1665: Fandom Marketing to Create Passionate Fans with David Meerman Scott

Robert Plank 0:00 David Meerman Scott is here, and he is a return guest after seven years. And David Meerman Scott spotted the online marketing revolution in its infancy, and he has written multiple books about it, including *The New Rules of Marketing and PR* And now the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of superficial online communications. We're talking about AI slop, etc. So David Meerman Scott shows how organizations win by developing fans, and it's the subject of his Wall Street Journal bestseller *Fanocracy* which we discussed last time. But now, the cutting edge, hot off the presses, his new book, *The Fandom Playbook* will be published in late 2026, and it discusses this idea of fandom marketing, which is a business strategy that prioritizes creating genuine fans only simply acquiring customers. We're talking about the fandom, the people who camp out for a new product release, tattoo a brand logo on their body, travel 1000s of miles to attend live event. That's what we're looking for. That will really help our business and our messaging. So, Mr. David Meerman Scott is here to tell us about this book with the the nine plays that we can perhaps plug into our business and have some amazing results. So, Mr. David, it's been so long.

David Meerman Scott 1:17 So good to see you, Robert. Thanks for having me on again, I always love coming on your show, and I love having you. I I need to look back and think back, but when I last had you on, I I was either just about to start video or or we had just started video, so I can't remember exactly, but but we now we see each other face to face in high definition and good quality, and so now we can get the the body language, that real human connection, which is so important these days. That's absolutely right. That human connection absolutely essential. As I was researching this idea of fandom, that's this thing that came up again and again and again. It's a genuine human connection, which also works on video, by the way, because our brains are treating this through this neuroscience concept called mirror neurons, the brain thinks that we're actually in the same room. Intellectually, we know we're not. I'm in Boston. I'm not sure where you are, Robert, but

Robert Plank 2:16 California,

David Meerman Scott 2:17 In California, 3000 miles away. But our brain thinks that we're together because of mirror neurons. It's it's the part of our brain that fires when we see something, even even even if you're not doing it yourself. I'm going to demonstrate. I've got a lemon and a slice of lemon. If I take a bite, my brain explodes, and wow, you know, it's like on my tongue. It's my eyes are watering, but you're seeing me do this. So the same thing is happening to you. Can you taste the lemon, Robert?

Robert Plank 2:48 I had a little bit of like saliva secretion.

David Meerman Scott 2:50 Isn't that weird? Yeah, that's called mirror neurons, and that's why even though we're on video, our brain believes that we're together, which is why you feel you know a movie star. So video, a great way to build fans, which we're doing right now.

Robert Plank 3:07 Yeah, so funny, such a cool concept. And there are a lot of people like that, people that I've, I've met hundreds of times, literally on Zoom, but never met in person. And I have, I feel sometimes like closer, like more familiar than people I do know in person, and then sometimes I'll have dreams of people of like YouTubers or of people like on LinkedIn, and like I see their faces, and it just our brains are so weird, right? That there's this outdated software, but we can then apply the the latest update, the logic to like achieve amazing things.

David Meerman Scott 3:39 Right, and, and if you understand just a couple of just a few underlying concepts around that, it really helps to grow any kind of business, whatever business you're in. So we briefly talked about mirror neurons just now, but there's another form of neuroscience which is super important, and that is we're all hardwired to be to want to be part of a tribe of like-minded people because that's when we're safe and we're comfortable. That goes back 10s of 1000s of generations, caveman days. You know, if you were with your tribe, you were safe when you went out by yourself. You could be eaten by an animal or beaten up by another tribe, and therefore, if you can build a tribe of like-minded people in your business, perhaps by having an in-person conference, perhaps by inviting your best clients for dinner, any way that you can have in-person connections, you are building fans because you're building a tribe of like-minded people.

Robert Plank 4:38 Very good, so those those group gatherings are so important, even though it seems like a lot of work or it seems silly. Like once you're in the thick of it, once you're experiencing the results, it's it's quite something magical and and very worthwhile to do. And so the and it's always fun and fascinating to to try to make sense. This because it's it's like a it's it feels like you know music or comedy some of these things like they don't fully make sense or we can kind of dip into the science and then kind of pull back out before it becomes less fun and so it seems like some of these concepts gives me a similar feeling of just like it's it's mystical it's magical but there are for sure best practices and principles, and I feel like jumping in and bump back out and back in again.

David Meerman Scott 5:26 Yeah, no, that and and that's exactly right. And you brought up two interesting examples: comedy and music. It's the same idea when you're in a room physically with other humans laughing. Hopefully, the comedian is funny, or you're you're you're singing along to the songs that you love in a live concert, or you're cheering on the sports team. That is super super powerful from an emotional standpoint because you're with that tribe of like-minded people. Again, I mentioned that earlier, and you can build that into your business. So as we're recording this episode tomorrow, I'm speaking at the HubSpot Unbound conference. I've been on the HubSpot advisory board since the very beginning, 2007. I joined. That's 19 years. That's an incredible amount of time, and the event has well over 10,000 people who come. And you know, you're wearing your badge to go to inbound to the unbound conference, and maybe you're some. It's in Boston, so maybe you're somewhere else in Boston. You're at a bar, or you're at a hotel, and if someone sees that badge, like, "Oh, I'm part of that tribe too. That's not the words they use, but they know they can approach you. You can have a conversation. You're part of the same tribe again. Can you build that kind of proximity into your business? That's one of the most fundamental aspects of of what we're talking about here with fandom.

Robert Plank 6:51 And it's such an important life skill, right? Like we we think about that that girl we should have talked to when we were young, or that friend on the playground that we could have been lifelong friends with, and and you think like, what's the barrier? Why couldn't I break through? I didn't have that kind of icebreaker. I didn't have that kind of way in. And it's like, I'm sure for some people that comes naturally. But as far as the life skills, I found like, okay, well, I have to like that's kind of my my task, my assignment, right? If there's someone in whatever context that I want to speak to, it's like what common ground or like what what do we what can I relate to just to get the conversation jump started so then that can lead to other things and it's like it's I wish there had been an instruction manual I wish someone had told me that when I was five years old.

David Meerman Scott 7:36 Yeah, right? I know, I know and and and this idea the the book that's coming out, the fandom playbook. I have some of those ideas in it. I'll give you the most surprising one, Robert. It's like I was I was really dumbfounded when when when I learned this one through a bunch of research about how organizations grow and so on, and and especially how individuals grow. You and me and others. I I learned that the vast majority of business people have erected a huge brick wall between their personal life and their professional life. So over here in their personal life, you know, they they have things they love. Maybe they love a sports team. I'm in Boston, I'll choose the Boston Red Sox. Maybe they love they love the Boston Red Sox, or they love fly fishing, or like me, I've got a surfboard behind me. They love surfing, and that's their their private life. And they share that with their friends. They maybe they share it on Facebook, but over here is their professional life, and they're all buttoned up, and they only talk about professional things, and they're on LinkedIn, and they never let those two worlds collide. It's fascinating that if you break down those barriers and let your professional colleagues understand who you are as a person, the things that you love, what you're passionate about, that passion is infectious. I'll give you a real quick example. I speak at Tony Robbins Business Mastery events around the world. Have done so for a dozen years. And a couple years ago, I met Dr. John Marashi. Dr. Marashi is a dentist in Southern California, and he. I had finished my talk about fandom, and he comes up to me. He says, "David, I love to talk about fandom, but I'm a dentist. People don't become fans of their dentists, and I said, "So well, Dr. Marashi, maybe they can tell me about you. And we got to chatting a little bit about his practice, but he lit up when he said, "Oh my God, I love to skateboard, and so I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting. Tell me about that. So he tells me all about skateboarding. He wanted to be a professional skateboarder when he was a kid, and now he's a dentist. And I said, "How about if you bring the idea of skateboarding into your dental practice? And he thought about it, sort of scratched his head, and and and and we parted ways. A year later, he. Contacted me, said David. It's been transformational. He put skateboards on the wall of his dental practice in the office. He has pictures of him skateboarding on his website. He created an Instagram. It now has over 50,000 followers, where he has images and pictures of him doing dentistry and videos, but also videos and photos of him skateboarding, and he said, "I can actually measure the success because I ask people when they come to me as a new patient how they heard of me. 33% growth in new revenue. I'm sorry, in new patients, and 23% growth in revenue simply attributed to the fact that he's sharing what he's passionate about because we humans we're we're we're attracted to that passion. So that's one reason I've got a surfboard over one shoulder, a Grateful Dead logo over another shoulder over here, where I'm where I'm doing my in my studio because those are a few things that I'm passionate about. And so I say to everybody listening and break down that brick wall. Show us in in your business world who you are as a person. What are those things you're passionate about? Because passion is infectious.

Robert Plank 11:14 I love it, so passion is infectious, have those layers and and express yourself so that way, people can relate to it. I mean, even in that town, if people don't remember that man's name, he's the skateboarding dentist. It's kind of hard to forget about that. And and maybe if he was really cool, he could like when you go to get a dental checkup, he can like skateboard into the room. Who knows, right? That could be really fun.

David Meerman Scott 11:37 Yeah, and, and, and it's not just other skateboarders. It's and everybody is attracted to that passion. You know, like not very many people surf, but people are attracted to the fact that I like to surf, and I surf on a wooden surfboard. This is a wooden surfboard that I made, and so yeah. So, what is it that you love to do? And in fact, the quirkier the better. My most recent recent passion is dancing Lindy Hop, which is this this obscure form of swing dancing that came out of Harlem in the 1930 s, and I I love it. I love it. I do it like 10 hours a week. I was out social dancing last night, for example. I'm going to go out again tomorrow night, for example. So that's a weird little obsession that I'm passionate about. The more obscure and weird and that your passion is, the more people remember it, and the more that it helps to to build fans of your business. You know, lots of people play golf. There's nothing wrong with sharing that passion, but dancing Lindy Hop, an obscure swing dance-that's quirky and weird and interesting.

Robert Plank 12:45 Oh yeah, obscure makes you stand out. It differentiates you, and so and you always think about when when you're looking to like build the fandom, right? Build build all these obsessive people around you. The you when they're like, okay, well, like does that happen on its own, or is that something I force, or have I just opened up the opportunity for people to do it? Like, how much control do we really have over this?

David Meerman Scott 13:08 Well, and I, I believe studying. I've been studying this for 20 years, and and I'm absolutely convinced that there are ways that you can build fans, and that's why I wrote the fandom playbook because so many people knew that I loved to talk about this idea of fandom, and as you thank I thank you for mentioning my book Fanocracy that that we talked about last time I was on the show, also talking about fandom. But fanocracy, and I wrote a book called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead about the Grateful Dead's fandom. I wrote a book called Marketing the Moon about the the marketing aspects of the Apollo Luno program, including how NASA made fans of the astronauts, people said those ideas are interesting. But what do I do, David? Tell me exactly what to do, and that's what the fandom playbook is about. Is here are the things you can actually do, starting literally today, to grow fans of your business.

Robert Plank 14:02 Very nice, so there's there's that, that these nine plays, and you've shared like the like the surprising one. But is there is there one that maybe like is is not used enough, and we should really use it in today's day and age?

David Meerman Scott 14:16 One of the ones that I really I'm fascinated by is that most companies, most organizations, have some data that's sitting locked away somewhere, which has tremendous value to potential fans. I'm going to give you a few examples. So Hagerty Insurance is the largest provider of collector car auto insurance in the world, and I love the I love Haggerty. They they absolutely built their entire business on fandom. I've interviewed McKeil Haggerty, the entrepreneurial CEO, a number of different times. They have over a million. Fans, they're the largest classic car insurance company in the world. They're public on the New York Stock Exchange. But one of the things that they did was to unlock the data that they had collected on the value of classic cars, and rather than just keep that locked away in a database somewhere, they made it freely available to anyone who wants it. So I have a 1973 Land Rover Series Three. It's this quirky old car with a with a spare tire on the on the hood, which is weird. And I love my little Land Rover, and I can find out its value because Hagerty has shared the value of all the cars they insure, not on an individual car basis, but aggregated, so I can find out how much my car is worth. And this is real data because it's the actual data that they're insuring these cars for, or that those cars have sold for at auction. And so, rather than just keep that data proprietary, locked away. They've made it freely available. Another example: company called Intralinks. They are a provider of secure online data rooms for mergers and acquisitions. So lawyers and and investment bankers and company executives who are working on a financial transaction can have a secure place to store data. Now they obviously can't share data around an individual transaction, but what they did was they aggregated that data and they share how many data rooms that they're running, and that that tells whether the relative M and A activity in a given quarter is up or down, which is really valuable information for Wall Street. So the question becomes: Does your organization have some valuable data that's locked away somewhere that you could make freely available that would help to build fans?

Robert Plank 16:57 Oh, very interesting. There's some creative outside the box solutions, and it seems that many times transforming something that's boring into something that that can be exciting. And I think I'm always on the the hunt for for mechanisms like that to kind of see what people like and and give them more of what they want, and then get them to give me attention and grow the business and engagement and sales and all those other goals that we're after, and so this is like such a a huge quirky topic. And there's so many ways that we can go, but because it's a podcast, we're limited on time, and we want to get people excited about the upcoming book. So, in these final few minutes of our conversation, Mr. David, do you think there might be a missing question about all this that I should be asking you? I just don't know what to ask you?

David Meerman Scott 17:41 I think you've done a fabulous job, but you might have asked me what I learned from my daughter. So my daughter and I were co-authors in our book Fanocracy. She's a mixed race millennial woman who's an emergency room doctor who loves Harry Potter and who loves K-pop very different than me, and we we learned so much from each other as we were researching this idea of fandom. So I brought in the whole Gen Z and millennial aspect, even though I'm older than that, because this this idea is universal. It's not based on age. It's universal. Fans are fans, and anybody can grow them.

Robert Plank 18:23 Oh, nice! So that that can be a lot of fun to look at the the differences, but then like the foundational similarities that still work despite the age, the upbringing.

David Meerman Scott 18:32 Exactly right. And there's really no difference between my love of the Grateful Dead, a band that started in 1965, and my daughter's love of K-pop, which is much more modern style music.

Robert Plank 18:43 Oh, nice! Yeah, so so some things stand the test of time, right? No matter what the the brand or the the band is, they're still they still have applied something that works, right? You think about how the the Beatles were were big back then, and then you have other like Taylor Swift now. That's like has you know all the similar their parallels, right? As far as what they're they're doing right to stand out.

David Meerman Scott 19:06 Absolutely right, and and that I draw then the parallel that says you too can build fans. Here are the ways to do it. I've done all the research, here's how you do it.

Robert Plank 19:17 Very nice, and so I love what you've created, right? Because like it's it's real. I'm sure it's tempting to get lost in the weeds and into the the theory and the history and and as you said a few times, it's like, well, how does that help me? And so you have this playbook with the nine different plays, so you can say, okay, well, I can understand why something works, but then give me this this task, this assignment, this play to then apply this to my business, and so in these final few moments of our discussion here, can you maybe like unpack about the the magic and why exactly we'd want to go and check out this book?

David Meerman Scott 19:51 Yeah, you know, right now we all are experiencing online chaos. You know, there's our world is run. By algorithms, you open up Instagram or YouTube or whatever. You're you're you're shown videos based on what the algorithm thinks you want to see. Your inbox is completely full with with AI generated outreach from the organizations you do business with. We we sometimes just want to back away and say enough of this online chaos. I want to do something fun and interesting, and and that's what you can in you can infuse in your organization. Fun, interesting, in person, the opposite of online chaos. Sometimes the contrarian approach is the right approach. If everybody is focused on AI. I'm not saying don't use AI, but if everyone's focused on AI, why not focus on something else?

Robert Plank 20:47 Yeah, and it's a fun thought experiment, right? That the, the chaos, the randomness, it's built in. It's not going away. It's like the the the wind and the weather, right? It'll always be there, but then we can choose to say, well, you know, I'll do some new projects, some new experiments, some new marketing campaign instead, and it can be change your pace and a lot of fun. And so, the book that we've been discussing, the fandom playbook: How to create passionate fans in a world of online chaos. We can find it on Amazon.com. Are there any other next steps, calls to actions, places to go?

David Meerman Scott 21:23 Yeah, sure. I've got a, a great, very extensive website which has tons of free content, I have no registration required. I'm not going to ask you for your email address. All you have to do is go to your browser, type in Fandom.Marketing. That's Fandom.Marketing. That's all you have to type. Bang! You will redirect to the page on my site where I have all kinds of free resources.

Robert Plank 21:48 Ooh, and there there are quite a lot of resources, right? There's a lot of education that can be had, such as the neuroscience of fandom, why fans are wired to connect, how any organization can build fans, and just get a lot of education to then motivate us to check out the fandom playbook on Amazon, and it's a playbook that you wrote, Mr. David Meerman Scott, for building genuine fandom around any brand, product, or organization, and it's a guide that distills what you learned into one comprehensive resource. Whether you're a startup founder, entrepreneur, Fortune 500 CMO, or nonprofit leader, or even an artist. You will walk away with a clear understanding of what fandom marketing is, why it works on a neurological level, and exactly how to build it for your organization. So, fandom marketing is the place to just go there and find out about what Haggerty's doing, what Trader Joe's is doing, what the Grateful Dead is doing, and so much more, and get a handle on what these brands are doing properly. So perhaps we can tap into some of that magic and and get ourselves a a slice of the pie or the lemons, so to speak. So that's fandom. I did that on the fly for you.

David Meerman Scott 23:01 I love. I love that. I love that callback for like the first thing I talked about.

Robert Plank 23:06 Yeah, I mean, just yeah. You do enough podcasting, it becomes intuitive. Just like it's, it'd be good to when you see what other companies are doing well to kind of like intuitively understand, like okay, well, I can apply what Grateful Dead was doing and and have some new results in my own business, so Fandom.Marketing is the place to go. And as we're headed there, Mr. David, and getting educated, it's time for the scary part of the podcast, where I try to stump you. I try to put you on the spot by asking you about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you. So, what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson?

David Meerman Scott 23:41 Yeah, I, I love speaking at Tony Robbins Business Mastery events. Have done that for a dozen years, maybe 30 or 40 times. Tony says, "Life doesn't happen to you; life happens for you. And I love that quote because it it kind of is emblemic of of what you can do to have an interesting life. To think of things that happening for you to take advantage of rather than to you. It helps you to focus on the things that are optimistic rather than pessimistic.

Robert Plank 24:16 Yes, very valuable and helpful to think through our life in that sort of lens, life happening for you instead of to you. So we'll consider that as we're getting a fun education about fandom marketing and checking out the book once it's live. The fandom playbook: How to create passionate fans in a world of online chaos. Fandom.Marketing; go there right now. You have so much fun, and thanks for stopping by, Mr. David Meerman Scott, once again and blowing our minds with what's possible. So thank you for that.

David Meerman Scott 24:48 Thank you so much, Robert, for having me on yet again, I really appreciate it.