Community-Driven Brand Narratives

Big brands have a lot to learn about building community from this small East London shop. If you follow me you know I’m obsessed with pinpointing the places, moments and margins where culture appears, often outside the mainstream. Waste! is an independent store in Hackney specialising in handmade, self-published and DIY artist products that also serves as a meetup for makers and fans of the niche and novel. Big brands can spend millions chasing community. Yet genuine bonds form in the unlikeliest corners. By giving people a place to belong and a stake in the story, you can create evangelists rather than consumers. Here’s some of the playbook: → Look beyond the obvious Which subculture have you never visited? Find the one that aligns with your brand values and surprise them with an IRL activation made just for them. → Host micro-experiences Think smaller than a giant pop-up. Small scale means deeper conversations, stronger friendships and stories that spread far beyond the room. → Invite people behind the scenes Jack and Roydon modelled the shop on their childhood bedrooms. Everything feels handpicked and personal. → Celebrate genuine connections At Waste! customers aren’t just buying things. They swap ideas, share projects and spark new collaborations. Create spaces online or offline where people can connect, chill and feel like insiders. → Reinvest in your community Every penny from sales goes back into buying more stock from friends and local artists. That reinvestment shows you care about real people not just profit margins. → Turn every interaction into a collectible moment Limited-edition patches, secret passwords, custom playlists or tiny zines tie physical mementos to emotional experiences. Superfans will wear, share and trade these badges of honour. → Measure passion not just reach Track repeat attendees, social shout-outs from community insiders and user-generated content. A hundred truly engaged superfans create more long-term value than ten thousand casual followers. Sometimes the best way to build real community is the scrappy, DIY, heartfelt route ✌️💚

THIS is how you tap into community. I shared a post last week about how niching down isn’t just smart marketing, it’s how brands actually connect with people. There’s real power in niche communities that already exist. When brands approach them with understanding, not just opportunity, the results hit differently. It’s about becoming part of something, not just sticking your logo on it. Nike’s new collab with London calisthenics studio PNP fitness is such a perfect example of that. The film feels raw, local, and community-first. It’s so London and features real pnp members. No slogans. No monologues. Just movement. There’s no swoosh splashed across the screen, but every athlete is wearing Nike. It’s subtle. Human. Smart. They’ve understood the power of going small to go big. By backing real communities, they earn relevance, and conversation, organically. This is the kind of work that builds earned eyeballs, not just ads. It’s grassroots storytelling on a global scale. At Axe + Saw, we talk about this a lot, how community is a superpower, how brands can move at the pace of culture when they listen first. I'm so pleased to see Nike coming through with campaigns that bring their values to life. The things that always made them a brand that stood out. Now I can’t stop thinking about what’s next, what other subcultures, micro-communities, and scenes they could champion in this way. That’s where the future of brand storytelling lives.

Slapping “community-led” into your brand positioning doesn’t magically make it true. Because if what you’re calling a “community” is really just: - A one-way email blast - A WhatsApp group with no interaction - A silent audience politely lurking because they don’t know what they’re meant to say… Then what you’ve got is an audience. There’s nothing wrong with having an audience, by the way. But don’t confuse people watching with people connecting. Real community-led brands do things differently: - They don’t just speak at their audience, they co-create with them - They build rituals and reasons for people to engage beyond product updates - They listen, tweak, involve - not just broadcast It’s not always loud and ain’t always sexy. But it’s consistent, intentional and centred around actual people - not just a content strategy or GTM feature. Look at Strava. They didn’t just build a fitness app, they built a behaviour loop. You show up because others do too. You cheer each other on. That, my friends, is community. If your people aren’t engaging, it’s not always an awareness issue. Sometimes, they’re just not being given anything to belong to. And calling it “community” without the trust, participation or two-way value exchange is simply just marketing. Again, that’s okay. But remember: you’re not building a community if no one’s talking to each other. P.S. We now have over 500+ members in our Nexus Femtech community. All built on a SHARED purpose. 🤝

The centre of gravity in media has shifted Once, brands were the primary voice in the marketplace. Now, individuals hold the mic and more importantly, the distribution. For DTC brands, this isn’t a threat. It’s the greatest opportunity we have. In a world where attention is fragmented and trust is hard-won, people no longer look to companies for cues, they look to people. Influencers, creators, customers, employees. Authenticity travels faster than polish. This shift means: Your most powerful media asset may not be your Instagram grid, but your most passionate customer’s TikTok. Your head of product’s behind-the-scenes content could outperform a six-figure ad campaign. A founder’s personal story shared on LinkedIn might drive more meaningful engagement than a branded video ever could. The gravitational pull has moved from corporate control to human connection. As a DTC brand, you must build with this in mind. Empower your community, amplify internal voices, and put storytelling back in the hands of real people. The brands winning today are those who let go of control and learn to co-create with the people who already have their audience’s trust. The question isn’t “How do we control the narrative?” It’s: “Who can tell it better than we can and how do we help them do it?”

Celebrity fatigue is real. And brands can feel it. For years, the default playbook was simple. Big celebrity. Big cheque. Big splash. But quietly and now visibly, that equation is changing. What we are seeing on the ground is not a rejection of celebrities. It is a recalibration of influence. Across categories like #beauty, #food, #fashion, #fintech and #consumertech, #brands are asking tougher questions. Not “who is famous?” but “who actually moves behaviour?” Not “how many followers?” but “how many conversations?” And most importantly, “does this feel real to the consumer?” At Bloomingdale Public Relations, we are seeing this shift play out every day. #Campaigns that once hinged on one large face are now being broken into many smaller, sharper voices. Regional creators. Community insiders. Micro and nano #influencers who speak the language, understand the culture, and carry credibility within tight circles. This is not about cost alone, though efficiency helps. It is about control, relevance and trust. A #celebrityendorsement delivers instant visibility, but it is also top-down, transactional and increasingly predictable. #Creator-led narratives, on the other hand, travel sideways. They feel discovered, not delivered. They invite participation instead of applause. Another big change is accountability. Brands today want to see linkage. Between content and engagement. Between engagement and action. Between action and business outcome. Influencer ecosystems allow testing, learning and course correction in ways celebrity contracts never could. What is interesting is that the most effective campaigns now sit somewhere in between. A familiar face to anchor trust, supported by a chorus of credible creators who make the story local, personal and repeatable. This is not the end of celebrity marketing. But it is the end of celebrity marketing as a shortcut. Influence today is earned in communities, not rented in bulk. And brands that understand this shift early are not just saving money. They are building relevance that lasts longer than a campaign window.

Do we all remember when Ami Colé broke the rules of traditional product launch strategy last year and just ran their version of March Madness, the "Ami Colé Cup," letting their community vote on their favorite Lip Treatment Oil shades? Not only did they reach more than 700 daily votes, 20K+ site views, and, most importantly, insights that completely challenged their internal team's predictions (their team was betting on the Eggplant shade as the winner, while their community coined Brick Red the winner), but they also turned what is sometimes buried away as customer feedback for post-launch data analysis into product launch gold: guaranteed product-market fit before a single formula is mixed. Now, we talk endlessly about community and the value of it, but how many brands truly let their community drive product decisions? Ami Colé has been doing this since Diarrha Ndiaye was developing products in her Brooklyn apartment, and now they're a Sephora success story. So, I can't help but wonder: Why aren't more beauty brands embracing true crowdsourcing? Is the fear of losing creative control holding them back? Or do concerns about operational complexity loom too large? Or are they collectively stuck in traditional product development cycles? The data here is so clear: let your community lead, and they will show up. _ #beautyindustry #strategy #growth #disruption #beautybusiness

I was at Bloom Nutrition's Energy Bar pop-up in Austin today, and it felt different. This wasn’t just an influencer-driven marketing stunt. It was an experience — one where the brand didn’t just want to be seen but wanted to be felt. For years, brands poured millions into influencer campaigns, chasing clout through sponsored posts and paid shoutouts. But the smartest brands are pivoting from influencer-driven to community-first marketing. Influencer marketing isn’t fading, but it’s evolving. Brands now realize that digital buzz alone isn’t enough; they need real-world engagement. Here’s why Bloom’s pop-up worked, and why more brands need to be thinking like this: 🔥 Exclusivity without exclusion – Anyone could sign up, yet the long lines created buzz and demand. Making an event open to the public while maintaining an exclusive feel is the sweet spot for community engagement. 🎯 Hyper-localized branding – They didn’t just drop a generic activation; they spoke Austin’s language. From ATX-branded hats to signage that read “Bloom loves Austin,” the event felt personal and intentional. When brands embed themselves in local culture, they foster deeper connections. 📷 UGC at scale: Live experiences generate way more organic content than a single paid post. Instead of relying on a few big influencers, they turned every attendee into a brand ambassador. 🙌 Participation = ownership – A photobooth, a charm keychain station — small, interactive moments made attendees part of the brand experience. People don’t just want to see a brand; they want to engage with it, create with it, and share it. Your audience doesn’t just want to be marketed to — they want to be included. The future of marketing is experiential, participatory, and community-driven. If you’re not building real-world experiences that make people feel something, you’re missing out.

Most brands obsess over the feed. Too few study what's happening underneath it. That's a mistake. Because while a post might capture attention, the comments shape interpretation, trust, and momentum. According to Morning Consult, 77% of social media users actively read comment sections, 56% discover new brands there, and 26% comment daily. "The comment section is basically the new Twitter feed," says Brett Dashevsky, co-founder of Siftsy, the comment intelligence platform analyzing millions of comments for Taco Bell, Hilton, and Sony Pictures, among others. And that's exactly how the smartest brands are treating it: mining comments for emerging language, emotional through-lines, early demand signals, narrative shifts, consensus forming in public—all the signals that a community is starting to cohere as strangers align in language, emotion, and expectation. In this week's edition of Community Catalysts, I break down the five signs that show when a comment section is crossing over from random reactions to real community formation—and how brands are turning that layer into strategy. 👉 Read the preview below and subscribe to get the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/gjhGTGTn --- Hi, I'm Sara Wilson 👋 I help brands generate attention, relevance and loyalty with Gen Z by building community-powered flywheels. 🚀💸