In today's digital landscape, brands aren't just selling products—they're cultivating belonging. The most successful companies have moved beyond traditional marketing to embrace community-driven strategies that transform casual customers into passionate advocates.
This shift isn't just happening—it's revolutionizing how brands connect with audiences. By fostering authentic communities around shared values and experiences, forward-thinking companies are creating sustainable growth engines that traditional advertising simply can't match.
Let's explore how brands of all sizes are mastering the art of building brand community, with actionable insights you can apply to your own community marketing strategy.
Community-led Marketing
Community-led marketing represents a fundamental shift in how brands approach audience relationships. Unlike traditional marketing that pushes messages outward, community-driven marketing pulls people together around shared interests, values, and experiences.
This approach recognizes that today's consumers don't just want transactions—they crave connection. They want to belong to something larger than themselves while expressing their individual identity. By facilitating these connections, brands become more than providers of products or services—they become cultural touchpoints and identity markers.
Successful brand communities share several key characteristics:
- Authentic engagement: Community members interact with each other, not just with the brand
- Shared purpose: A clear reason for gathering that transcends purely commercial interests
- Member value: Tangible benefits for participation, from exclusive access to emotional fulfillment
- Consistent nurturing: Ongoing investment in community health and growth
- Two-way dialogue: Brands that listen as much as they speak
The most powerful community marketing campaigns combine these elements to create spaces where people genuinely want to spend time—and bring their friends.
When building your community marketing strategy, start by identifying the authentic connection points between your brand values and customer interests. The strongest communities form around shared passions rather than products themselves.
How Popular Pays Helps Brands Build Strong Communities
Creator partnerships have become essential to community building strategies. Why? Because creators have already mastered what brands struggle with: authentic connection. Popular Pays sits at this crucial intersection, helping brands transform creator relationships into thriving communities.
Popular Pays' platform enables brands to:
- Identify authentic community voices: Find creators who genuinely resonate with your brand values and already have influence within your target community.
- Scale personal connections: Work with dozens or hundreds of creators simultaneously while maintaining relationship quality.
- Measure community health: Track engagement, sentiment, and word-of-mouth to understand community strength.
- Drive consistent engagement: Develop ongoing creator programs that maintain community momentum between campaigns.
- Generate community-sourced content: Turn creator content into assets that can be amplified across owned channels.
The most successful brands use Popular Pays not just for one-off campaigns but as an ongoing community cultivation tool—identifying micro-communities, nurturing relationships with key voices, and creating consistent touchpoints that strengthen belonging.
Creating a brand community requires both strategy and authentic human connection. By bridging these worlds, platforms like Popular Pays help brands build sustainable communities that drive business results while delivering genuine value to members.
Brand Community Examples
Nothing illustrates the power of community-building better than seeing it in action. Let's examine how innovative brands have created strong, sustainable communities that drive both customer loyalty and business growth.
Doritos Dinamita: Energizing Community Through Creator Authenticity
Doritos Dinamita, known for bold tortilla chips with intense flavors, faced the challenge of connecting with Gen-Z and Millennial audiences on TikTok. Rather than pushing traditional advertising, they embraced a community-first approach that leveraged creator authenticity.
Working with Popular Pays (a TikTok Marketing Partner), Doritos Dinamita implemented a two-pronged strategy:
First, they activated 88 Gen-Z TikTok creators to showcase the brand's "intensely unhinged" personality through chaotic recipes, confessions, and over-the-top reactions to the snack's bold flavors. Each creator produced authentic content that was later amplified through Spark Ads.
Second, they introduced fictional brand ambassadors "Dina and Mita" who "crashed" seemingly normal creator videos. This innovative approach enlisted six popular TikTok creators (@octopusslover8, @Cost_n_Mayor, @sofiedossi, @alejandrozario, @mitsy270, and @latryguy), creating the feeling of an inside joke that community members were in on.
The results were extraordinary: 91 million views, over 537,000 engagements, and a video view rate of 11.63%—11% above industry benchmarks. More importantly, they created a sense of shared experience around the brand.
This case demonstrates how successful brand communities often form around shared humor and experiences rather than just product features. By leveraging creator authenticity and TikTok's community dynamics, Doritos Dinamita transformed from a snack brand into a cultural touchpoint for younger audiences.
PepsiCo Foods US: Building a Cross-Platform Cooking Community with FLVR
While social media has been the primary battleground for community building, PepsiCo Foods US took an innovative approach by bringing community-driven marketing to television screens. Their FLVR channel on Fire TV demonstrates how brands can build communities across platforms by uniting people around shared passions—in this case, cooking and food entertainment.
The challenge was ambitious: reach new audiences by bringing creator-driven content to TV screens, drive brand awareness among home cooks and younger demographics (particularly Gen-Z), and achieve full-funnel impact with original, engaging content. Rather than producing traditional commercials, they envisioned a community centered around cooking inspiration.
Working with Popular Pays, PepsiCo Foods US executed a comprehensive community-building strategy:
- They identified content creators who had successfully worked with consumer-favorite foods to drive consistent engagement across social channels.
- In under one month—from briefing to launch—Popular Pays produced 15 episodes featuring creators making recipes with Frito-Lay products, along with a channel trailer for the Fire TV home screen.
- When an ad for FLVR appeared on their home screen rotator, Fire TV users could hover over it to watch the trailer and click to access the FLVR channel, where they could watch videos and order Frito-Lay products directly from Amazon.
This approach transformed what could have been traditional advertising into a community-building initiative centered around shared cooking experiences and food entertainment.
The results were impressive: 9.6 million total impressions (5.9 million unique) with a 64% video completion rate among all audiences and over 70% for Gen-Z specifically. The campaign achieved product detail page views 15x above benchmark and a return on ad spend 50x above benchmark. Perhaps most telling for community-building effectiveness, new-to-brand shoppers were responsible for 47% of overall sales, a rate propelled largely by Gen-Z consumers.
As Chris Bellinger, Chief Creative Officer at PepsiCo Foods US, noted: "Using Amazon Ads partner Popular Pays helped make this opportunity turnkey and a success in the face of tight timelines. The collaboration across teams was second to none."
The campaign was so successful it earned Silver for Best Micro Creator Campaign at the Global Influencer Marketing Awards in London—recognition of how effectively it built community connections through creator content.
This case illustrates how brands can build communities by connecting people through shared interests (cooking) rather than just product features. By creating valuable, entertaining content that happens to feature their products, PepsiCo built a community of engaged home cooks across platforms.
The Science of Building Brand Community
Building effective communities isn't just art—there's science behind successful community building. Research shows that strong brand communities share several psychological foundations:
1. Identity Expression
Communities allow people to express and reinforce aspects of their identity. Whether someone identifies as a health enthusiast, a snack connoisseur, or a fitness fan, brand communities provide spaces to validate and strengthen these self-concepts.
When implementing your community marketing strategy, ask: "How does participation in our community help members express who they are or who they want to become?"
2. Belonging Needs
Humans have a fundamental need to belong. Strong communities create rituals, language, and shared experiences that fulfill this need. This explains why the most successful brand communities often develop their own terminology, inside jokes, and customs.
3. Value Exchange
Sustainable communities must provide ongoing value to members. This value can take many forms:
- Informational: Exclusive knowledge and insights
- Social: Meaningful connections with like-minded people
- Instrumental: Practical benefits and resources
- Identity: Status and recognition within the community
When crafting community marketing campaigns, ensure you're delivering value across multiple dimensions—not just pushing products.
How to Build Your Own Brand Community
Ready to transform your marketing approach? Here's a strategic framework for creating a brand community that drives sustainable growth:
1. Identify Your Community's Purpose
Every thriving community needs a "why" that transcends transactions. What brings people together around your brand? Is it shared values, common challenges, collective aspirations, or specialized interests?
Doritos Dinamita found their community purpose in the shared experience of bold, unhinged enjoyment. PepsiCo's FLVR united people around cooking inspiration and food entertainment. Your community purpose needs to be authentic to your brand while meeting genuine audience needs.
2. Find Your Natural Community Leaders
Successful communities need leadership beyond the brand itself. Identify individuals who:
- Already have influence in your target community
- Authentically connect with your brand values
- Create engaging, conversation-starting content
This is where influencer community strategies become crucial. By partnering with the right creators, you can jump-start community growth and establish authentic leadership voices.
Popular Pays excels at helping brands identify these potential community leaders, whether they're established influencers or emerging voices with strong engagement.
3. Create Value-Driven Participation Opportunities
Give community members meaningful ways to contribute. These opportunities should:
- Provide clear value to participants
- Generate content that strengthens community bonds
- Feel authentic rather than transactional
Doritos Dinamita's creator campaigns succeeded because they gave participants creative freedom to express genuine reactions, resulting in content that felt authentic to their audiences. PepsiCo's FLVR channel provided genuine value through recipe inspiration and entertainment, creating a community of home cooks united by their love of creative food combinations.
4. Establish Community Rituals and Traditions
Rituals transform groups into communities. These can be as simple as weekly hashtag challenges or as elaborate as annual in-person gatherings. What matters is consistency and meaning.
Peloton masterfully employs community rituals through milestone celebrations, instructor catchphrases, and seasonal challenges that members anticipate and prepare for.
5. Measure What Matters
Community-building requires different metrics than traditional marketing. While engagement and growth remain important, also track:
- Member retention and participation frequency
- User-generated content volume and quality
- Sentiment analysis and emotional connection
- Referral and advocacy behaviors
These metrics better reflect community health and long-term value than simple reach or conversion numbers.
The Future of Community Marketing
As we look ahead, several trends are shaping the evolution of community-driven marketing:
- Micro-communities: Brands are focusing on smaller, more passionate sub-groups rather than trying to build monolithic communities. This approach allows for more personalized engagement and stronger bonds.
- Creator partnerships: The line between influencers and community leaders continues to blur, with brands investing in long-term creator relationships rather than one-off campaigns.
- Owned platforms: While social media remains important, more brands are creating proprietary community spaces they control directly, from mobile apps to online forums.
- Value-first approaches: The most innovative brands are creating communities that would provide value even if they stopped selling products tomorrow.
- Employee involvement: Companies are increasingly involving team members in community participation, creating more authentic connections with customers.
By staying ahead of these trends, forward-thinking brands can build communities that drive sustainable growth while providing genuine value to members.
Conclusion: Community as Competitive Advantage
In an age of increasing digital noise and declining trust in traditional marketing, community-building offers something precious: authentic connection. Unlike conventional marketing tactics, which often struggle to cut through the clutter, community-led strategies foster genuine engagement. This comparison between community and traditional marketing highlights why brands that master this approach don’t just gain customers—they create passionate advocates who drive organic growth.
As the case studies demonstrate, successful community building combines strategic thinking with genuine human connection. By providing spaces for identity expression, fostering belonging, and delivering multi-dimensional value, these brands have transformed marketing from a cost center into a growth engine.
Whether you're building a vibrant social media community like Doritos Dinamita or creating a cross-platform entertainment experience like PepsiCo's FLVR, the principles remain the same: listen deeply, engage authentically, and create value consistently.
The brands that thrive in the coming decade won't be those who shout the loudest—they'll be those who build the strongest communities.
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Ready to transform your marketing approach? Contact Popular Pays today to learn how our platform can help you identify, engage, and grow authentic brand communities through creator partnerships.
