Together with an expert panel of Carrie Melissa Jones, author of Building Brand Communities, Douglas Atkin, author of the Culting of Brands, and Dr Lauren Vargas, independent researcher and communities consultant, we’ll explore the kinds of community we need as we emerge from the pandemic, the ways we can build it and the role that marketers can play in renewing our social fabric. What are the big ideas for how we can thrive together at a time when our connections to each other are more important than ever?
Carrie Melissa Jones is the author of Building Brand Communities: How Organizations Succeed by Creating Belonging. She is a community builder, entrepreneur, community management consultant and the founder of Gather Community Consulting. She has created community strategies for presidential campaigns, non-profits and global businesses including Google and Patreon. And in addition to being passionate about helping organisations build communities, she’s a passionate advocate for community leaders.
Douglas Atkin is the author of The Culting of Brands: Turn your Customers into Believers. Douglas was Global Head of Community at Airbnb and on its leadership team from 2012 to 2017 during the hyper-growth years. He led the development of Airbnb’s purpose to ‘Create a World where Anyone can Belong Anywhere’. And also led all community initiatives including grass-roots organising and movement-making techniques to mobilise Airbnb Hosts and Guests to take political action that changed laws to recognize home sharing. He was Co-Founder of Peers, a movement for the Peer-to-Peer economy. He Co-Founded Purpose, an organization that creates movements, and was on the board of one of its creations: AllOut, the world’s first and largest LGBTQ rights movements. He was Partner and Chief Community Officer at Meetup in 2007-8. Prior to all this community, purpose and movement-making stuff he was a branding expert and strategic planner at several leading London and New York firms.
Dr. Lauren Vargas is a digital dragon wrangler with 20 years experience assisting organizations with their community and communication strategies. She is an independent researcher and consultant at Your Digital Tattoo, as well as, a 'One by One' Research Associate with the University of Leicester - delivering a "practical approach to building digital literacies within specific museum contexts" for UK and US museums. Lauren is based in Leiden, Netherlands and in June 2019 graduated with a PhD from the University of Leicester in Museum Studies with a research focus on digital data collection. As a communications professional and adjunct university instructor / lecturer, Lauren enables organizations and students to engage with the communities they serve by fostering authentic relationships built on trust and dynamic dialogue. And she was previously named by The Economist Intelligence Unit as one of the top 25 social business leaders.
Founding Members of MarketingKind Robbie Hearn, Co-founder of Standing on Giants, and Célia Pronto, Managing Director of Love Home Swap, will host this xChange.