Community is great, just don’t start with a crap product

November 19, 2009

in Brand Management, Marketing

patagonia.jpg

With so much focus these days on how companies can leverage great branding, marketing, and social media to build a passionate customer community, I think a pretty simple underlying truth tends to get overshadowed:

It all starts with a great product.

And not just a technically sound, decent quality, reasonably well designed product. But one that truly and deeply impresses. Three years ago on my personal blog I wrote this:

I don’t want their [customers'] reaction to be a measured, rational, dispassionate analysis of why the product is better than the alternatives, how the cost is more reasonable, feature set more complete, UI more AJAXified. I don’t want them to pause to analyze the boring feature comparison chart on the back of the box.

I want “f**king cool!” Period.

Look at all the chatter on Twitter from the WOMMA event in Vegas right now – the Marketing VP (Rob Bondurant) from Patagonia apparently just presented, and shared wonderful nuggets of wisdom along with a bunch of stories about how vibrant and passionate their community is.

If their products were just average, do you think Rob would have been on stage at WOMMA? No way. For all the cool stuff Patagonia has done to build their brand identity and encourage and cultivate their fans (and it’s seriously impressive), their success all starts with developing kick ass products that customers don’t just like, they adore.

So learn all you can about great marketing. Listen to smart people with great experiences to share. Sharpen your skills around supporting and fostering customer evangelists.

But be damn sure your product or service is awesome first. It all starts with that.

*Photo from the Patagonia home page, hoping they don’t mind the compliment.

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Tagged as: cool, patagonia, womma

  • davidglashan
    came across this and have to say, "I love the attitude" i am not a great marketeer and that is why i am reading as much as i can to learn, I do believe that i have great inovative practical and cool products, I just need to get them known out there, any advice would be fantastic.
  • Hi Tim, thanks for the comment and I hope things are going OK on your end!

    To clarify a bit, I didn't mean to knock marketers - given I am one - nor anyone at WOMMA - which I desperately wish I could have attended. I just wanted to highlight that it's damn hard to build a passionate community on top of crappy products. Great marketing is vital, but it can't overcome a horrible foundation. As you pointed out, Patagonia is definitely one of those who got it right.

    To a lesser degree, it's the same way for me with REI. It's like my temple, some days I just go to wander and absorb it all, and I talk up the place to anyone who will listen.
  • Totally on, Kevin!

    Patagonia has remained true to building amazing products for their core users for decades.

    I'm guessing the bulk of the geeks at the WOMMA conference don't have 20 year-old (still functioning and adored) Patagonia retro fleece jackets in their closets. But Patagonia's core customers do. And it's those climbers, fishers, surfers, and skiers who talk about all the cool trips they've taken with that gear, how awesome Patagonia quality is, and so.

    It's those folks who build the buzz that gets the mainstream to buy ass-loads of Patagonia organic t-shirts and computer messenger bags and allow Bondurant to work his marketing magic (not to mention get his conference invite ;-).
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