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CANNES, France—Brands whose marketing strategies overlook fan communities are leaving their most valuable audiences untapped, executives shared at a group chat on Monday at ADWEEK House in Cannes.
Michael Sugar, CEO and founder of Sugar23, moderated the panel, which included Alyssa Buetikofer, vice president and CMO of McDonald’s Canada, and Stephanie Fried, the CMO of Fandom. The executives discussed the power of connecting with audiences in fan communities and through online forums surrounding sports, entertainment, music and gaming.
All three executives are well-versed in the subject.
Sugar, an Oscar-winning producer, has been recently helping brands connect with popular celebrities who inspire fandoms. Meanwhile, Fandom and McDonald’s have been working together to activate fans after learning that the McDonald’s brand had a robust following in the anime community.
Together, the three executives discussed why every brand should have a fandom marketing strategy and what that strategy should entail.
Here are the three biggest takeaways:
Reaching superusers taps into buying power
Fan communities bring disparate groups together through their shared love of a cultural product, such as a television series, sports team or video game.
This engaged group of superusers differs from mass audiences in that they are visibly declaring their passion for these topics, which gives relevant brands a rare opportunity to connect with consumers who often want them to be there.
In fact, according to Fried, 75% of fans say they are more likely to buy products or services from brands that support their fandoms.
At Fandom, which attracts more than 300 million fans monthly across its naturally segmented Wikis, the scope and depth of these communities not only provide surfaces for brand integrations but are also rich sources of consumer insights and data that can better inform those efforts.
“Our fans are exploring 50 million pages of content that are unlimited scroll, so we know everything about what people love within these IPs and these franchises,” Fried said. “We understand not only what they love, but how that connects to other IP, which today is even more important as we see the rise of franchises.”
Everything comes down to a creative strategy around insights
The superpower of fandom marketing is that—similar to zero-party data—fans in spaces dedicated to their passions will tell marketers exactly what they like.
As such, fandom marketing should be rooted in consumer insights, which allow brands and platforms like Fandom to collaborate, turning behavioral signals into finely tuned strategies.
These groups might be small, but the power of highly active niche groups has been amplified in recent years through social media and chat platforms, according to Sugar. If brands can figure out how to tap into their interests, the benefits can be immense.
“Small groups of people talking—we’ve seen it launch cranberry juice, we’ve seen it move the stock market, and we’ve seen it sink brands,” Sugar said.
Sharing the pen with the community
Some of the best fandom marketing strategies relinquish a bit of creative control to the fans themselves, according to Buetikofer.
The McDonald’s CMO shared a recent example from one of the company’s biggest viral successes in recent years: the Grimace shake.
After McDonald’s released the purple milkshake last year, a trend emerged in which TikTok users pretended as if drinking the shake killed them, resulting in a crime scene splattered with purple goo.
At first, the McDonald’s marketing staff were unsure of how to navigate the bizarre, macabre joke, but they let the trend flourish and it quickly became a global phenomenon. McDonald’s brought the shake to Canada last month, nearly a year after the initial hype cycle, and several franchises ran out of product within days.
The takeaway, according to Buetikofer, is that brands that trust their fandom communities will reap the rewards.
“We’ve been purposeful about giving up some control and sharing the pen with our fans as part of all of our marketing and programs and activation,” Buetikofer said. “And we just feel lucky that that happened.”
See all of ADWEEK’s Cannes Lions coverage here.
