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And In the Beginning There Was a Brand: The BPONG IRELAND Brand Community “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” – Carl Sagan (1980) This quote comes to mind frequently when pondering the adaptation of brand community (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001) as a marketing strategy. There is substantial evidence that consumer tribes centred on existing brands can be approached, fostered, supported and included in key marketing decisions (Schouten and McAlexander 1995, Cova and Cova 2002, McAlexander et al. 2002, Kozinets et al. 2007, Fuller et al. 2008). However, what approaches should be used in attempting to create a brand community around a new brand? In a recent study of a new and emerging brand (BPONG IRELAND) we found that by including an aim of brand community initiation, the new brand achieved a loyal customer base and enjoys an increasing consumer following. We now outline the conceptual approach followed in detailing the current attempt to establish a brand community. DEVELOPING A BRAND COMMUNITY Brand communities are usually initiated by consumers, either without any corporate involvement, or free from excessive corporate involvement (Mandelli 2004, McAlexander et al. 2002, McAlexander et al. 2003, Muniz and O’Guinn 2001). They are a particular form of response to the ‘desperate search’ for social links (Cova 1997) whereby brands serve as a talismanic locus for consumer affiliation. Brand community thus incorporates a web of interacting relationships (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001, McAlexander et al. 2002, McAlexander et al. 2003). McAlexander et al. (2002) propose four key relationships (see Figure 1): “A brand community from a customer-experiential perspective is a fabric of relationships in which the customer is situated. Crucial relationships include those between the customer and the brand, between the customer and the firm, between the customer and the product in use, and among fellow customers” Figure 1. Brand Community Integration model as envisaged by McAlexander et al (2002) There is also a consensus in the literature on the need to facilitate consumers’ desire for such relationships, rather than to try to coerce them into community (Algesheimer et al. 2005, Fournier and Lee 2009, Patterson and O’Malley 2006). McAlexander et al. (2002) proffer the brandfest as a means by which consumers’ need for meaningful relationships and experiences can be met, while brand loyalty is simultaneously enhanced. Well-designed brandfests such as Jeep Jamborees can facilitate transcendent customer experience (TCE) (Schouten et al. 2007) thereby strengthening mutual ties in a brand-related manner. TCE can be defined as a sense of flow and/ or peak experience in a consumption context. This can be characterised by feelings of awakening, epiphany and novelty of experience. It can also have an ongoing relational dimension, whereby consumers not only seek to repeat such experiences, but seek to do so in association with the people and brand(s) whom they encountered via their initial experiences. Schau, Muniz, and Arnould (2009) build on this by advocating that organisations engage in ‘seeding practices’. For instance organisations should facilitate social networking, so that community members can both reminisce about shared brand related experience, and anticipate future experiences. Other seeding practices include milestoning (the acknowledgement of “seminal events in brand ownership and consumption”, badging (“translating milestones into (tangible) symbols”), and documenting (“detailing the brand relationship journey in a narrative way”). All such practices should be openly encouraged because they serve to integrate members further into the brand community (Schau, Muniz, and Arnould 2009). A further issue arises in relation to service brands. How might the brand community concept be applied in the context of intangible service brands such as higher education (McAlexander et al. 2006) or charity marketing (Hassay and Peloza 2009). Hassay and Peloza (2009) advocate application of the brandfest approach to the charity sector, arguing that participation in charity brandfests will result in full brand community integration. They also advocate badging, through the provision of badges such as t-shirts, pins, or car stickers, to charity brandfest participants. In relation to alumni brand communities, McAlexander et al. (2006) propose that marketing efforts target essentially the same four relationship categories identified by McAlexander et al (2002). However this approach possibly separates rather than integrates the various relationships involved. It may be that BCI is more readily achieved by designing brandfests that primarily aim to facilitate the key relationship illustrated in Figure 2 (below). Figure 2. Simple Brand Community Relationship Model (based on triadic model of Muniz & O’Guinn 2001) Finally, we propose that successful efforts at brand community building are likely to have borrowed from Cova and Cova’s (2002) model for tribal marketing. The three distinct phases of tribal marketing are identified as Phase 1, Ethnomarketing, which involves full participant ethnography, Phase 2, co-design, which involves collaboration on product design and development; and Phase 3, Tribal Support, whereby facilitation of the tribe is systematically developed from within. Organisations who have established their bone fides as members of the community retain subcultural credibility and their efforts at facilitation have a much greater impact than attempts to impose seeding practices from the outside. This shared passion is clearly illustrated in the practices of Harley Davidson in their relationship with the Harley Davidson brand community, for instance (Fournier et al. 2001). THE CURRENT COMMUNITY STUDY: CREATING THE BPONG IRELAND BRAND This paper outlines the lead author’s experiences in attempting to apply the brand community concept in establishing beer pong in Ireland, specifically via the BPONG IRELAND brand. In terms of methodology the study is therefore being implemented via an ongoing participant ethnography (Stewart 1998). Participating in various beer pong events has allowed for participant and non-participant observation, photography, videography and informal conversations with a vast amount of community members on an international scale. The study also includes a virtual aspect with the application of ‘netnography’ (Kozinets 2002). The sport of Beer Pong Beer pong involves two players per team, an 8ft long table, and ping-pong balls that are thrown into a triangle formation of 10 cups slightly filled with beer on the opposite side of the table. When a ball is sunk in one of your opponent’s cups, that cup is taken away. Victory is achieved when all your opponent’s cups are taken away. Beer pong combines the intensity of a boxing match, the self-congratulation of a football touchdown, and the pressure of a gamewinning free throw (Applebaum and Disorbo 2009). The lead author first experienced beer pong when he attended the World Series of Beer Pong (WSOBP) V in Las Vegas, from Jan 1st to 5th 2010. This event combined the sport of beer pong with a carnival ethos: “The level of organisation that went into this entire thing shocked me,… it has been very professionally put together… The music, people dancing, jumping, laugh joking, making friends. I couldn’t believe how friendly people were, everyone was included in the fun. The tournament is almost designed to be as much fun off the tables as on them.… some players were in fancy dress, it was very much a festival of fun and enjoyment.” –Fieldnotes, WSOBP V WSOBP V thus provided participants with a high level of personal interaction not only with the sport of beer pong but also with other members of the ‘BPONG’ community. This left the lead author with an unshakable sense of conversion (Belk et al 1989) and a strong desire to maintain membership of the community. Post the WSOBP V attendees befriended other ‘pongers’ on Facebook, began participating in conversations on the BPONG.COM forum, and uploading various photographs and videos on-line. However, virtual participation in an online community could not prove adequate as a means of replicating the full beer pong experience. Ultimately the desire to recreate this transcendent experience led to the decision to establish BPONG IRELAND. Establishing a Brand Community The BPONG IRELAND brand began in May 2010 with the goal of being Ireland’s premier beer pong provider. An awareness of the benefits of the brand community approach led the founders to believe that they had to firstly facilitate transcendent experience for consumers, and secondly, facilitate consumers’ needs for maintaining that experience both socially and virtually. It was also felt that participation by the founders as full members of the BPONG IRELAND community would allow symbiotic relationships to emerge organically between organisation and consumers as the community grew. Thus the first objective was to organise initial beer pong events that facilitated, rather than tried to coerce, conversion to the beer pong community. This was achieved by focusing very much on people’s enjoyment of their first experience rather than trying to enforce the rules; “We (BPONG IRELAND) were very aware of trying to create an atmosphere people could make their own so, we were very slack with orders, rules, and we left lots of things (rules) go, in order that first of all people had a good time, the first night was not about raising standards, it was about having a good time…. Conversion experience was the aim, we believed (we)... achieved this for most people who were playing….. “ - Fieldnotes, BPONG IRELAND, 05/05/2010 From the outset the attempt at providing a unique experience for consumers to make their own appeared to be successful. “If I just came in randomly, I would definitely come back again” -D______, Fieldnotes. BPONG IRELAND, 05/05/2010 Given the founders’ awareness of the importance of sacralisation maintenance through seeding practices (Schau et al. 2009), consumers were provided with online opportunities to interact. BPONG IRELAND thus encouraged players to engage with the BPONG IRELAND Facebook page to maintain their sense of sacred experience through interaction with each other. This allowed the emerging customer-customer relationships to be facilitated via the shared link (Cova 1997) of the brand; “When filming I was trying to get as much as the new teams as possible, I try to make sure they can see themselves the next day playing and in photos. It inspires communication between groups of people. A lot of people have become good friends on Facebook now since the BPONG IRELAND has started” -Fieldnotes, BPONG IRELAND, 16/06/2010 Brand Community Evolution In the context of an activity based brand there remains a need to continuously create an atmosphere that facilitates TCEs and supports the group’s sense of consciousness of kind. However as the number of participants grew it became less feasible for the founders of BPONG IRELAND to personally engage with ‘newbies’ and to co-create transcendent experience with them. However, neophyte community members began to take on this role spontaneously without waiting for encouragement from the founder members; “We didn’t do a demo tonight, other players already were explaining to the new friends they brought how to play….. the newbies were unaware of some of the lingo, one of the lads shouted ‘Reform!’ he then said 3,2,1 and made (a) triangle shape with his hands and showed them.” - Fieldnotes, BPONG IRELAND, 16/06/2010 This highlights the importance of the customer-customer-brand fused relationship over other relationships associated with brand community formation. Marketers can support and facilitate, but they cannot control all factors surrounding brand community marketing. Consumers form bonds of kinship (Schouten et al. 2007), develop their own rituals and traditions (Muniz & O’Guinn 2001), their own system of cultural capital (Leigh et al. 2006) and hierarchy (O’Sullivan et al. 2011). Members of an emergent brand community will also often engage in their own seeding practices, even if the marketer is already partially facilitating their needs in this respect. In practice, the need for personalised, tangible expressions of this new communal identity meant that new members began to make their own jerseys; “People began asking us when are selling t-shirts, that they’d definitely buy one, also we then announced that we are considering selling BPONG IRELAND tables, people immediately said they would put off buying them from ebay and wait for ours to be on sale” - Fieldnotes, BPONG IRELAND, 10/11/2010 “Teams got their own jerseys made up, displaying our logo and theirs, a considerable expense, it was great to see players do this all off their own back to make the day special for them – we didn’t encourage any of this – it was like a mini WS” –Fieldnotes, Irish Beer Pong Championship, 27/11/2010 Thus in the relative absence of provision of customised badges (Hassay and Peloza 2009) by BPONG IRELAND, new members engaged in several seeding practices (Schau et al 2009) themselves, thereby incorporating the brand more deeply into their identities. Members’ spontaneous co-creation of the atmosphere thus increased the possibility of ‘newbies’ having a conversion experience and also served as a means of sacralisation maintenance for current members via enactment of the brand ambassador role. Newly immersed community members also began to display additional forms of ownership of the BPONG IRELAND experience; “Bpong Ireland members started making the BPONG IRELAND poster (see appendix) their profile picture (on Facebook), people everywhere are beginning to tag themselves and other friends in the States and throughout Ireland on the poster, this is something I really wanted to happen and it did, pressure free, I had chills” – On-line observation, 15/11/2010. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION We have thus outlined how a brand community has begun to emerge around the BPONG IRELAND brand. We believe that conscious adherence to the principles of brand community development, with a primary focus on co-creation of transcendent experience, full community participation by the brand founders, and facilitation of various forms of seeding practice (Schau et al. 2009) has successfully led to a situation where consumers are facilitating transcendent experience for each other and the central brand community relationship of consumer-brand-consumer has taken root in their identities. Brand community members have taken an element of control over the brand’s direction and evolution (Cova and Pace 2006). We therfore believe that new members of the community have undergone conversion experiences and are seeking to maintain and replicate their experiences by developing brandcentred relationships with each other. Further research needs to be conducted to verify whether this is the case. Participative knowledge from ongoing ethnomarketing (Cova and Cova 2002) should help to clarify the extent to which neyophyte ‘pongers’ have indeed undergone a conversion expereience, while also shedding light on the transition from converison experiecen to full integrationinto the community. By continuing as full members of the community, the marketers can remain focused on faciliating the community’s co-creation of transcendent experience. Further research will seek to document the relationship between this and brand community development. Appendix Image 1. BPONG IRELAND poster for the Irish Beer Pong Championship 2010 References Applebaum, B. and, Disorbo D., (2009), The Book of Beer Pong. San Francisco: Chronicle Books Algesheimer, R., Dholakia, Utpal M., & Herrmann, A. (2005), “The Social Influences of Brand Community: Evidence from European Car Clubs,” Journal of Marketing, Vol.69, (July), 19-34. Belk, R., Wallendorf, M. & Sherry, J. 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