How community and co-creation can skyrocket brand growth
- Challenge established players by embracing radical transparency
- Involve your audience at every stage, from design to marketing
- Great execution matters more than large budgets
- Turn product development into a community experience
- Build loyalty through shared ownership of the brand journey
Key Takeaway: The most powerful brand differentiator against established competitors may be your willingness to let customers shape your brand's future.
One of the campaigns that has inspired Estrid’s creative process has been Nothing's Community Edition Project, where they invited their followers to co-design a 3A smartphone with their team.
Everything, from the actual design of the phone to the UI was executed brilliantly, involving fans in every stage of development.
They gave their audience exactly what they wanted. There were submissions for hardware design, aesthetic choices, and packaging. The community then helped curate wallpapers and themes that would be featured on the device.
Next they had a say in how the product should be marketed, contributing suggestions for the campaign itself, social media content, and promotional materials, before culminating in a limited edition release.
They’re also doing it in a time where their biggest competitors – take Samsung or Apple – are increasingly shielded, corporate, and opaque.
In contrast, Nothing is incredibly intimate with their customer. This counter positioning has profound implications for any brand looking to challenge established players – sometimes your greatest advantage is simply being willing to open up your process to your community.
At Estrid, we're learning from this approach as we build our own community-first brand. What the Nothing campaign shows is the power of execution and great production.
It doesn't always need to mean huge budgets, but it does need thoughtful, interesting, and careful production.
We're applying this philosophy to our sustainable personal care products, where we've found that involving our community in product development and sustainability decisions has started to create the same kind of deep engagement.
The bottom line is that if you create enough excitement, joy, and if you can leverage the brand positioning that you have, it's going to be the gift that keeps on giving.
In our case, we've seen how transparency around our manufacturing processes and ingredient sourcing is helping to build a loyal community. It's about giving people genuine ownership of the brand journey.
