Tribal Branding: Know Like Trust Series

This post is the final installment of the 3-part series on how to get customers to feel that they 'know, like and trust' your brand. The series was motivated by the need to create social media management (SMM) strategic content pillars. I think that, if I applied the 3 target behaviors / feelings to top, middle and bottom funnel positions, each one would apply in that order; ie 'know' will apply to the top, 'like' to the middle and 'trust' to the bottom. ... or depending on market needs, like when an unknown brand faces a huge challenge of gaining trust in expertise regarding a high-stakes problem, 'trust' and 'like' may overlap or be swapped within the cycle (of a month or whatever your expected cycle period towards conversion).

Even if your marketing campaigns have been successful in getting many people to know and perhaps even trust your brand, that does not mean that they will necessarily like your brand. You therefore need to connect emotionally, to have an emotional relationship with your market, ie you need to build brand affinity with customers. Afterall, brand affinity transcends brand awareness (which, as illustrated below, is only the first and most commercially beneficial of 4 levels of brand affinity). If developed successfully, brand affinity can motivate evangelism, the highest of the 4 levels. By such a point, customers make favorable purchase decisions based on emotional bonds with your brand. Needless to say, when measuring levels of affinity, the emotional connection is most important.

 

Brand affinity levels	Nature of consumer relationship with the brand
1.brand awareness	Consumer seeks to meet basic needs. Any product that does that meets basic needs will do. Won't go out of their way to get the brand.
2. infatuation	Consumer trusts the brand because the brand adds some value to their life. Consumer feels affection, appreciation or even obsession towards the brand.
3. fidelity	The consumer can truly relate to the brand values*. Consequently, the consumer feels an emotional connection and seeks out your brand specifically.  * Here are examples of core values to which consumers may relate. the style and image provided by a clothing brand very high quality images taken from Apple iPhones
4. evangelism	The consumer believes in your brand to such an extent that they want others to use the brand.

 

For the sake of making this post on the consumer's 'liking' or 'brand affinity' with a brand as clear as possible, I will discuss it in its extreme application; 'tribal branding'. However, recognize that, depending on the brand, tribal branding exists on a continuum. For instance, on one hand, Apple has applied it to the maximum extreme, while un-branded commodities not at all on the opposite extreme and  finally, most other marketed brands fall in the middle with varying levels of moderate tribalism. The majority of brands are in the center because they know that tribalism is hugely profitable but respond with only lukewarm attempts to tribalize consumers by claiming the most recently trending core values (like eco-friendliness). However, their corporate strategizing never quite achieves the same tribalism as Apple. 

Seth Godin's book 'Tribes' explains how to create tribes. Here is a quick breakdown of the take aways from that book along with some of my ideas on corresponding content pillars.

Lesson 1: Connection

Connection is the sine qua non of successful tribalism. Tribes comprise a group of people connected to each other, a leader and an idea. The idea may be based on anything like religion, politics, racial or other basis of marginalization, sports and so on. The communication is critical because back and forth messaging among members intensifies core values and attracts new like-minded members. Essentially, the communication is a catalyst for growth. Needless to say, social media communication makes tribalism easier than ever. In short, to transform any group of people into a tribe, 2 requirements must be met as follows. 

1. a shared interest
2. communication among members

Needless to say, connection is associated with the strategy of growth and tactical content pillars like ''Traction', 'Core Values' and, if you ask members to support each other and or ask qualification questions (about interests) as a pre-requisite to membership, also 'Ask / Participate'.

Lesson 2: Pull Marketing

Because the interest is so niche, the messaging is tailor-made to narrowly attract only the tribe's members (not everyone). It therefore pulls only those who share the tribe's passion. (See Push & Pull marketing). Needless to say, pull marketing is associated with the tactical content pillar like 'Core Values' with very specialized content. One option is to use specific questions from the consumer's perspective as the titles of your posts, ie rather than write generic titles. Social listening tools can help you to generate questions. For instance, rather than write a title as 'product x [your brand name]', write it was 'Is method a-b-c the best way to resolve problem y? -- or -- solutions for problem y'. Either way, establish the details in your brand voice and tone. 

Lesson 3: Leaders are heretics.

Heresy relates to having beliefs that go contrary to norms that are generally accepted in the broader community (like religion, sexual preferences and so on). In other words, they challenge the status quo. Example(s):

• When it was generally felt that computers would not be desirable at home, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple suggested otherwise, likely seeming a little crazy by most who could not imagine his vision. However, Apple's Macintosh computer introduced the world's first home computer and therefore revolutionized the modern world. 

Lesson 4: Tribes are assembled, NOT created.

Godin explains that, before the formation of a tribe, its eventual members, although still disconnected and scattered somewhere in the world, they lay in wait to be connected. At the sight of a catalyst, they will join and do not need to be schooled on the interest.

• Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Black Twitter followers were not trained in a class room. Instead, they suffered for while and eagerly awaited their opportunity to be connected. Consequently, when the opportunity arose, they were eager to join.

Lesson 5: The tribe is not for everyone.

This is where I think many businesses fall short of the full tribal glory. I think this failing is due to lack of authenticity. Tribalism is about true believers with a burning desire to connect with other true believers. Their efforts are not staged through corporate strategy (alone) and so they can become cohesive simply because their intrinsic interest in the cause is sufficiently strong to sustain their focus. In other words, the focus is not about vanity metrics such as likes and views. Rather, they are more interested in drawing their members closer (than growing numbers). Wired Magazine's Kevin Kelly suggested that tribes only need 1,000 true members, ie enough for a core group of passionate, deeply 'heretic' members to sustain them. In short, leaders focus on their tribe, ignoring everyone else. This lesson corresponds with the tactical pillars 'Transparency' (Authenticity), 'Values' and 'Beliefs'. The rules for these pillars will suggest unapologetic specificity in content, brand voice and tone, etc. Some might even encourage exclusivity.

• White supremacist (WS) groups are unapologetic about their zero tolerance policies regarding membership.

As far as possible, managing a corporate tribe should involve having only the right partners, suppliers, employees and so on. 

Lesson 6: Tribes become movements (with the help of leadership)

After membership has reached critical mass, the tribe becomes a movement, ie it can bring about change in the world. Do not take this power lightly. Social media movements have swayed elections. The movement comes into being when the leader does the following.

1. Tell a story (to people who really want to hear). The story highlights the vision for a better future (whatever that means to the tribe).
2. Connect the tribe members to each other and themselves
3. They lead the movement with direction and purpose.
4. They make change occur in ways that no single member could have done alone.

Lesson 7: Leaders use a combination of the & leadership Cs

Leaders all accept their leadership roles and use a combination of the following elements. They

1. challenge the status quo.
2. build a culture
3. are curious  (about the world, how it works and how their vision can work)
4. are or become charismatic to attract and motivate followers
5. facilitate communication among members and themselves
6. commit to the cause
7. facilitate connection among members.

Video (above): Tribes by Seth Godin, Animated Book Summary by YouTuber MentalEFit Book Club.

Video (above): 'How the Dogtown Z-Boys changed skateboarding culture (tribal branding)' by YouTuber Intermark Group. 

The Dogtown Z-Boys was a small group of skateboarders in the early 1970s with an intrinsic interest in skateboarding long before the tribe formed. The earliest skaters were outcasts or 'heretics' by nature. The concept of skateboards was an adaptation of ocean surf boards that were adapted to the land. Their membership was exclusive on the basis of psychological characteristics and unique skating styles that evolved naturally into being from their interaction with each other. For instance, given their ocean surfing background, they did things that other land-only skaters did not, like bring their bodies close to the ground, touch the ground and so on (in other words, an aspect of their 'heresy'). They mastered this style inside of empty swimming pools at homes up for sale during a Californian drought. Craig Stecyk of a local newspaper  (Dogtown Chronicles) assumed the leadership role by publishing the group's symbols, images, core values and ideas. (Keep in mind that this occurred several decades before the internet). This leadership brought together like-minded, otherwise disconnected members and established their culture. They also wore uniforms to demonstrate to the world and themselves their cohesiveness. They even had a physical location where they met each other. Ultimately, the tribe transformed the initially basic trends of skateboarding into its current status as a mainstream extreme sport of skating up smooth vertical surfaces of modern day.

Apple has been able to create a loyal tribe that is willing to wait overnight outside of their doors for new releases, with hopes of paying much more than the competition for their products. In keeping with lesson 1 (regarding a shared interest for being outstanding in graphics and creating a space to encourage easy, direct communication), Apple engages heavily with its market over social media platforms. For instance, its Instagram posts have featured very striking images from customers using their latest iPhone model. Starting from their revolutionary 1984 introduction of home computers for personal use, they go out of their way to establish the idea that the brand is different, in an unapologetically superior way. Their tagline 'Think different' reflects this and is somewhat of a call to action for persons wanting to be seen as an outsider, non-conformist and revolutionary like the brand was in 1984.

TO DO

1. Research and identify your tribe as intimately as possible. To this end, create a target customer profile.

2. Be clear about your unique value proposition / UVP.  The UVP does not need to be only one value. It can be a collection of those values that are most meaningful to your target market.

3. Engage with your tribe, listening closely and responding accordingly.

4. Connect emotionally with your tribe. (This is a must).

5. Create strategic content pillars that incorporate the elements of tribalism. Here is a rough example that incorporates elements of brand tribalism for introducing a new brand whose state of being unknown must overcome sales objections of distrust based on the market not knowing and consequent distrust of the brand's expertise. Notice how the same tactical pillars are applied to each of multiple segment-specific thematic pillar (like plus-sized women's wear, regular-sized women's wear and so on within a single women's line). Those tactical pillars were inspired by the concepts of tribalism and Fastnet's 9 tactiical pillars. 

ToF lead generation  / Objective(s): to be known (through trust, seek qualify members)

• Thematic pillar 1 of .. segments
• Traction
• Value
• Results (Pull title)
• Authority (expertise)
• Social Proof (Pull title)
• Transparency
• Thematic pillar 2 of  .. segments
• same as above (s/a)
• Thematic pillar 3 of  .. segments
• same as above (s/a)

MoF lead nurturing  / Objective(s): to tribalize customer (like, trust)

• Thematic pillar 1 of .. segments
• Value  (Pull title)
• Transparency
• Results (Pull title)
• Heresy  (Pull title)
• Ask / Participate
• Solution
• Thematic pillar 2 of  .. segments
• same as above (s/a)
• Thematic pillar 3 of  .. segments
• same as above (s/a)

BoF lead conversion / Objective(s) to sell and retain customer with trust inspiring content)

• Thematic pillar 1 of .. segments
• Solution  (Pull title)
• Ask / Participate (Community communication)
• Thematic pillar 2 of  .. segments
• same as above (s/a)
• Thematic pillar 3 of  .. segments
• same as above (s/a)

CONTENT RELATED TO BRAND LOVE (TRIBAL BRANDING)

• Know, Like and Trust Series
• Tribalism is an extreme form of lifestyle branding.
• Brand voice and tone
• This article relates to B2C tribal branding / brand affinity. However, B2B brand affinity is also noteworthy. Third party research suggests that that clear top drivers are Trust and customer service. Read third party articles about this topic by Marketing Charts.
• When done correctly, tribalism is able to get customers to make buying decisions based on emotional bonds.
• Emotional branding and marketing.
• Branding: Core values
• Social media content management
• Persuasion technique
• Noteworthy case studies of corporate tribes not include in this post are Tesla, Nike

Brand Trust: Know Like Trust Series

Research shows that a lead's successful advancement through the purchase decision process is strongly motivated by whether customers know, like and trust the brand. Consequently, sales teams configure their sales funnel to encourage customers to 'know, like and trust' them. However, to successfully sell on this basis, you need to analyze what these 3 terms actually mean and then know how to incorporate them accordingly. For instance, well designed social media content plans systematically incorporate these 3 objectives in strategical and tactical content pillars. 

This post is part of a 3-part series 'Know, Like & Trust' that deals with each of these 3 objectives in turn to determine how to incorporate each into your brand's efforts for best results. To this end, this first installment deals with trust. Research shows that trust is a hardcore motivating factor in the decision-making process. 

Depending on the context, trust means slightly different things. Furthermore, although it is something every brand wants, it is hard to figure how to get it if without being clear what it is in the first place. For this reason, I will discuss the different meanings separately. Consider your internal strategic goals (like brand awareness*) and target customer profile (TCP) to find one or several facets of trust that should apply to the relevant campaign. This is especially useful for defining your strategic and tactical content pillars within the area of social media content management. 

Do not lose sleep if you find overlapping meanings to these terms. You need to figure what definitions and names work best for you and use those with a definition in your brand voice and tone guidelines to resolve any confusion. If you use any of these terms to name your tactical content pillars, you can fine tune them or their meaning eventually.

1. Social Proof     |     2. Authenticity     |      2.b Authenticity - Transparency     |     3.    Customer Experience

1. Trust: Social Proof (of the brand's expertise)

Social proof refers to the psychological phenomenon in which people mimic the actions of others when faced with uncertainty (about new products). With trust in brands in crisis, it is noteworthy that research suggests that it trump all other forms of advertising in motivating buying decision (with an impact rate of over 90%). I recommend social proof as a form of building trust for new brands, especially that suffer sales objections related to being unknown*.

In short, social proof builds trust in your brand's expertise (relative to the competition).

Examples of how social proof content can be incorporated into content pillars include the following.

'Reviews'(*) or 'Results'(*) pillar. (Feel free to rename your content pillars in a way that is more meaningful). Very useful for Brand Awareness campaigns for new brands when the market can not trust because the brand and expertise is unknown.

• Product reviews by consumers  
• awards won
• good R&D results: like high percentage rates of customer satisfaction
• influencer marketing; Third party expert's positive review of your product or brand 
• indicating best sellers (to minimize analysis fatigue from too many choices)
• indicating segmentation  (to minimize analysis fatigue from too many choices)
• dedicated landing page of reviews
• list of well-known customers, often including their their logo. NB, get permission to use the logo of other companies beforehand.
• user generated content (UGC) in which customers showcase themselves using your product.

2a. Trust: Authenticity 

The construct of authenticity refers to honesty and integrity, ie the uphold of certain convictions (shared between the brand and customers). Keeping in mind that brands are a type of personification, it is easier to recognize why authenticity is central to trust and loyalty, ie the ability to keep a relationship in tact.

Example(s): Consistent representation of a certain ethos. Entertaining content that provides multiple points of exposure to a brand may encourage consumers to feel that they 'know' the brand. Likely very useful for new brands for which sales objections involve the fact that the market feels distrustful because they do not know the brand.

• Lifestyle branding that illustrates years long consistent adherence to a way of life, whether it is the fun loving nature of Red Bull, raw nature of Harley Davidson, nature protectionism of Patagonia and so on. 
• Personal branding (influencers that fit the TCP) / Lifestyle branding that involves sales communication that shows that the brand representative has a genuine interest in the stated values through lived experiences. 
• Consistent adherence to valued standards * of production, hiring, ethical practices regarding the sourcing of materials, etc.  ['Values' content pilar]

The use of loyalty-motivating content to maintain loyalty is especially obvious when the market gives negative feedback (like bad customer experience complaints. disapproval to brand practices like social injustice, mistakes or other transgressions), when the values associated with the transgression carry heavy emotional weight. Just consider the cases of brands being cancelled. Part of transparency in the face of bad situations is for brands to own up to transgressions and demonstrate continued commitment to the values they were expected to share with their target market. 

Example(s): Apologies after a brand's transgressions

• Balenciaga, one of the most powerful and iconic luxury brands used by A list Hollywood stars was canceled by numerous celebrities in November 2022 when a campaign featured child pornography and sadomasochism.
• Murad Merali is a YouTuber whose falling out with his main audience, black women was a striking case in 2022. Although not being black himself, his content was heavily focused on highlighting anti-black racism in popular culture, a theme that represented very strong values for his audience. However, during that year, video evidence was released revealing his participation in anti-black race-play sexual activity. (Race play often includes  playing out domination and stereotypes usually used to put down another race). This activity was apparently one way in which he made a living before his YouTube success. When performing this type of sex work, some of his clients apparently asked him to use the specific anti-black racial slurs. Needless to say, the black community felt deceived and exploited by him. Many vowed to never support his channel again.

2b. Trust: Authenticity - Transparency

Transparency involves being very open and honest about who your brand is so that customers can know the real you and decide whether they want to buy from your brand, This is a refreshing departure from organizations that use wonderfully worded policies only for PR purposes with no interest in complying. The psychology of transparency is that it allows consumers to feel assured that they are not being exploited.

Here are some 'Transparency' (arguably also 'Values') content pillar ideas. NB, some examples overlap with 'authenticity' pillars. This type of content is often created in response or proactive response to negative market feedback and social consciousness.  Consider thee trends in your industry and how you can use them to your advantage.

behind the scenes

being open about your production inputs 

product ingredients 

McDonald's created a website that responds to tough customer questions like the origin of meet products. 

source of materials and labor force (a new trend in response to the negative feedback against businesses using the sweatshop model).

the identify of your management team

responding in an open fashion to feedback or questions from the public.

responding to negative feedback like complaints, your mistakes 

committing to policies, ie unlike the practice of having policies only as a PR strategy without any genuine adherence to those polices.  

3. Trust: Customer Experience 

Customer experience (See full article) is arguably the leading motivation factor in keeping customers in the sales funnel. Since I have already discussed it, I will not re-introduce it here. Instead, I will only discuss its place in the sales funnel and application to the social media content pillars.

• Unboxing user-generated videos. This type of video has been shown to be a powerful emotional trigger that can convert consumers. Even the term 'unboxing' has been widely searched. Its value is that it enhances customer experience, albeit vicariously. Viewing prospects enjoy the same rush as opening gifts. 
• Example(s): Content-related style guidelines should explain the brand voice and tone.

• Buyer personalities have very specific needs regarding how they want information to be shared in order to trust a brand. Include DO's and DONTs in your  pillar definitions.

CONTENT RELATED TO BUILDING BRAND TRUST (ONE PART OF THE KNOW LIKE TRUST SERIES)

• Know, Like and Trust Series
• Social media content management
• Persuasion techniques

Brand Knowledge: Know Like Trust Series

This short post is part of the 'Know, Like & Trust' series. For background, see the first installment regarding trust . The primary aim of this series is to discuss how to encourage audiences to know, like and trust brands in the social media content management process.

Since a brand's aim to become as humanized as possible, brand knowledge can be understood as being similar to knowing a person. Just imagine; you feel like you know someone who you have seen enough times in a consistent way that you can identify them in a crowd or describe them to some one else; because you know their values, you can predict their actions and are even willing to buy new product releases without getting details; you are so familiar what they bring to the table that you can recall them only on the basis of what they mean to your life. In short, brand knowledge closely relates to brand awareness.

Within the context of social media content management, I suggest that brand knowledge may fit in tactical content pillars like 'Traction' (involving social or other hot topics that can go viral using virality pillars), 'Beliefs', 'Values' (involving lifestyle branding and core values) and 'Social Proof' (regarding values and beliefs). However, regardless of the tactical pillar, keep the following in mind. 

• Teach brand recognition to consumers. For instance, show brand assets in a consistent way in all posts. Be clear about your brand's voice and tone.
• Deliver value beyond the product. In other words, create content to inform, educate or entertain leads. Lifestyle branding is a case in point. 
• Patagonia's 50-minute video called 'Tribal water' discusses the matter of access to water for Native Americans in the US. The content is what one would imagine like-minded friends might discuss because it touches on deep values and beliefs they share. Consequently, the video aligns with the brand's core values so as to gently woo like-minded customer friends. While the product appears in the video, Patagonia never used hard sell tactics. Instead, its delivered value is the friendly chat itself.   
• Make the content shareable, after all, you want people to know about the brand. Having people share content within their personal sphere of influence is great advertising.
• Hold contests. Doing this with other brands (with the same target market) will boost brand awareness.

CONTENT RELATED TO BRAND KNOWLEDGE

• Social media content management
• Know, Like and Trust Series
• Brand awareness