The Fan Economy: Building Fan Community for Products

2009
the fan economy
Bud Caddell
Strategist, Undercurrent
nce upon a time,
the internet was
supposed to be the
great homogenizer.
O
With common information, in
common places, we were all
supposed to become one mass
audience – ripe for the picking.
This was not an original idea.
Fortunately, the world is far
too complex for homogeneity.
The web has made
constructing our identity
through niche communities
more visible, accessible,
and rewarding.
And whatever we hunger,
we can find others like us
offering the means to
satiate that hunger.
Which means the days of the
captive audience are gone.
Welcome to today.
Welcome to standing for
nothing means standing alone.
Welcome to the recession.

Today, we must commit our budgets
to have the greatest measurable
impact on human interaction.
Which means we can’t waste
our diminishing ad budgets on
another awareness play.
Fans are our new economy.
A dollar spent on fans is a dollar
spent on retention, recruitment,
R&D and longevity.
Fans don’t just buy our
products, they convince their
friends to give us a try.
And because we all define our
digital identity around our
fandom, fans are now easier
and more cost effective to find
and engage online.
And engagement begins
simply by listening.
Fans are practiced at voicing
their opinions. Understanding
their desires and their
motivations is absolutely critical.
Make no mistake, 2009 will wipe
the floor with unremarkable ideas.


Customers come and go,
but fans fight for your survival.

2008 provided some fine
examples for how we can
engage with fans in 2009.
Pent-up fan demand for
the McFly lead to lines
around buildings and
pairs going for $2,000
on eBay.
Nevermind pay-as-you-
like, it was the box-set
that was the fan
focused product, and
Radiohead sold over
100,000 at $80 each.
Avril Lavigne puts as
much content as she can
on her YouTube channel.
And it’s estimated she
made a cool $2 million
from her fan’s views.
Mountain Dew created a
game to let their fans
engineer the next flavor
from scratch. The
candidate flavors flew off
the shelves.