Beyond Customers: Building a Brand That Creates Fans
Session Overview
As rising prices continue to put pressure on consumer spending, brands are facing a familiar challenge: how do you build sustainable growth when customers are becoming more selective about where they spend?
The answer increasingly lies beyond the traditional customer. Long-term brands are built by turning consumers into fans — people whose relationship with a brand goes beyond a single purchase.
Fandom has already reshaped industries far beyond entertainment, influencing everything from finance and AI to mobility. Major global brands such as Starbucks and Coca-Cola continuously collect data and analyze fan ecosystems because they understand the long-term value of emotional connection and community.
This session explores what brands can learn from fandom: how to understand fans rather than simply use them, how to build relationships that last beyond transactions, and how brands can earn the kind of loyalty that turns customers into long-term advocates.
Customers may leave. Fans stay. The strongest brands build relationships that go beyond the purchase.
Speaker
As the main producer of Mr. House Husband Season 2, she helped lead the program to the No. 2 position in overall entertainment ratings and received the award for Best Program Selected by Viewers.
Her work explores the relationship between fandom, content and brands, with a particular interest in what makes people move beyond casual consumption to form deeper emotional connections.
She is also the author of several books, including From a Fan to a Brand, The Work of Planning People, and The Language of Planners.