nike running in the past, but in the context of this conversation, free from bias, because I also want to talk about them in comparison to on running and how they have actually approached run clubs as a third space and their strategy for acquiring those third spaces quite differently.