How to Build Fans When Everything Feels Fake

Most marketing is built to win a click. Fandom is built to win something far more durable: loyalty that survives a cheaper competitor, a bad quarter, and even your own mistakes.

David Meerman Scott has studied fandom for three decades. His newest book, The Fandom Playbook: Building Your Human Connection in a World of Digital Chaos, turns that work into nine plays. In a conversation with Paxton Gray the day before the book’s launch, he made the case that fandom isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a basic human need that most brands ignore.

A Fan Is Someone Who Stays

Before running any play, we need to know what we’re building. David defines a fan by three behaviors:

• They stay. “A fan is somebody who will stick with you even if a lower cost competitor comes around.”
• They share. A fan loves you enough to tell friends, colleagues, and family about what you do.
• They forgive. “A fan is somebody who will forgive you if you make a mistake.”

That’s a different relationship than most customers have with the companies they buy from. Most will jump the moment a better offer appears.

David’s interest started with the Grateful Dead. He has seen the band 111 times and co-wrote Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead with HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan. Their main finding was simple: the band focused on building fans. One example stands out. While other bands of the era banned recording devices, the Grateful Dead let fans record their shows.

The deeper reason fandom works is biological. In David’s words, “it actually is hardwired into our brains to want to be part of a tribe of like minded people.” For tens of thousands of generations, being with your tribe meant safety. That instinct still shapes us. Walk into a room of friends and you feel at ease. Step into a crowded elevator of strangers and you feel exposed.

Pick Two Plays, Not Nine

The book holds nine plays, but David is clear that no one should try all of them: “don’t try to do all nine. I don’t even do all nine. I wrote the book.” The advice is to pick a couple and run with them. Here are the ones he highlighted.

Real People Beat Stock Photos

The easiest play is one any team can start today: remove stock photos, stock video, and AI-generated images and video of people from your marketing. A forest shot is fine. A fake person standing in for your customer or employee is not.

David sees this most in B2B, where the staged conference room shot is everywhere. “People see that it’s fake.” Even when they can’t name it, they sense it. Those smiling strangers around a table plant a quiet doubt about whether this is a brand worth becoming a fan of.

Polish Is Fine. Placeholders Are Not.

Paxton Gray asked whether a professional shoot of real employees, with good lighting and planned outfits, still counts. David’s answer: “I’m cool with that.” A website photo should look good. The goal is to replace placeholder images with real people, not to ban production quality.

Your Passion Is Your Edge

The most surprising play is that your passion is infectious, including what you love outside of work. “Your passion for what you do, both in your business, but surprisingly, what you do on your personal time is infectious.”

The problem is the wall most professionals build between their personal and work lives. Instagram gets the surf trips and the concerts. LinkedIn gets the buttoned-up version. David doesn’t hold back on that split: “That’s nonsense. Actually, you build fans when you break down those walls.” The logic is simple. People do business with people they can relate to.

The Skateboarding Dentist

After one of David’s talks, a Southern California dentist named Dr. John Marashi told him dentists can’t have fans. There are thousands of dentists in the region, and their websites all look alike. Many are built by the same company. “It’s a very templated process.”

David asked what he loved outside of dentistry. The answer was skateboarding. Had he ever brought it into his practice? No.

Months later, the results were in. Dr. Marashi now has skateboards on his office walls, skateboarding photos on his dental website, and an Instagram account that mixes dental content with skateboarding. He credits the shift with growing new patients by nearly 100% and new revenue by nearly 50%, because “people are attracted to this nutty dude who loves the skateboard and happens to be a dentist.”

Grateful Dead Music on an Earnings Call

This works in B2B too. When HubSpot went public in 2014, Brian Halligan decided to play Grateful Dead music as hold music for the company’s earnings call. “Everyone told him don’t do it.” His investor relations team, his PR team, and his board all pushed back. He did it anyway.

The first question HubSpot ever took as a public company came from a JP Morgan analyst, who opened with congratulations and thanks for the Grateful Dead music. Brian has shared his love of the band on podcasts, on social media, and from the stage ever since.

Fandom Doesn’t Replace the Algorithm

Paxton Gray raised the obvious objection. Marketers are under pressure to feed algorithms and prove ROI, and telling a CFO “I’m trying to make fans here” is a tough sell.

David rejects the trade-off entirely: “I don’t see it as either or.” Use AI. Play to the algorithms. He does both himself. The point is to add human connection on top, especially now. After the isolation of the pandemic, “We’re eager for human connections.”

HubSpot shows how this works in practice. At its INBOUND conference, thousands of attendees wear the same badge. In the hotel lobby, at the bar, or in line for a session, that badge marks someone as part of the same tribe. It gives strangers an instant reason to talk. Simply holding in-person events creates the human connection fandom grows from.

Do the Opposite of Everyone Else

The plays come from observation, not academic studies. David has written 14 books and spent 24 years on his own studying what works. “I don’t do surveys or anything like that. I’m looking for trends and ideas that seem like they’re working.” He finds stories, gathers evidence, tests ideas on his blog and social media, and keeps what resonates.

He also hunts for contrast. “I’m constantly looking for patterns in the universe that are different from what everybody else is doing.” When The New Rules of Marketing and PR came out in 2007, most brands were spending on TV, print, and direct mail. He pushed them online. Today, with everyone racing to create content with AI, he’s pushing them toward human connection.

Old Tactics Can Come Back

Some ideas return in new forms. David coined newsjacking, which he calls “the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story.” When news breaks, journalists and curious readers alike look for experts. In its early days, the goal was media coverage.

Now the same move helps brands show up in LLMs. Picture a new cybersecurity threat in B2B. A company that publishes a webinar or an article on it right away gives AI tools fresh, expert material to surface when people go looking for answers.

Fandom Won’t Saturate

Paxton Gray pointed out that content marketing, once a fresh way to win attention, is now oversaturated. Will fandom follow the same path?

David doesn’t think so, since “what I’m talking about here is truly something that’s hardwired into humans’ brains.” A tactic can wear out. A human need can’t. If every competitor is focused on digital channels, be there too, and then find ways to bring people together.

Video Puts You Four Feet Away

Can a remote company build fans? David’s answer is yes: “I think it’s possible to build fans virtually as well.”

The key is video. He points to the work of Edward T. Hall on how distance shapes human connection:

• Public space: beyond about 12 feet, where connection is weak
• Social space: about 4 to 12 feet, where connection is strong
• Personal space: within about 4 feet, where connection is strongest

Head-and-shoulders video lands close to personal space, thanks to mirror neurons. To prove it, David bit into a lemon on camera and asked if Paxton Gray could taste it. He could. As David explained, “our brains are processing it as if we’re in the same room, even though intellectually we know we’re not in the same room.”

For B2B brands, the takeaway is concrete. Fill your website and social channels with video of real people: customer interviews, partner conversations, your CEO, your technical experts. Frame them head and shoulders. Let your audience feel like they’re in the room.

Where to Start

Fandom isn’t a campaign. It’s a different way of relating to the people you serve. Start small:

• Swap one stock photo for a real image of a real customer or teammate.
• Share one passion that has nothing to do with your job title.
• Record one video of a real person talking straight to camera.

Then pick another play and keep going. The brands that win the next decade won’t just be the ones the algorithm favors. They’ll be the ones people refuse to leave.

Resources: 

Check out David’s work: https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/fandom-marketing 

Order David’s new book: https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/books/the-fandom-playbook 

Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmeermanscott 

Connect with Paxton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paxtongray/ 

Looking for an agency that'll be worth the investment? 97th Floor creates custom, audience-first campaigns that drive pipeline and conversions. Get started here: https://97thfloor.com/lets-talk/. 

About David Meerman Scott: 

David Meerman Scott spotted the online marketing revolution in its infancy and wrote multiple books about it including “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”, with more than 500,000 copies sold in 29 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese.

Now David says the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of superficial online communications. He shows how organizations win by developing fans, the subject of his “Wall Street Journal” bestseller “Fanocracy” and “The Fandom Playbook” both published by Entrepreneur Press.