Community is Becoming the New Currency of Brand Relationships
Participation should be viewed more as an opportunity for building sustained brand equity and consumer relationships and less as an indicator, says Hira Omar Aamer, Brand Strategy Director, Sprite, Eurasia and Middle East Operating Unit, The Coca-Cola Company.
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A consumer liking a post is engagement. Choosing to spend time, share information or actively participate in a brand experience is something more.
As audiences gain greater control over the conversations surrounding brands, marketers are increasingly being forced to look beyond reach, impressions and individual interactions. The more important question is whether consumers are willing to invest something of themselves in a relationship with a brand.
That shift makes participation particularly valuable. Whether joining a loyalty programme, entering a promotion, attending an event or contributing to a cultural conversation, participation represents an opportunity for brands to move beyond a single moment of engagement and create a longer-term relationship.
But community participation does not happen simply because a brand has a strong audience or a compelling campaign. Consumers are constantly weighing what they will receive against the time, effort and attention required from them. In an increasingly crowded promotional and cultural landscape, brands must therefore create experiences that offer genuine value while making participation effortless.
For Hira Omar Aamer, Brand Strategy Director, Sprite, Eurasia and Middle East Operating Unit at The Coca-Cola Company, participation should not be viewed simply as another metric for measuring brand strength. Instead, it is an opportunity to build sustained brand equity and create repeated, meaningful interactions with consumers.
“Participation should be viewed more as an opportunity for building sustained brand equity and consumer relationships and less as an indicator,” says Aamer.
In this interview, Aamer discusses why participation is becoming increasingly valuable, what motivates consumers to participate, how younger audiences are redefining brand relationships, why creators and communities are shifting the balance of influence, and how brands can turn individual interactions into sustained relationships.
Excerpts from the interview;
In your opinion, what signals are showing that participation is becoming a more meaningful indicator of brand strength?
The relationship between participation and brand strength is not a linear one. Whilst higher brand strength can influence participation, many other factors play a role and marketeers in today’s age need to be aware of and able to delineate these.
What is more important than seeing participation as an indicator of brand strength is seeing it as an opportunity to build and strengthen a brand’s relationship with its consumers.
Consumer affordability concerns have accelerated dramatically over the last few years. Within a context of higher price sensitivity, participation in a promotional campaign or a loyalty program that does not have an immediate price benefit is an indicator of brand strength, as it shows a consumer’s belief in investing in a longer-term relationship with the brand.
That said, multiple other factors influence participation. An important one is the perceived benefit of the participation, i.e. the promotional prize or the tier benefit of a loyalty program.
At the Coca-Cola Company, we endeavour to make our promotions a gateway to new, unmatched experiences for our consumers. Last month, we took a group of UAE consumers on an all-expenses paid trip to the Waterbomb Festival in Seoul, South Korea, courtesy of a Sprite promotion that ran across selected retails in the UAE. A Sprite bottle became the gateway for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
An equally important factor is the ease of participation, especially in the Middle East, where there is very high promotional clutter and a plethora of loyalty programs to join. The more seamless the consumer journey, the higher the chances of participation.
Most crucial, though, is for brands to think about what they’re doing with that participation – how do they take that one meaningful interaction with the brand and convert it into repeated meaningful interactions, closing the purchase loop and turning a consumer into a brand ambassador.
Participation should be viewed more as an opportunity for building sustained brand equity and consumer relationships and less as an indicator.
From your experience, what motivates participation most strongly: recognition, belonging, influence, entertainment, shared values, or something else entirely? And why?
As with most decisions, it’s a value equation – what is the consumer getting from the participation and if the effort of participation is worth the value they’re receiving.
That ‘value’ can be driven by multiple things, depending on the brand and the industry. It could be as simple as preferential boarding from moving up a tier in an airline loyalty program, early-sale access on a clothing website or getting access to a sold-out Coca-Cola Arena concert ticket via a Coca-Cola promotion.
The ‘cost’, on the other hand, is not just the cost of the product, but the time and effort it takes the consumer to participate.
At some subconscious level, each consumer is doing this cost-benefit analysis in their mind, and it will net out in a different place for each one depending on their own circumstances and preferences, but there will always be that cost-benefit analysis.
Marketeers need to spend time and effort understanding what that value equation looks like for their existing and prospective consumers.
What is the difference between consumer engagement and consumer participation, and why does that distinction matter?
Engagement and participation are effectively degrees of brand interaction. A consumer’s engagement with the brand in a particular moment (a social like/comment, attending an event, a purchase) make it a singular brand interaction.
Participation, on the other hand, showcases a commitment from the consumer towards multiple future brand interactions and thereby involves them sharing a piece of information about themselves with the brand.
The onus then lies on the brand to continue that relationship by offering the consumer reasons for future meaningful interactions.
Sprite has built strong connections with youth culture. How have younger audiences redefined what they expect from brands they choose to engage with?
Sprite is the world’s No. 1 lemon-lime soft drink, and the brand operates on the belief that growth comes from cultural relevance. Each generation redefines what they expect from brands in their time.
Gen Z in our region specifically are coming of age amid economic volatility, political uncertainty and rapid social and cultural change, which has sharpened their demand for authenticity, real progress, and the freedom to express individuality.
They’re facing steeper hurdles than previous generations and clashing a lot more with traditional/collective mindsets. They are pragmatic yet idealistic, sceptical of empty promises, and drawn to brands and institutions that demonstrate authenticity, deliver no judgement, and prove change through action, not words.
Sprite has always been a brand that celebrates individuality and self-expression, and earlier this year, we rolled out our new global platform, ‘It’s That Fresh’ to reaffirm Sprite as the ultimate refreshment with the freshest takes on culture. ‘It’s That Fresh’ celebrates the people who aren’t afraid to play by their own rules, are shaping culture and championing originality.
That’s exactly what Gen Z in the Middle East are doing, and that expression is manifesting across multiple cultural passion points, including music.
For its Summer campaign, Sprite has collaborated with artists in Pakistan that are shaping what’s next in music culture. The collaboration has delivered a Sprite summer anthem that blends the brand’s global iconicity with local music culture and reflects this idea of authentic self-expression beautifully.
In an era where consumers can instantly create, remix, and respond to brand content, how has the balance of power between brands and audiences changed?
Brands no longer manage their brand narrative independently. Long-gone are the days that branded content alone influences consumer choice, and with each passing day the balance of power shifts further away from brands, not just to consumers but also to content creators, online communities and even AI language models.
Navigating this new era of communication means that marketeers need to be a lot more intentional, not just about their communication, but about how their brand shows up every day – in culture, in consistent product experiences, in customer service experiences.
Equally important now, when planning media, is including the right balance of independent content creators in the mix and sufficient focus on in-person experiences with consumers to allow for a more two-way brand dialogue.
