Exterminate Brand: 6 Things Doctor Who Teaches Us about Fan Love
Photo credit: Mathieu Stern on Unsplash
Last week Doctor Who turned 60, or 1018 depending on your source. In the marketing world the concept of ‘brand love’ has been thoroughly discredited by Byron ‘Buzz Kill’ Sharp et al. Yet as the anniversary celebrations showed, the Whoniverse is full of passionate Whovians for whom Doctor Who is far more than a distinctive brand asset. To them, Doctor Who is the inspiration driving debate, blogs, podcasts, fan fiction, twitter watch-alongs, clubs, conventions, etc… Is ‘brand love’ making a comeback by dressing as a ‘brand fan’ and sneaking in the now fashionable door marked ‘creator community’?
Fan ‘love’ needs to be seen through a creator lens. A ‘regular consumer’ gets value from how they consume a brand and they feel some level of loyalty, affinity, identity, towards it. ‘Brand lovers’ are regular consumers turned up to 11, they get more value out of consuming the brand and feel an emotional connection ‘beyond reason’ which does get them to behave differently. A ‘brand fan’ however doesn’t simply passively consume brand value. Brand to a fan is a tool that inspires and enables them to actively create their own value. For a brand to be worthy of fandom it needs to be a muse that inspires fans’ own fiction, debates and community. The meaning of a brand to a fan lies as much in their own hands as the brand’s.
So how does Doctor Who transcend its role as a feel-good family show, to become a tool for creators? The answer is to draw on the same fundamentals that drive any successful brand, but with a creator emphasis.
1. A ‘positively bonkers’ idea lovingly crafted
The heart of a great brand is what we at 2050 call a ‘Positively Bonkers’ Idea. Something bonkers enough to cut through the pop culture clutter and positive enough to feel-good and bring people together…
…However people don’t fall in love with ideas, they fall in love with ideas given warmth and presence by craft. They feel the love the actors have for their characters. They revel in the creative touches that make the Tardis look like a Police Box and sound like a groaning wheezing whale. The importance placed on a classic theme tune that still provokes shivers of anticipation. Doctor Who has never had big budgets, but it has been a triumph of creativity in the details. This is what a creator responds to. It’s the same ethos that drove Innocent to rewrite their ingredient lists into joyous prose.
2. Usable distinctive brand assets
Distinctive brand assets give creators rich ‘symbols’ to use. Doctor Who has plenty of these: The Tardis, the ’sonic screwdriver’ and of course the Daleks…
…But for a seven year old, it’s being able to run around the playground shouting ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’ in a robot voice that makes it easy to take your first steps into the fandom. Just as ‘Should have gone to Specsavers’ is easy to find a relevant place and use in everyday life.
3. A rich yet incomplete brand world
Doctor Who lives in a rich world with strong characters and its own internal logic where geeky science always defeats violence. And this enables others to construct their own stories using the formula… but a black page is always intimidating, so the ever-helpful Doctor gives you plenty to fire your imagination. The ‘Filipino invasion of Reykjavik”, “The jaws of the nightmare child” are throwaway lines which are never explained, expanded on or mentioned again. Yet they gnaw away in the mind long after the episode has ended. Brands like Apple have a strong brand world and by virtue of the pace of change in their tech category, fans are similarly prompted to ask themselves, what would an Apple Electric Car look like, how would Apple Credit Cards work, how would Apple do… Nothing provokes a fans’ imagination like a compelling mystery or interesting question.
4. Finished product and workings out
Current Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies said he thinks there is more ‘behind the scenes’ content for Doctor Who than any other show. This content not only feeds Whovians insatiable appetite for anything and everything Doctor Who…
…but also brings them behind the consumer curtain to the creator side of the brand which is where they want to be. In a similar way Virgin’s success as a brand came through publicising Richard Branson - the ultimate Virgin brand creator - and talking about his personality, philosophy and challenges in creating the brand’s success.
5. Culturally relevant and constantly refreshed
In the ‘70s Doctor Who battled against The Company and their penal rates of tax. In the most recent episode he revealed his preferred pronoun was ‘the’ as in ‘The Doctor’...
…The Whoniverse has big enough ideas to be able to both be culturally on the money for an episode and constantly reinvent itself. Or should that be regenerating. In the same way Levis stands for ‘teenage rebellion’ while flexing to rebel against whatever is meaningful to teenagers of any given era.
6. Inclusive with an enemy
Fans need a shared identity, something that brings them together. But that identity is sharpened when you have a common enemy to push against… Some brands are born in opposition. Where would Punk be without Prog Rock or Apple Mac without PC? In Doctor Who’s case, there is no ‘enemy’ science fiction series, but like all Pop Culture fans they feel the presence of a disparaging world that looks at them and thinks ‘get a life’. In that sense there is a community bond strengthened by adversity and a shared ‘fight’ to champion Doctor Who as a cultural icon just as worthy of interest as the ‘high brow’ culture of Shakespear and Beethoven.
So as you settle down to the rest of the 60th Anniversary Specials, remember that Doctor Who’s success is in part down to the incredible advocacy and cultural credibility delivered by the combined efforts of its substantial fandom. And the key to achieving this is in part down to the brand’s power as a tool to inspire fans to create their own meaning, identity, community… And therein lies the purest expression of brand fans’ true love.
