Building Community with Issa Rae
First comes culture, then comes community. It started with a Facebook group and has evolved as her star rises. The secret is a strong brand culture that lends itself to finding synergies. This one’s for Awkward Black Girls everywhere.
Photo Credit: Adrienne Raquel for Vanity Fair
My first taste of social networking was from The-N.com. The website came from a nighttime programming block on the Noggin television channel that was aimed at preteens and teenagers. I was in middle school then and heavily invested in Degrassi. The experience started with an avatar you used to navigate the site. It became your identity. From there, there were quizzes, games, clips from popular shows and — my personal favorite — message boards.
Those boards were my treasure trove. It was Reddit with a youthful twist. There were forums on almost every topic: live viewings of popular shows, fan-fiction, short stories, online play. With our words we hosted surprise parties for one another, traveled, fell in love. There I was with my online persona, meeting and interacting with my online tribe.
At some point the lines blurred. We grew an actual affinity for each other and chatted on AOL messenger when we weren’t on the boards. It was a crash course in balancing the fantasy we created with the digital accessibility of the times. When I think of online community, it brings me back to my avatar days. That feels like eons ago. Technology is far more advanced. There are a variety of new social platforms to choose from and compete with. And yet, the same inner workings still ring true.
Within the right cultural context people use online forums to build community. The power of that community can translate into material experiences. It can move a hit series from crowdfunded on Youtube to corporate-back on HBO. It can serve as a launching pad to media mogul status. If there is anyone else who knows that to be true it’s Issa Rae.
From the grassroots momentum of Youtube shows like Dorm Diaries and Awkward Black Girl, Rae has built a portfolio of media and business ventures that are true to the core of who she’s always been. It’s pretty stacked with the production company Hoorae, the record label Raedio, her Hilltop coffee shop in Inglewood, and an investment in Streamlytics, a streaming-media data startup. Rae has come a long way from her Kickstarter days. Still, at the core of all these projects lies the essence of the community she built.
Partly responsible for the success of the show was the Facebook group created to promote it. At the time, episodes were released on a monthly cadence. It gave Rae space to soak in reactions to the show as it unfolded, fine-tuning her craft as she built her platform. The strategy was successful because group members could relate to the main character, J: an awkward Black girl navigating ”the embarrassing minefield of love, friendship, and office politics.” J sat at the core of Issa Rae’s brand culture — the central ethos that brings a brand to life — creating a cultural moment for the show’s viewers. From there they formed bonds, with each other and with the fantasy world, and thus her community grew. Shared culture breeds community.
Nearly 2,000 fans donated to the Kickstarter campaign to raise money to finish the first season. It was an instance of Rae leveraging her influence in an exchange with her brand. Her community wanted to participate directly, connecting their fantasy experience with something tangible. For the online creator looking to build something similar from scratch, community is the bedrock. Issa Rae used original content as a platform for solidifying brand culture and building genuine community. That community was her launching pad to Hollywood.
Using Brand Culture to Build Synergies
The added bonus of building a community from scratch is that it helps you hone in on elements of your brand strategy. The ethos of ABG lives on in Insecure. Issa is just as much of an awkward Black girl as her predecessor. HBO gave Issa more ground to cover and we see how she used that as an opportunity for bigger ventures within her signature realm. Take the music. Insecure has grown a reputation for its soundtracks. Raedio, the record label in partnership with Atlantic Records, is a dot connector that builds on brand culture. The two just go together. A major facet of brand strategy is creating brand culture be it through shared experiences or concentrated, high impact moments. By leveraging the community aspect of Facebook groups at the time Issa collected her first round of customer data to build from. She had a real-time focus group right there in front of her.
There’s nuance here to keep in mind. Taking in community feedback isn’t always about creating what they want. The goal is to stay true to your brand culture. Be consistent in building heritage. Heritage is equity in the right circumstances. In this sense, Rae was able to find her niche, build up her fanbase and then replicate it across ventures through building synergies e.g. dot connectors. Remembering that culture builds community is really important for someone who is building influence from scratch.
A brand-new platform needs a shared culture to grow. Sometimes you can use celebrity as equity. Take Lebron James who used his basketball stardom to pivot to the SpringHill Company. There was already a level of fame and affinity associated with his brand that could lend itself to this new venture. Community is credibility. In either case, leveraging your influence means getting people to buy into your story.
Create culture and then facilitate community.
Today, Issa Rae may not need a Facebook group to stoke the fire under her many ventures, but the ethos of that group lives on. In another insightful move of the times, her production company, Hoorae, runs a Patreon membership giving “creators, fans and friends” access to exclusive tiered content. The content subs into Rae’s model as Awkward Black Girl. The Patreon subs into Rae’s model for Facebook. The same principles apply. First, find your people and learn from them. Then, build synergies to scale.
