Does your brand empower your staff and customers? Do they feel passionate about it with tribal gusto? Is it the stuff of cults, revolts or mere mediocrity?

Building a tribe of passionate brand followers, or at least a ‘community’, is a smart strategy. Not always appropriate, but smart when it is. The brand takes on a whole self-perpetuating momentum in this community setting. Your customers begin to sell on your behalf. Neighbours help neighbours to make purchase decisions. Ingenious.

Take Apple Mac Inc. Mac users are passionate, almost fanatical, about their brand. Websites abound, waxing lyrical about Apple. Fans create these sites. They chat, exchange knowledge and cement product loyalty. Nobody pays them.

Smart marketers see the merit and worth in nurturing stronger ties with consumers.

Since iPod, Apple jumped in brand worth by 23.7% to $13,724 million in one year.*

*Source: “Best Global Brands” Interbrand 2008.