Speaker A
Today we'll explore four ways to create passionate fans for your business. Always talking about your products and your services is not a great way to do marketing. It's not a great way, as you well know, to do social media.
David Meerman Scott explains how businesses can build passionate fans rather than just customers, using neuroscience-based tribal instincts and examples like Hagerty Insurance.
Key Takeaways
- Build fans, not just customers, by focusing on what your audience cares about rather than on your product.
- Leverage the human need for tribal belonging through shared identity, rituals, and community.
- Create participation through games, certifications, behind-the-scenes access, and shareable experiences.
- Share your own passions and personality, which can make a business stand out and attract its ideal fans.
What the video covers
- Marketing that centers on your own products and services is ineffective; focus should be on the people you want to reach and their interests.
- Fans, unlike customers, stick with a brand even when cheaper competitors appear or mistakes occur, and they promote it to friends, colleagues, and family.
- Humans are hardwired to seek belonging in a tribe of like-minded people, which is the psychological basis for building fandom.
- Hagerty Insurance shows that even a hated product (auto insurance) can build millions of fans by serving classic car enthusiasts with events, free valuation data, and a strong YouTube presence.
- David Meerman Scott's background includes the books 'Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead', 'Marketing the Moon' (adapted into the film 'Fly Me to the Moon'), 'Fanocracy', and 'The Fandom Playbook'.
- The episode outlines four practical ways to create fans, including making the business a game with participation, unleashing personal passions, and showing behind-the-scenes access.
- Transparency such as glass-walled operations or showing how products are made makes customers feel more connected and loyal.
- Certifications, badges, and shareable achievements give fans identity and social proof they can display publicly.
- A dive resort example illustrates the need to keep experiences fresh, since repeat visitors lose interest without new reasons to return.
- Small businesses such as a skateboarding dentist can differentiate by sharing personal passions that attract like-minded clients.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: Why Fans Beat Customers
- 02:13David Meerman Scott's Journey into Fandom
- 04:36Biggest Marketing Misconception: Product-Centric Thinking
- 06:33Hagerty Insurance: Fans for a Hated Product
- 08:39The Benefits of Building Fans and the Tribal Instinct
- 13:20Four Ways to Create Passionate Fans
- 26:40Transparency, Certification, and Behind-the-Scenes Access
- 40:00Keeping Experiences Fresh and Unleashing Passions
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
The best thing you can have in your business is fans. A fan is somebody who will stick with you even if a lower-cost competitor comes along. A fan is someone who will share their love of what you do
Speaker A
with their friends, with their colleagues, with their family members. A fan is someone who will share that they love you on their social media feeds.
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So we humans are hardwired to want to be part of a tribe of like-minded people.
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My special guest is a prolific author. His bestselling book is "The New Rules of Marketing and PR." He was last on this show in 2020 when he released "Fanocracy." His latest book is "The Fandom Playbook: How to Create Passionate Fans in a World of Online Chaos."
Speaker A
David Meerman Scott, welcome back to the show. How you doing today? I'm doing great, Mike, and it's so fabulous to be back here having a conversation with you.
Speaker A
Well, it's great to have you here, and we're going to talk about some really exciting things. So let me ask you this.
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How did you get into the whole concept of fandom? Because obviously I know you, I've known you for a very long time- Yeah ... and marketing has been kind of your focus, but the fandom concept is kind of
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a-- I know there's been a thread there all along, so why don't you share a little bit of that story.
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Yeah. And right, we've been following each other for I think more than 20 years, which is, I don't want to say it dates me, but it's super cool.
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So over one of my shoulders, you can see a Grateful Dead logo. And so I've been a fan of the Grateful Dead since I was 17, and I was thinking to myself, this was 20 years ago, "Why is the Grateful Dead so popular?" And I started
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to really dig deep into it. And Brian Halligan, the co-founder and former CEO of HubSpot, and me, as well as Bill Walton, we co-wrote a book called "Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead" where we did one deep dive into the
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fandom of why people love the Grateful Dead, and we pulled out some ideas from that. And that book did super well, and it got me really excited about this idea of really digging deeper into fandom, because it's not a topic a lot of people looked
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at. And then I wrote a book called "Marketing the Moon," and the fandom aspect there is, there's tens of millions of fans of NASA.
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And people became fans of the Apollo astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and the others. And I'm like, "That's weird.
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They became fans of government employees, and I want to know more about that." So that book actually was turned into a Hollywood romantic comedy that came out two years ago called "Fly Me to the Moon" starring Scarlett Johansson.
Speaker A
So super cool that, Mike, yes, a marketing book can be turned into a Hollywood feature film. And then the book that we discussed last time I was on in 2020, as you mentioned, "Fanocracy," I wrote that one with my daughter, which is all about
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basic ideas around building fandom. The new book coming out shortly is more how-to and digging deeply into the ideas of how can I make this happen?
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Because so many people after a talk or reaching out by email or through social media say, "David, I love your ideas about fandom, but how do I do it?" So that's what the new book is about, "The Fandom Playbook."
Speaker A
Love it. So, David, you've been talking about this and writing about this and speaking about this for a very long time.
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And you probably have heard a lot of misconceptions or biases or false truths or whatever the phrase is.
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But what is one of the biggest misconceptions out there when it comes to marketing and fandom in general?
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The thing that I keep coming back to, and I know you talk about this as well, Mike, I see you talk about it frequently, is always talking about your products and your services is not a great way to do marketing.
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It's not a great way, as you well know, to do social media. It's not a great way to build fans. There's outliers, like people become fans of their Apple products. But marketing starting with the product or service is not a great way to build fans. And I've been talking about that idea now for
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ages. It's not about your product and service. It's about the people you're trying to reach.
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It's about those people that you want to become your fans. What are they interested in? What do they want?
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And that's where it becomes really interesting. And I'll give you an example of that.
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My favorite example of that is Hagerty Insurance. They do classic car auto insurance. Auto insurance.
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A product everyone hates. I ask the question in my keynotes, "Who loves auto insurance?" Zero hands go up.
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No one wants to spend money on auto insurance. It feels like you're throwing your money away.
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And no one wants to use the product because it means you crashed your car.
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Yet they have millions and millions of fans of Hagerty Insurance. They do classic car auto insurance.
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They go to the classic car auto events where people who love classic cars congregate. They provided the data that classic car owners want for how much their car is worth, because Hagerty has the actual valuations they're insuring those cars for, and they make that data freely available.
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They have a YouTube channel with over a million followers. They're doing social media right.
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So here is an organization and a product everyone hates that yet still has millions of fans, and that's allowed them to become the largest classic car auto insurance company in the world.
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And they recently went public on the New York Stock Exchange. I've interviewed McKeel Hagerty a number of times and have been involved in the company from watching them and writing about them for a number of years now.
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Fabulous example in a business everyone hates. Yes, you too can build fans. It's actually pretty fascinating because if you think about the role of marketing, especially inside of a small business, which is kind of the most of the people that
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are listening to this show, our job is really ultimately to market products. And this is challenging for us because when we market products, there's lots of ways to do it. But I really love this concept conceptually, and this is why I'm
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really excited to explore these things that we're going to be talking about today. But before I actually get into the details of it, help everyone understand, if they pay attention to what we're about to talk about and they actually employ some of
Speaker A
these ideas, what's the unlock? What's the benefit? What's waiting for them on the other side?
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Oh my gosh. The best thing you can have in your business is fans. A fan is somebody who will stick with you even if a lower-cost competitor comes along. A fan is someone who will stick with you even if you make a
Speaker A
misstep. A fan is someone who will share their love of what you do with their friends, with their colleagues, with their family members.
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A fan is someone who will share that they love you on their social media feeds.
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So the idea of having fans, not just mere customers, but fans, is such a fabulous way for any organization of any size.
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And it's not just big companies. It's small companies. It's entrepreneurial organizations. It's professional services providers, even independent professional service providers. All of those kinds of organizations can build fans.
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And the basic idea, if I were to sort of say, what's an overarching theme of this concept of building fans is, and I've studied this now for 20 years, is it becomes something rooted in neuroscience.
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So we humans are hardwired to want to be part of a tribe of like-minded people, because when we're part of a tribe of like-minded people, we feel safe and comfortable. And that goes back tens of thousands of generations in
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human history. Because around the proverbial campfire with your tribe, you're safe. However, if you venture away from your tribe, you're vulnerable. You're vulnerable to animals.
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You're vulnerable to other people. And we humans want to be a part of a tribe of like-minded people.
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So, for example, at Social Media Marketing World, we're all part of the tribe. I've attended a couple of times. We're part of the same tribe when we go there.
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We see the badge and it says, "Oh, I'm at that conference too." Even if you're having a drink or dinner at a restaurant that's down the street.
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Oh yeah, and you can strike up a conversation with somebody who has that badge on.
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You see them in the elevator or waiting for coffee at Starbucks. You have an instant connection. That's a fan.
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A fan is somebody who feels safe and comfortable because they're part of a tribe, they're part of a movement.
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And that's something that's absolutely possible to do for any organization. It involves some counterintuitive kinds of marketing.
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It's not just what we've always done, but absolutely possible. I love it. So, so far what I've heard you say is that neuroscience is at play here, and people want to be in proximity of people that are like-minded.
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Yeah. And you shared the example of my conference. I was just at another conference, and when you go to a restaurant and you see that someone in that bar, for example, has the badge on- Yeah ... you can walk up to them and start striking up a conversation because you know
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that you share a common interest of whatever the theme was from that particular event, where you might never normally just walk up to a stranger, because they have that thing around their neck.
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Yeah. I love it. Yeah, exactly. And another example, just we mentioned the Grateful Dead earlier.
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Yep. If I go to a Grateful Dead concert or one of the bands that plays Grateful Dead music, there's hundreds of cover bands around the country, around the world actually. But I go to that concert, I can strike up a
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conversation with anybody, waiting in line for merchandise, waiting in line for beer, even waiting in line to take a pee. I'm there with my tribe.
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"Hey, have you seen any other shows this tour? Hey, what song are you hoping they play tonight?
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When was your first concert?" I often will win that discussion. My first Grateful Dead concert was when I was 17 years old in 1979.
Speaker A
You just dated me right there, Mike. But that's this idea of being part of a tribe.
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And like you said, it is neuroscience, and a super powerful way to build a business.
Speaker A
Okay, so we're now talking about the first of four concepts that are in your book, and this concept is called Ignite in Person.
Speaker A
Yes. So, we've talked about the neuroscience of it a little bit, but let's back up just a little bit and explain conceptually what's at play here, just so everybody can understand this concept.
Speaker A
Sure. You've given some examples, but let's be a little academic a little bit here, just so people can understand- Okay ... they can apply something like this. You know what I mean?
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I know you'll appreciate this. Let's nerd out a little bit- Okay. Yeah ... about this, Mike, okay?
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Yeah. So I did mention that we want to be part of a tribe of like-minded people.
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There's a neuroscientist named Edward T. Hall who did some research on specifically what that means, and it's really interesting research. Because what he found is that there's different levels of how close you are to another human being, and he identified four different levels.
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The furthest away, he called that public space, which is more or less roughly 12 feet away or further.
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Okay. So when you're 12 feet away from somebody, you know they're there, but there's not really an emotional connection.
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You're walking down the street, and there's someone walking on the other side of the street, you know they're there.
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You walk into a big room, and there's someone in the other corner of the room, you know they're there. However, what the neuroscience suggests is the closer you get to someone, the more that individual connection is triggered, either positively or negatively.
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So the next level is called social space. That's from about four feet to about 12 feet.
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So that might be at a party or shopping at a supermarket or a more crowded street that you're on. Within social space, you start to feel a little bit of emotion when you come in contact with somebody.
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If you know that person or if they're part of your tribe, like at "Social Media Marketing World," you can feel really good about getting into someone's social space. However, if you don't know that person, that's the neuroscience of being
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part of a tribe kicks in. You can start to feel uncomfortable. The next stage is where it gets really interesting. That's called personal space.
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That's from about one foot-ish to about four feet. So hand length, arm length, I mean.
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And that's when you're having a conversation with someone, or you're in a restaurant, and you're sitting across from them at a small-ish table.
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Or even in line, right? Standing in line. Or in line, or in an elevator.
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Yeah. Now, if you're part of the same tribe, let's say you go to a cocktail party, and you're with your friends, you feel great.
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You have a very positive emotional connection. However, if you don't know those people, for example, a crowded elevator, we don't know the people, you can feel unsafe.
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And that's why we sort of feel a little queasy when we go into an elevator sometimes, and we don't know who the people are because they've invaded.
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They haven't actually invaded, but they've invaded your personal space. What does this mean for building fans?
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What it means is if you can create the environment where you bring people together in some way, and then create the environment where they're part of the same tribe, again, "Social Media Marketing World," perfect example.
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Right. Or back to Hagerty Insurance, the classic car auto insurance company I mentioned earlier. What Hagerty does is they go to classic car shows around the country, and these are all outdoor events where people are showing off their cars.
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Sometimes there's auctions, sometimes there's competitions. But classic car enthusiasts love to go to these events. Hagerty's there.
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They set up a tent. They have coffee. You can come by and get coffee.
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They often have swag, a ball cap or whatever. And that's where people can go and meet people from Hagerty, and it's the same idea. It's a tribe of like-minded people.
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If you're sharing coffee, they call it Cars and Coffee, sharing coffee with someone from Hagerty at one of these events under their tent, you feel safe and comfortable. You're part of your tribe. That helps to build fans.
Speaker A
Very cool. All right. I love that. Lots of cool ideas. Okay, so let's move on to the second concept, which is Behind the Curtain.
Speaker A
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what the heck that is and explain that to us a little bit.
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I will. And these ideas that we're talking about, just so everybody knows, these are the individual plays within the fandom playbook.
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The fandom playbook has nine plays. We just talked about in-person connections. That's one of the plays. I'll talk about Behind the Curtain here in just a moment.
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And what I recommend is take a look at the book, and there's a free excerpt.
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You can look at the table of contents to see what all the nine plays are.
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But most people would choose two, maybe three, possibly four plays. Don't try to do them all.
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Okay. I don't know any organization that would make sense to try to do them all.
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A handful, two, three, four makes sense. Even just one makes sense. So the idea behind the curtain is what can you do to provide a way for people to see what's happening sort of in the back room, in the process of what you do? I'll give you two examples, one quick one, and then
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one that I found super fascinating. Quick one is, there's a restaurant I love on Nantucket Island.
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It's called Black-eyed Susan's. And you can either sit at a table, or you can sit at a counter, and you can watch them prepare the food because the food is being prepared on the other side of the counter.
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And it's a great way to see what's going on. I'm like, "Wow, the chef is like an artist." It's super interesting.
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His name is Chef Todd. I follow him on Instagram. And so that's a way to sort of show what's going on behind the curtain.
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In that case, the kitchen's not off in another room. It's literally the kitchen's in the dining room.
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My favorite example, though, I've got a Grain Surfboards surfboard right behind me here. Grain Surfboards is located in York, Maine, and they do wooden surfboards, fabulously designed, beautiful wooden surfboards. And they have a specific technique they use to make these
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surfboards. It's a boat building technique where there's ribs, and then there's wood that goes over the ribs, and then they have a special plug in the wood.
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It's a small plug about the size of a quarter dollar, and it allows air into the surfboard, but not water. And that's required so that there's no pressure differential between inside and outside of the surfboard, otherwise it might burst.
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So they invented this concept. They invented the boat building technique. They invented the plug that allows for the surfboard to breathe, the pressure differentials. Most companies would put a patent on that and say, "You're not allowed to use this stuff. We're not going to show you.
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It's a trade secret." Grain Surfboard does the opposite. They allow people behind the curtain literally to come to their factory.
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In my case, I bought a four-day surfboard building package, and I went up to York, Maine for four days, and I built this beautiful surfboard myself, obviously with the help of the people in the factory.
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Or you can buy the plans. They'll send you the plans, or you can buy the plans with the materials that you need. Now, that's really interesting because so many organizations would say, "Nope, it's proprietary, it's secret, it's patented.
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We're not going to show you what we do." Grain Surfboard says, "Sure, why not?
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It's going to help to build fans." Somebody like me working with the factory workers over the course of four days, I got to know them super well.
Speaker A
Fun fact, one of them is a huge Grateful Dead fan, so two of my fandoms colliding is a kind of cool thing. But- Let me ask you a quick question about this, David.
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Yeah. So far these examples are in-person experiences, and is it possible that we could take people behind the curtain online with video, live, I don't know, other kinds of things? Just because so many people also have businesses that maybe don't have a
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physical presence. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that. Oh, absolutely. There's many, many ways that you can show what's going on behind the scenes. I talked about the restaurant earlier. How great would it be?
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I know a number of restaurants do this. Right. I'm sure you've seen them, Mike, is- Yeah ... show how the food's prepared. Have a YouTube channel or a TikTok or Instagram, whatever, that you're showing the food being prepared. You're sharing the secrets.
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You're bringing us behind the scenes. I've got a Toyota Land Cruiser. It's a newer one. It's a 2025 model.
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And Toyota released a video of what that car looks like going through the factory in Japan. It's 18 minutes long. I watched the whole damn thing.
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I don't watch 18-minute videos. That doesn't happen. I watched this one. Yeah. Behind the scenes and how the car is being made.
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Absolutely, social media is a great way to bring people behind the scenes. Well, it's fascinating because my oldest daughter is a massive Star Wars fan.
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Yes. And what's really intriguing is she watched the making of videos just as much as she watched the videos themselves to see- Oh cool ... George Lucas behind the scenes working with a young Mark Hamill, and all these people and all this stuff. I do think that
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this is where documentaries come in handy. This is where behind the scenes with your staff come in handy.
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And nowadays, I think people can do this a little bit more if they choose to actually show how things are made.
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Because I do think there is something to the human craft of seeing how things are made that endears fans to the brand. There's- Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely, Mike.
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And I'll give you one more example, as long as we're talking about daughters. Yeah.
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My daughter Reiko is a huge K-pop fan, Korean pop music. Her favorite band is Stray Kids, and she travels the country to go to Stray Kids concerts. The most recent one, she went all the way to Orlando, Florida, to see her
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favorite band. And on social media, they do something really cool. Of course, they have the music videos, but then for people who become more of a fan, they have how-to videos of how they put the dance steps together.
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Mm. And what's interesting about that is it's absolutely bringing you behind the curtain because you can see dance practice. You can see them.
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They're not wearing their stage costumes. They're wearing sweatpants and so on, and they're putting the dance moves together.
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But the other thing it does, which is interesting, is it helps to teach fans the dance steps so that some of those fans then do those dance steps, and then they create videos of themselves doing the dance steps, or they can do the dance steps
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when they go to the shows. So yeah, totally behind the scenes, how we put together those dances from K-pop is one of the reasons why K-pop is a phenomenon around the world. They figured out fandom.
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One other application that we do at our conference is we have a huge, at least I think like 100 volunteers that are typically part of the conference.
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Yeah. And they get the behind-the-scenes tour on the production and all the magic sauce that goes into putting on a conference at the magnitude that we do.
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Yeah. And it's crazy to see these people. Some of them are actual customers who decide to become volunteers, and they just kind of geek out. They get a chance to meet me.
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They get a chance to meet the people behind the scenes. And there is something to that, is there not?
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I feel like almost any kind of business could do tours and stuff like that. And you have obviously distilleries and businesses that this is where actually you can probably accomplish quite a bit with this.
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Is there psychology at play here? I'm just curious. I think there is. In fact, I've experienced that myself.
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I'm at my home video studio right now. I commandeered an extra bedroom. This is what it looks like.
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And I- Yeah. For folks that are listening to the podcast, we're looking at kind of a wide shot with a whole bunch of equipment, but keep going.
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Yeah. And I've got four cameras. I've got professional lights. I'm standing when I do podcasts or virtual events that I do from the studio.
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Sometimes I'm on CNN or one of the other networks, and this is where I do that from. And so I do all my things from the studio.
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And people who aren't, like Mike, you're on video all the time, but people who aren't on video all the time, who aren't a content creator, aren't on cable news and don't do virtual events, to see my studio, it's really cool for them.
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And I fire it up. I get it going so they can see what it looks like for me, and what they look like on camera, and what the lights are like.
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And so that's really cool. I hadn't thought of it that way before, the way you're describing it, as actually a little bit of a behind-the-scenes thing in my little, I have a one-person business, my little one-person business, and I have guests once
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in a while to my home, and I bring them into the home studio. They're like, "Wow, that's really cool.
Speaker A
Okay, now I know a little bit more about you, David. That's interesting." Okay. So, so far we've talked about ignite in person, and this is really about the concept of creating opportunities for people to have connection, and this really
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happens, obviously, if you've got any kind of event or music or restaurants or any kind of experience where people can come together. And then we talked about behind the curtain, right?
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Yes. And I'm a big fan of the behind the curtain stuff. Yeah. I think it could even turn a passive customer into a fan, actually, because I do think when they begin to understand the work that goes into producing the output-
Speaker A
Mm-hmm ... they actually might actually turn into a fan. So the next thing- I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right.
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Let me give you one really, really quick other example. Yeah. I have a Mercedes-Benz camper van. It's great.
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When I bring it to get serviced at Mercedes, it's the only time I've ever seen this. The wall between the waiting room and the service bay is glass.
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Oh. I can actually see them working on the cars, and in my case, a van.
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That's really, really interesting. And it's just a simple change from putting it literally behind the curtain where you can't see it, to making that wall glass, and I can see what those mechanics are doing. Fascinating.
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And it makes me more of a fan, and I'm a little bit more likely to want to, I hate having my car serviced. It feels like I've lost a day, but I'm a little more likely to do it when I can see what's going on behind glass.
Speaker A
Well, and just a couple of tips for anybody who, I've done docuseries, and I've got a docuseries, a short form docuseries that we're doing right now. When you remove the wall, metaphorically or physically, and allow people to see what your staff is doing behind the scenes, it does change the way
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your staff behaves- Mm ... because they're always on stage. You understand? Right. And in some regards, they're going to be extra careful to ensure that they are going to do things that are in alignment with the vision and the brand.
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I would love, to be honest with you, to get a behind-the-scenes tour of Disney.
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You know what I mean? Yeah. How cool would that be? Yeah. That'd be great.
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And I know they offer those kinds of things. But by removing the wall, you do also, I think, up the game of all the players that are involved because they have the- Yeah ... opportunity to be seen and to positively impact the brand. I don't know.
Speaker A
I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Super cool idea. And so what we're talking about here, of the nine plays, this one is behind the curtain. What can you do? Every one of us can do something behind the curtain.
Speaker A
Yep. Okay. So the next one is about games. Make it a game. Talk to me about that one.
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So, we humans love games, which is sort of a natural thing that we like.
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Is there a way to make a game within your product, service, or offering? So I'll give you just a couple quick examples.
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One of them comes from HubSpot, and I'm on the HubSpot board of advisors, have been for 19 years. And HubSpot has HubSpot Academy, where they have free courses that you can take about marketing and sales and customer service and social
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media and how to use HubSpot products and services. The courses run from about an hour video-based to three or four or five more hours. And then once you pass a course, and they take a little test, you get
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certified. And the certifications include a badge, both a virtual badge you can put on your LinkedIn or on your CV, as well as literally you can get a pin that you can put on that says that you passed this particular
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certification. At the Unbound conference, HubSpot's Unbound conference, which was in September, I noticed many people on their badge had the pins of the certifications that they had on their- Oh, it's like a little trophy almost, huh?
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Yeah, on their lanyard. And I ran into one woman, Stephanie, and she had about, I think, 20 of these certifications, so like all down her lanyard.
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And I was like, "That's really cool." Now it's become a game for people to get these certifications and put them on their LinkedIn.
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So that's one that can be both virtual because you're putting it on your social media feed that you've got this particular certification.
Speaker A
I'll give you another example, which I love, and it's a dive resort, scuba dive resort in the Grand Cayman Islands.
Speaker A
And I went there with my daughter a couple of years ago, and I met the owner.
Speaker A
His name is Steve Broadbelt. It's Ocean Frontiers Dive Resort in the Caymans. And Steve said... He knew I was a marketing guy.
Speaker A
We got to talk about marketing over a beer as the sun was going down.
Speaker A
It was amazing. And he said, "David, I've had a problem. People love coming to my resort. I get five-star reviews.
Speaker A
They say it's been great. They love it, but they don't come back." And then he said, "I had been thinking about this for years, and I tried to figure out what was going on, and a couple of years ago, I figured it out." Scuba divers,
Speaker A
anyone who's listening in or watching who's a scuba diver will recognize that scuba divers want to always dive a new reef.
Speaker A
It's not as exciting to dive and see a reef that you've already seen. So he recognized one of the main reasons why people love his resort but don't come back is they're like, "Okay, I've already been there. I've already seen that reef.
Speaker A
Yeah, it was a great dive resort, but I want to go to a different dive resort." So what he did was he went in his boats all around his resort, all the different places that are nearby, and he mapped
Speaker A
55 individual dive sites. And he created what he calls the Green Shorts Challenge. Anyone who dives all 55 dive sites with his dive operation wins the Green Shorts Challenge.
Speaker A
They get all these benefits. Number one, they get a pair of green shorts with the logo of Ocean Frontiers on it. Only people who've done all 55 dive sites can get that. You get a brass plaque with your name on it that they screw into the dock
Speaker A
of their dive resort. When you complete that, after you've done your 55th dive, they throw a party for you, a cake, champagne. They give you a medal.
Speaker A
They take pictures of that party. Guess what happens to the pictures? Mike, of course, you know. They get shared on social media.
Speaker A
Ocean Frontier shares it on their social media, and then the people who achieve that Green Shorts Challenge, they share on their social media.
Speaker A
And it's a great way to build word of mouth because all of a sudden, someone who might not have shared that they were at Ocean Frontier say, "Yeah, I got the Green Shorts Challenge. I dove all 55 dive sites. Here's the party.
Speaker A
Here's me with my champagne. Here's my cake. Here's the brass plaque they screwed into the dock for me." And they share that on their social media. It's amazing.
Speaker A
Can I ask a question? Yeah. This idea is how can you make something within your organization game-like?
Speaker A
We'll get to answering that question in just a second, but I want to ask a couple clarifying questions just so people can understand the story.
Speaker A
So a dive resort, this is not something they can do in one weekend. Obviously, this is over many years.
Speaker A
No. It takes time. Help people understand, first of all, what the heck a dive resort even is because I know what a resort is, but I don't know what a dive resort is.
Speaker A
Is that just a shop that has a dock? Or help everybody understand. Okay. So in the case of Ocean Frontiers, they have a full-service dive resort.
Speaker A
What that means is they have hotel rooms that you can stay in. Oh. They have a restaurant that you can eat in, and they have their own boats that you can use to take you out to the place where you can go scuba diving.
Speaker A
And so it's basically an all-inclusive dive resort where you go down for three or four days or five days or a week, and normally people will do two, maybe three, sometimes as many as four dives per day.
Speaker A
I prefer two, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Got it. So that means it's 26, no, 27 days that I have to be at Ocean Frontiers to dive all 55 sites.
Speaker A
Well, and you've spent a heck of a lot of money with them. I didn't actually do it. I didn't get up to- What I meant is if you achieve this goal, you have spent an enormous amount of money with them. And-
Speaker A
And you've gone back five or six or seven or eight times to the same resort. And remember, this came about because Steve Broadbelt, the entrepreneurial CEO of Ocean Frontiers, said, "People love coming to my resort, but they don't come back. I need to fix it." And by doing this, he's now getting many
Speaker A
repeat visitors who want to... It's a silly thing, but we humans, many of us love this.
Speaker A
It's the people who have a collector gene. "I want to get all 55 sites.
Speaker A
I don't know what's in number 49. It might be the coolest thing in the world.
Speaker A
I want to go to number 49." That's really, really cool. Okay. I get it now.
Speaker A
So- Sorry, I should have covered that beforehand. No, that's okay. Obviously, I'm a snorkeler.
Speaker A
I've never done diving, but so that's why I didn't know what a dive resort was.
Speaker A
So, okay. Let's talk about practical, what in the world we could do. You know what I mean? That's obviously an extreme example of somebody who has a bunch of properties, but I love it, and it works.
Speaker A
So let's bring it down to some very simple things that we could do to gamify our business. We could just freeform, or maybe you've got some examples.
Speaker A
I don't know, but I'd love to just explore this a little bit. You know what I mean?
Speaker A
I think it's a matter of trying to understand within your business- Yeah ... what is there that someone who has sort of, I call it the collector gene, but somebody who likes to complete lists, somebody who wants recognition, somebody who wants to feel special.
Speaker A
So, as we're doing this recording, Mike, and I appreciate you working within my schedule, but tonight I'm going to a restaurant in Boston.
Speaker A
It's called La Bodega. And it's hard to get a reservation to this restaurant. If you go to this restaurant a couple of times and you sort of make friends with the owner, it's an owner-operated restaurant, she'll give you her text number.
Speaker A
Oh. And once you have her text number, you can text her, which I did, and I said, "Hey, I know it's only a week out. Any chance you can fit me in on Friday night?" She texted me back. She knows who I am. I'm in her phone.
Speaker A
Said, "Hey, David, how's it going? Would love to have you. Yes, I have room today at 5:30." And so It's kind of a game- Yeah ... that if you're in the restaurant's good graces, you can text the owner. They don't do online reservations like through any of the apps.
Speaker A
The other way is you call the main number and try to get lucky and get a table.
Speaker A
So it's a game. Can you become buddy-buddy with the owner, and get her text number, and be able to shoot her a text, and then she knows who you are because you're in her phone?
Speaker A
That's just the first thing- I love that ... that came to my mind because I'm going to that dinner tonight with my wife.
Speaker A
But think creatively. What is something that can become a game within your business, within your organization? Be creative about it.
Speaker A
Well, I have an example now that you're talking. Yeah. We have a daily docuseries called "Press Start: The Road to 3000," and it's our story of how we're trying to recover our conference back to 3,000 or more people-
Speaker A
Yep ... post-COVID, back when you were there. And what we're doing is we're soliciting ideas from our fans, and if we deploy their idea, first of all, if they have a good idea, we acknowledge their idea in the
Speaker A
series. Nice. And if their idea actually helps move the needle, we will actually give them a ticket to the conference and also cover their hotel.
Speaker A
Great. So that's an example of gamification. Great example. Yeah. Great example. Great example. Yes.
Speaker A
And we're actually putting it to work, and the fans are getting behind it, and it's really, really cool.
Speaker A
Yeah. So I didn't realize that was an example of making it a game, but that is exactly what we're doing. Okay.
Speaker A
That's a good one. I'll give you another one that I learned from- Yeah ... HubSpot's Unbound conference, Mike, because I know we've been talking about your conference, but- Yeah ... they have some big celebrities who come and do keynotes, and for example, Tom
Speaker A
Brady was at the most recent one. And they have meet and greets backstage with the people who are doing the keynotes.
Speaker A
And basically, it's kind of a lottery system, where if you want to meet one of the people, you put your name in, and then they randomly choose, and then you might get a chance to meet Tom Brady. And-
Speaker A
Oh, that's super cool ... and so yeah. So that's cool. So if you have somebody who's coming to speak and they're well-known in our world, in social media marketing world- Yeah ... maybe there's a game and the winner has dinner that night with that
Speaker A
person, or maybe there's a group of a dozen people who have dinner with that person paid for by the organization. There's all sorts of things when you start to think of making it a game that you can do.
Speaker A
Love it. Okay, we're going to talk about another one, which is- Yeah ... about unleashing your passions.
Speaker A
Talk to us- Right ... about what this is and why. My favorite play. What I've noticed, Mike, I know you have as well, is that most people have erected a brick wall between their personal life and their professional life. And on social media, that brick wall
Speaker A
exists. So for example, many people have that brick wall, and then over here they've got their personal life, and they share that on maybe Facebook or Instagram or whichever social media they use for personal stuff.
Speaker A
Then they've got that brick wall, and then over here they've got their professional life, and they share on something like LinkedIn, they share their professional life. And on their personal life, "Yeah, I'm having fun.
Speaker A
I'm doing the things I love. I'm with my friends. It's great." And then over here, "I'm very serious because this is business, and I only post important things." I say break the wall down.
Speaker A
And when I did research for the latest two books that I wrote, the most recent one coming out, "The Fandom Playbook," I realized that people are attracted to those who have passion for something.
Speaker A
One reason why I always talk about what I'm passionate about, Grateful Dead or green surfboards or whatever, is because that shows my passion, and that becomes infectious.
Speaker A
And I'll give you a really interesting example of this. So I speak at Tony Robbins' Business Mastery events around the world, have done so for 12 years now, spoken maybe 30 or 35 times at his events.
Speaker A
And I was speaking at one of his events a couple of years ago, and I was talking about fandom, and a dentist approached me. His name is Dr.
Speaker A
John Marashi. Dr. Marashi is a dentist in Southern California, and he said, "David, I love the idea of passion, but I'm a dentist. People hate their dentist.
Speaker A
They don't love their dentist. Well, how can I build fans?" So I said, "Dr.
Speaker A
Marashi, what do you love to do? What are the things that give you joy?" And he said, "Oh my gosh, no question. I love skateboarding." Oh.
Speaker A
And I said, "Oh, that's interesting." I said, "Have you ever shared the idea that you love skateboarding within your dental practice?" And he said, no.
Speaker A
And I said, "Why don't you consider how you might share on social networks and in other ways your love of skateboarding and see what that might do to build fans for your dental practice?" So he said, "Okay, that sounds interesting." I
Speaker A
didn't hear from him for about nine months, and then he got back to me.
Speaker A
He emailed me, and we set up a call, and he said, "This has been amazing, David.
Speaker A
I started talking about my skateboarding love when I left the conference. I put skateboards up on the wall of my dental practice.
Speaker A
I have pictures of me skateboarding on my website." He said he created an Instagram feed, by the way, now has 60,000 Instagram followers. For a dentist, I might add.
Speaker A
And he said, "I do some things about my dental practice, but I also post often about skateboarding." So what he's become is not one of 10,000 dentists in Southern California.
Speaker A
He has become the only skateboarding dentist. And so because he's sharing that passion, people are attracted to him.
Speaker A
It's not other skateboarders. It's just people who are attracted to the fact that he's passionate about something in his personal life, and they don't want just someone who's a cookie cutter dentist.
Speaker A
They want someone who's got this really cool, interesting thing that he does. And then he reached out again, I think it was about a year later, and said, "I want to give you the data." He said, "I've had, just simply
Speaker A
because I've been sharing on social networks and within my office about my passion for skateboarding, I've been able to grow the number of new patients in my practice by over 100%, and I've been able to grow the revenue
Speaker A
in my dental practice by almost 50%. And I can attribute that growth to the fact that I'm talking about skateboarding because in our new patient in-" Intake yeah.
Speaker A
"... forms, intake, that's the word I was looking for, intake forms, I ask them how they heard about me and what they know about me, and then people who check that, 'Hey, you're the skateboarding dentist. I know who you are.
Speaker A
My friend told me about you,' or, 'I learned about you on social media.'" And so Dr. Marashi's like, "I can't believe how easy it was to build fans." Now, we're not all great skateboarders. That's not going to be right for everybody.
Speaker A
And you certainly don't want to talk about inappropriate things, politics or religion or whatever. But what is it that you're passionate about?
Speaker A
I've got the Grateful Dead. I've got surfing. What is it that you're passionate about?
Speaker A
Because that passion can become infectious. One more example of that. I mentioned my daughter earlier, her name is Reiko.
Speaker A
Reiko is now a full-time emergency doctor. She was in medical school during the period just before COVID, and then she was supposed to graduate from medical school in mid-2020, so in the thick of COVID.
Speaker A
They actually graduated her earlier because they needed more emergency docs in Boston. She went to Boston University School of Medicine, and then she did a residency at Boston Medical Center.
Speaker A
So Boston Medical Center, they graduated her from the residency program. Now she's a full-on emergency doc.
Speaker A
And she said, "Daddy, when we would approach someone during peak COVID, we looked like aliens. We had personal protective gear, head to toe, gloves, clothing, a mask, a shield. The only thing exposed was a little bit of eye,
Speaker A
but there was a shield over that." Literally, this did not look like a human who was coming in to talk to these very sick people.
Speaker A
She said when her colleagues and her decided to put on logo gear of Boston sports teams, the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics- Oh, as their clothing, you mean?
Speaker A
As their clothing, on the outside of their clothing. Okay. Either like a Red Sox T-shirt or a pin from the Patriots, or some people wore the, I don't know what they're called, but the caps that protect your hair from coming out. Those might be logoed.
Speaker A
She said, "When we did that, patients were no longer scared of us as if we're an alien. They lit up, and they said, 'Oh, you're a Red Sox fan. I hate the Red Sox.
Speaker A
I'm a Yankees fan. Ha ha ha.'" Or whatever. Right. And because now all of a sudden they're human. They're showing their passion.
Speaker A
So this idea of showing what you're passionate about, breaking the barrier between your private life and your professional life is a great way to build fans.
Speaker A
David Meerman Scott, author of "The Fandom Playbook." I know they can get this book anywhere books are sold.
Speaker A
If people want to find you or connect with you, is there a preferred social platform? And if there's not, where can they get the book?
Speaker A
Talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah, sure. So, I've used my middle name professionally now for more than 25 years, David Scott. There's millions, not millions, there's thousands and thousands of people with the name David Scott.
Speaker A
So if you google David Meerman Scott, you will find me and only me. If you want a lot more about fandom, I have a ton of free content, no registration required.
Speaker A
I'm not going to ask for your email address. You can get an excerpt of "The Fandom Playbook." You can learn more details on what those nine plays are. Lots and lots of information.
Speaker A
All you do is type into your browser, fandom.marketing. Fandom.marketing, click Enter. That will redirect to my page, which is the complete guide to fandom marketing. I think Mike will put the full-on URL in the show notes, but- 100%
Speaker A
... either Google me to learn more about me or fandom.marketing to learn more about this idea of growing fans of your business.
Speaker A
David, it was a pleasure having you back on the show. Thanks for giving- Always great, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on.
Topics:fandompassionate fansmarketing strategycustomer loyaltycommunity buildingDavid Meerman ScottHagerty Insurancesocial media marketingsmall businessbrand tribe
