Branded vs. Unbranded Community

Branded Communities 

• Members of the community know the identity of the company or brand sponsoring the community.
• The company brand may be mentioned during recruitment, or you can recruit from company customer lists, social media or other avenues.
• The URL may be branded.
• The home page can have the brand logo, a welcome message from the brand and so forth.
• The emails that come from the community can come from [e-mail].

Benefits

• Typically easier to recruit, as members will know what they are signing up for vs. joining a more nebulous type of community.
• You can recruit using customer lists - faster and easier than most options.
• Typically, members are easier to engage. You can draw on brand affinity, use the brand as the face of the community, and showcase feedback being gathered. 
• Oftentimes you can use lower incentives given the brand affinity. 

Potential Cons

• The client sponsor is known, so this may create response biases (awareness, brand halo effect, etc.) and could allow competitors to gain knowledge about research topics.
• Brand detractors may not join. 
• Typically more legal and creative review is needed (and for medical or financial services review can get very lengthy).

Unbranded Communities

• Members do not know the identity of the community sponsor or researchers.
• The URL is generic (e.g., cartalk.icmib.com).
• There is a generic logo (e.g., a tire) and a welcome message that may be topical (We are going to talk about buying a new car). 
• Emails will come from a generic email account.

Benefits

• You can get unaided awareness and can recruit across a broader spectrum of people that may or may not join a branded community.
• You can normally skip a lot of legal and creative review as it falls into a "research" type project vs. a creative brand execution. 
• More researcher control over the creative content, incentives and engagement. 

Potential Cons

• Can be harder to recruit without brand affinity.
• Members may "waste" time trying to figure out the identity of the sponsor.
• Typically, you will have to pay more out for incentives (both to join and for ongoing projects). 
• Harder to deliver 360 feedback to drive engagement.

Continue Reading:

Public vs. Private Community

 

 

For more details see:

When to use a Community

Frequency of Member Engagement

Community Engagement Tips