Onchain Cooperatives: Shared Brand

Part 2: Shared Brand

This is the second part in a series about Onchain Cooperatives. In our first post, Onchain Cooperatives: Compensation, we detailed designing compensation plans into these models and the benefits of rewarding members for their contributions.

Today, we will discuss shared brands. Typically, brands spend weeks incubating a company name, visual identity, and logo in stealth mode while formalizing their business and go-to-market strategy for the big reveal. This is normal. However, when community is added to the mix, shared brands are built over time.

Competitive advantage of a shared brand

A brand is not just the shape of your logo, the texture of your website, or the components in your design system. Your brand is a promise to meet, and ideally exceed, expectations of what you provide.

Traditionally, brands broadcast their message through one-to-many channels. In cooperative models, there is an inherent anti-hierarchical paradigm shift, moving from one-to-many to peer-to-peer interactions.

A shared brand represents a shared experience, a shared reputation, and a shared set of materials to build a stage on which to perform. It builds on the premise of brand promises but adds one more crucial component: community. What was once considered sequestered corners of in-person events and online support forums has evolved to become the heart of community-driven products and companies.

Differences between brands & shared brands

Brands:

• Broadcast using one-to-many channels

• Succeed through focused and consistent direction

• Transact to drive leads and other value for the company

Shared brands:

• Connect independents in peer-to-peer relationships

• Thrive from cross-functional threads

• Provide value for both the company and members

Advantages of a shared brand

By inheriting and contributing values and a history of successful launches within a cooperative, independents are playing off established associations and perceptions in a noisy virtual space.

Clients are more likely to take a trust fall if there is an entire community’s reputation on the line vs. just a single person. One could argue that this model exists today between agencies and their clients - BUT the major missing component is that traditional freelancing, agency, and employment models don’t offer the unique blend of autonomy and interconnectedness, without having to bear the sole responsibility of reputation and administrative risk.

As the world continues to move towards decentralized and cooperative models, shared brands offer a compelling and advantageous approach for independent workers seeking a place of belonging with proportionate upside potential.

Challenges of shared branding

Brand building involves both process and magic - there are proven formulas for success, but not everything can be planned for. In a community setting, a shared brand brings more variables into play. Without a clear framework, building a shared identity could lead to problems.

The first challenge that might be encountered is how to induce members to contribute their time towards building the brand. By contributing towards the shared brand, there is an inherent tradeoff of opportunity cost that could be spent elsewhere. One viable solution is to design incentives so that members contributing their time, ideas and work to the brand results in a positive-sum outcome.

Another challenge involved in building a shared brand is falling into the “design-by-committee” trap, where consensus becomes the enemy of completion. In trying to accommodate everyone's opinions and desires, a brand designed this way can become diluted and generic, failing to stand out. Setting clear guidelines and practical areas for collaboration can avoid this issue.

Imagine creating the perfect brand recipe, with sugar, spice, and everything nice. But what about the "Chemical X"? In the Powerpuff Girls, it was the fated ingredient that Utonium didn’t plan for, which gave the girls their superpowers. In a community setting, the unexpected surprises can also lead to the best outcomes.

At IndieDAO, we knew our sugar and spice were expert designers and developers, but the real magic (Chemical X) comes from community involvement and curated culture (memes, core products, experiencing indie life together, etc.), not something pre-designed. Embrace the uncertainty and uniqueness that a shared brand within a community can bring.

Core components of a shared brand

Community 🤝

A shared brand should create space and time for members to connect with each other, and the cooperative must have community effort with the authority to contribute to company-wide strategy and decisions. 

Tip: Create regular opportunities for your members to be consult each other on the direction and strategy of their efforts.

Example: Every week, IndieDAO hosts “Builders Working Group”, where we discuss product roadmap, strategy, and tasks in transparency with the community. Members join, voice their thoughts, opinions and contributions, and receive $INDIE for the tasks they’ve completed.

Constraint 🍱

Constraint creates clear direction, and avoids boiling the ocean. By setting a few guardrails, everyone can grasp the brand's purpose and direction, ensuring effective contributions from your community.

Tip: Design and document boundaries for experiments, such that any member can confidently implement a new effort with clear constraints.

Example: CreativeMornings, a breakfast lecture series started by Tina Roth Eisenberg, celebrates the unique signature of their cities by letting their local chapters add their own flavor. For instance, in Austin, the team experimented with a music segment that was so successful, it was adopted globally. Local chapters agree to a shared Code of Conduct so that the constraint is established in an accessible public format.

Openness 🦋

A culture of trust and transparency is cornerstone onchain. In a cooperative model, designing for members to feel heard and valued creates engagement opportunities that spark meaningful contribution. For example, the strongest open-source projects thrive due to their ability to create a powerful and supportive ecosystem, aligning all participants towards a common goal.

Tip: Create incentives for members to infuse their unique voice.

Example: At IndieDAO, we run competitions where members can create memes or share design and development tips. Contributors gain recognition and receive rewards through bounties. Structuring this as a bounty system is a win-win because it compensates members for their valuable time and efforts.

Trial & Error 🌱

In community, you need to experiment to see what resonates. Mistakes are normal and essential to growth. In fact, I've had engagement ideas and plans that didn't go as expected, but rather than getting down by set-backs, I’ve realized that experimenting with community is key to finding what works. Not every idea will be a hit, but every misstep is a step in the right direction.

Tip: Experiment, and run regular retros to bridge learnings back in.

Example: TED speaker series faced a problem with infrequent and inaccessible events for both speakers and audiences. Then, USC launched TEDxUSC, which was a small experiment on the established brand. As a result, more quality content was generated, and TEDx allowed the main brand to become more globally recognizable.

The paradigm shift of shared brands

We are often positioned to consider brands equal to large companies and consumerism, so thinking about shared brands in the context of work is a very new perspective. What other shared brands have done well to create positive sum outcomes for their communities?

Please share your thoughts, and stay tuned for the next post in this series, Onchain Work: Intellectual Property.