'Nothing is more powerful than a micro-community'

At the e4m iDAC 2023, Shrenik Gandhi, Co-founder & CEO, White Rivers Media chaired a panel discussion on “Built Thriving Communities Through Digital & Creative Media”. The panellists were Himanshu Arora, Co-Founder, Social Panga; Sumon K Chakrabarti, Co-Founder & CEO, Buffalo Soldiers; and Vikas Chawla, Co-Founder & Director, Social Beat.

Gandhi started the session by inviting the panellists to talk about the right intersection between culture and commerce. To this, Arora replied, “Culture is built by what kind of work you are doing. The merit of the work also defines a culture to a larger extent. So all the organizations, all the companies, global setups are defined by the products they have built.” 

“All of us as an organization aligned to that one goal is what defines culture in a nutshell. The goal could be anything. It could be service excellence, it could be customer-first approach, or whatever it is. You pick up Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, they are defined by that one goal. Everybody in the organization thinks about that goal and then you define your mission, vision and add pieces to it. When everybody is aligned to that one goal, it kind of moves in a community space.”

Agreeing with Arora, Chawla said, “I think it's really about creating value. People need to feel connected to the users over time. To build a community, we need to feel connected. That is really at the heart of building those communities and that means the brand that creates it needs to add value, needs to be able to be authentic and allow others in the community to be authentic.”

“For me, building communities starts right at home. Himanshu was talking about culture and I agree with him because I think when we start off, we all call ourselves startups and if we call ourselves startups we need to start behaving like startups. One of the things that we enabled at Buffalo Soldiers is that we give equity to each and every member. That for me is something that is non-negotiable,” Chakrabarti added.

Gandhi took the session forward by discussing GenZ consumers. He asked, “Have you been building GenZ first communities and what has your experience been dealing with them?

Arora answered, “For my parents, roti kapda makan was big stuff. For us, we moved to the next level where convenience was that. Uber, Ola came into the picture. Zomato and all came into the picture. Now that is by default. What is next for them (GenZ)? I always believe that two things are going to define the next 10-15 years of our journey. One is GenZ, the second is luxury. If a product or a community could build on top of it, they will prosper in the next 10-15 years.”

Chawla explained, “For brands that we work with, often it is about the kind of content we create because they (GenZ) have a lot more options, they have less patience than many of us have. They get distracted very quickly. The kind of communication we would create for a brand that's targeting that audience would be very different and frankly building a community for GenZ is not easy, because they have a zillion options.” 

“Hence it is really about ‘can you still connect with them and can you build that brand love?’ That is something that we probably are still trying to achieve. Building a community where they really feel connected, is still probably a work in progress in some sense.”

Talking about targeting GenZ and the contradictions that the GenZ population brings in their behaviour, Chakrabarti said, “When we are working for brands like. say Fastrack, it is very important that we let some of our very young folks including somebody who joined 2 months back lead that conversation because you know they kind of understand. They bring those contradictions together beautifully. As we move forward, we will understand how the generation of GenZ settles in. It should be an ongoing process.”

Moving the conversation forward, Gandhi said, “A lot of things within the digital ecosystem are maturing enough where the original subconscious strategy was expanding the network, now the strategy is to narrow it down to relevance. There are so many of these new-age Telegram groups or new-age Reddit groups, Discord groups and whatnot. Have you seen some initial success or some success in communities beyond your traditional social media as I call it?”

Chawla responded, “We have done some of it on Quora, some of it on Reddit. What we realized over time is authenticity on these platforms is very important. You want to be participating both as a brand as well as maybe consumers that love you and have that connection with you. But if that conversation or what you're saying doesn't feel real and authentic, that starts breaking apart. The other part is consistency because brands obviously want to do everything. So you have to find what is the second or third channel that you really want to go deeper into.”

“Often brands that have succeeded are the ones that have consistently built that with the right kind of content and value, found the right influencers and real consumers to be part of those communities. That is when that flywheel starts working because otherwise, you do it for a few months and it doesn't work. Building a community is a journey over many many quarters to make that really come to life.”

Talking about micro-communities, Chakrabarti said, “Nothing is more powerful than a micro-community. A lot of people go to social media and think about what are kind of followers they want. We work with Udaan and one of the things we guided them to do was the people who have their apps and order from their apps, the retailers, the Kirana Wallas, we ensured that those Kirana Wallas are actually following them on social media whether it is Facebook or Instagram or wherever they are present. ‘Can you also follow them on social media? Because you are using this app as the lifeline of your business.’ So, I think micro-communities are the way to go.”

Sharing his closing remarks on fostering a culture-first community within his organization, Arora said, “If a first-time manager Is treating his mentees or subordinates the way the founder is treating everybody, that clearly defines culture because it comes from top to the first of managers. There is no rocket science around it if that is the good way to look at it.”