Patron Social Club: Building A Brand Community
How do you create community around your brand? And how do you make this community be composed of the most influential tastemakers and devote brand followers? Patron must have been thinking about how to answer these types of questions when creating the Patron Social Club. This members-only site is a hub for tequila enthusiasts and enables members to gain access to exclusive cocktail recipes, special events, and extremely polished event recaps and more. I am not even that big of a tequila enthusiast, but stumbling upon the site actually dramatically increased my likelihood of purchasing Patron and generally made me appreciate the brand more. So why is this site effective in developing community and increasing brand equity?
Content is king. At the end of the day, it all starts with compelling content that people actually want to consume. The videos were well produced and contained relevant information that I found entertaining, from drink recipes to the chef’s thinking behind the courses he served. In fact, in some ways it reminded me of a well done Food Network show. It didn’t feel like marketing, simply like watching a mini show I would have watched regardless of whether it was on youtube or in this case, a brand website.
Reward loyalty in a smart way. Incentives work well, but well thought out and unique incentives work better. Patron could have easily rewarded me with a promotion based offer after interacting with the site such as X% off my next purchase. Instead, the website made it clear that the more I participated the more likely I would get an actual invite to one of these secret dining society events. That made me intrigued and engaged me a lot more than a simple offer would have.
Appeal to tastemakers. The site can’t be too popular or mainstream by nature. It needs to stay in some ways a “secret.” After finding out about this website, I shared the info about it with at least 5 friends. For those 5 minutes I became a mini brand ambassador for Patron and passionately explained the brand to others. Whenever a brand can empower this type of advocacy, they are definitely doing something right.
In conclusion, building a brand community is very difficult, but when done right it can yield dramatic results. The Patron Social Club is one prime example of that.
