Community is a superpower
Community is a superpower.
At Fancred, we decided to over-index on community empowerment, and it was one of the biggest, most exciting things (led by Shannon Lehotsky and Brent Bailey) that we did as a company.
The most popular tactic was called "Fandalism."
How did Fandalism work? We'd ship a big box of t-shirts, stickers, koozies, and bracelets to ambassadors on a college campus. Their job was to give it away for free as fast as possible in order to drive fan adoption on campus. 🎉 Excitement begets excitement.
📺 It wasn't abnormal to see homemade Fancred signs on ESPN College GameDay or someone in Fancred tee on SportsCenter.
✍️ Students arrived in classrooms to find that our ambassadors wrote download links on the whiteboards.
🏈 Tailgaters had Fancred stickers next to their sorority sticker.
🚽 Every urinal within 3 miles of campus had handouts or a stack of stickers placed above the flush handle.
The excitement bubbled up, and university athletic directors reached out to discuss partnerships, which resulted in promotion at the highest level (media guides, jumbotrons, etc).
It was a virtuous cycle, and my only regret is that we didn't 5x the budget of the program.