Virginie Glaenzer maps three layers of brand loyalty: contribution, community, and heroic cause. She uses a tree metaphor to show how customer-facing layers (branches) align with internal employee needs (roots) in mastery, membership, and meaning. Harley-Davidson customers who tattoo the logo exemplify loyalty that goes beyond rational choice.
Chapters
I have a framework that goes into more detail of the, those fertile conditions that have to be cultivated in any living system. And so it goes into more detail for an organizational context. And for engaging customers, there are 3 layers to that fertile condition. The first is contribution. Normally, this would be where we would talk about our commodity, our product or our service. But if we start to think of it as our contribution, it invites richer reflection about what that could involve. And that's where many companies stop. And that's where we inevitably get into price war and kind of competing on features. So it's a dangerous place to stop. And so if you want more loyalty, then you add community or conversation or even co-creation. And that's where we find that sense of identity and belonging. This is for this commodity, this contribution is for people like me. And I start to feel that I belong to it and to these other people. And if you want loyalty beyond reason, then you, you offer a heroic cause. You stand for something. And in the case of Harley-Davidson, it's an example that I often give, actually. I'm happy that you brought them up. It's that freedom and rebellion. And what's fascinating is that something like 40% of their customer base is lawyers and accountants. So it's people who desperately want access to that rebellion and freedom who don't normally have it. And so that is a real heroic cause. For them. And when you get all of those together, as Harley-Davidson does, then you get people who will tattoo your logo on their bodies. It doesn't get much more loyal than that. Yeah. And in this model, then, this framework, it's presented as a tree, and those are the— that's kind of the branches as the outreach into the community, and then the roots are the mirror image of those 4 employees. What is our mastery that contributes to the contribution? What is our sense of membership that's deeply connected to that community and conversation and co-creation? And what is the meaning that is totally tied in with the heroic cause? And then the trunk is how do we support and connect those so that it's one whole living ecosystem of community. I love when we, when we talk about nature and we bring it back into complex, uh, economical system.
