Community is more than a buzzword—it’s a battleground for relevance, loyalty, and long-term brand health. Yet, many corporations still misread the core ingredient that fuels thriving communities: passion.
It’s a critical yet often misunderstood distinction. Passion does not originate in a brand. It’s not baked into a logo or conjured through a clever slogan. Passion lives in people and is sparked by shared values, actions, and experiences, not just by buying into a product. Too often, brands think they are the fire when, in truth, they are merely the match.
The Misstep: Mistaking the Brand for the Passion
Many corporations make the fundamental error of believing that their brand, by its visibility or market success, is the gravitational center of passion. But communities don’t form around logos; they coalesce around purpose, shared experiences, and the emotional energy generated by those involved.
Take Apple, for example. Yes, people love the sleek design and intuitive functionality. However, deeper loyalty and evangelism weren’t built around the Apple brand itself; they were built around what Apple stood for in its early days: challenging the status quo, empowering creativity, and thinking different.
The passion wasn’t about the device but the user becoming a creator, rule-breaker, and visionary. Apple’s mistake in later years has been occasionally believing that its logo could carry that passion forward alone, forgetting that the spark was in the acts and ideals, not just the aesthetics.
Facebook made a similar misstep. Once a symbol of digital connection and college-era innovation, it lost community trust not because people stopped caring about social media, but because the company drifted from the values and intimacy that made it meaningful. Community requires stewardship, not just scale.
The Real Driver: Passion as a Shared Resource
Passion is the emotional glue that binds communities. It fuels volunteer moderation on Reddit, open-source contributions to Linux, and the unpaid evangelism of brands like LEGO or Harley-Davidson. In each case, the company didn’t impose a community structure from above—they nurtured a platform for shared passion and got out of the way.
LEGO’s resurgence in the early 2000s is a case study in letting passion lead. The company tapped into its vast adult fanbase, offering design challenges and inviting fans into the product development process. LEGO turned consumers into co-creators by recognizing that the passion for building transcended age and commercial intent—the result: not just product sales, but a cultural movement that’s still growing.
Harley-Davidson didn’t build a brand around motorcycles—it built one around freedom, rebellion, and brotherhood. The bike was just the vessel. The road, the ride, and the rider lifestyle were the fuel. Harley riders don’t see themselves as customers of an OEM—they’re tribe members.
Investing in Passion: Why It Pays Off
Brands that take the time to invest in passion don’t just win loyalty—they create belonging. And in a crowded market, belonging is one of the few things that can’t be easily copied.
That investment might look like:
- Inviting participation: Let your community help shape the product, the content, and roadmap. Make them co-owners.
- Supporting subcultures: Recognize and empower niche segments of your audience, even if they aren’t your largest revenue drivers.
- Celebrating the user, not the brand: Spotlight their achievements, stories, and creations. Make them the hero.
- Creating rituals and shared language: These form the backbone of any genuine community and create a sense of insider culture.
Done right, passion becomes contagious. Word of mouth (WOM) becomes inevitable because people want to talk about what they love. Fear of missing out (FOMO) kicks in because community visibility makes others want to join. And when people feel emotionally invested, they defend, promote, and even improve the brand.
Closing the Loop: Passion as the Viral Engine
When corporations try to shortcut passion—by forcing community through branded hashtags or launching empty forums—they get apathy or worse, backlash. Community can’t be engineered like an ad campaign; it must be earned and energized.
Look at brands like Glossier, which built its cult following by listening to beauty consumers who felt ignored by traditional brands. Or Patagonia, whose outspoken environmental activism resonates deeply with outdoor enthusiasts who want their purchases to align with their values. In each case, the product is almost secondary to the shared passion it enables.
Passion is among the few true differentiators left in a world of commoditized products and algorithmic reach. But it can’t be faked, bought, or fast-tracked. To build a lasting community, corporations must understand that their brand is not the destination—it’s the vehicle. The journey, and the fuel that powers it, is always the passion of the people behind it.
Nurture that passion, invest authentically, and you won’t need to chase community—it will come to you.
