Fans, Brands, Fandom (and Stans)

I often see people talking about fandom…but not actually talking about fandom.

There’s a trend in the (primarily) marketing and brand strategy world to assume that anything that has fans is a fandom. But that’s not true, and that kind of thinking erases decades of knowledge and work on what fandoms actually are.

Often when these people discuss “fandom”, what they’re actually discussing are:

• Brand communities (or Brandom [Guschwan 2012] - see presentation below)

• Fans (yes, there is a difference)

  or

• Loyal consumers

And it’s important we don’t lump all of these under the one term, like “fandom” is just some magical umbrella descriptor.

Fandoms are fan created spaces based on the idea of fan <-> Fan community.

I’ve expanded upon this a bit more in the presentation below that I created after being sick of re-typing my thoughts in endless twitter threads. Future blog posts will expand on this idea in longer formats, but for in-depth, (academic + field) research backed information, reports, and case studies specifically for your organisation/interest, please get in touch.