One of the Seven Deadly Sins or myths about getting brand communities right is "Build the brand, and the community will follow". For most of us involved in social media, the myth is self-evident  - the brand lives more in the minds of customer advocates than in the Agency brand strategy. And a brand community exists to service the people in it (not to serve the business! - Myth #2).

The Reality offered by Fournier and Lee is "Engineer the community, and the brand will be strong".

This has certainly been our experience although it is easier to say than do! The hard work is in working out how best to engineer the community without destroying the implicit social contract with community members.

Jump Associates distinguish three forms of community affiliation that assist in this challenge:

Pools: where members are united by shared goals or values but tend to atrophy if not strengthened by Webs and Hubs

Webs: where affiliations are based on strong one-to-one connections - the strongest and most stable form of community

Hubs: are united by their admiration of an individual - an inherently unstable form of community but can help communities acquire new members who hold similar values

These categories offer clues as to how to establish and develop communities through a lifecycle and Fournier and Lee also offer this example from L'Oreal:

L’Oréal "maps its brands along two dimensions:

(1) brands of authority versus brands of conversation, and

(2) mainstream versus niche brands.

Each cell in the grid suggests a different community approach.

Brands of authority offer expert affiliation and advice. L’Oréal (the company’s mainstream brand of authority) builds community through heavy TV advertising featuring celebrity spokespeople to inspire hub affiliations. La Roche-Posay (a niche brand of authority) nurtures a worldwide community of dermatologists, both online and face-to-face, to expertly represent the brand.

Brands of conversation thrive on social interaction and engagement. L’Oréal’s Garnier (the company’s mainstream brand of conversation) enlists well-known bloggers to share what they’re doing to make the world a better place, using these hub figures to strengthen the brand’s pool. Kiehl’s (a niche brand of conversation) uses a grassroots focus on local charity sponsorships, in-store customer bulletin boards, and required employee volunteerism in the surrounding community to create the social glue.

Although the tactics vary, the goal of L’Oréal’s community-building strategies is always to connect with the people who make up the community in ways that reaffirm the essence of the brand."

Now that sounds like smart brand engineering...