What is a category enthusiast?

Category enthusiasts are critical to specialty brands, and we have been studying them and why they’re so important for quite a while. Years in fact. This article will first explain what the category enthusiast is and then let you know why they are so important to specialty brands and specialty retailers. 

But first, a minor introduction featuring a story about a soccer player.

Most people don’t like soccer. They either hate it or they love it.
I love soccer. So much so that from the ages of 8 to 22 I spent pretty much every waking moment of my life doing something that involved the game. I played, I coached, I officiated. Even my first real job had something to do with soccer: at age 15 I was hired as a concession stand worker at Just For Kicks, an indoor soccer facility. My love for the game and this myopic focus paid off when I ended up an almost full-ride athlete at Drake University, where I played four years at the NCAA Division I level. Back then I was an athlete (please place a strong focus on the disclaimer “back then”), but these days I’m merely a soccer enthusiast.

I still play, I coach my kids and I’m a huge supporter of Sporting KC, Major League Soccer and our US National teams. I have season tickets to SKC, I read tons of soccer blogs, I follow the pro leagues in England and Spain. In other words, when it comes to soccer, I’m all in.

I think about enthusiasm a lot in my daily work here at the agency. Since we focus on shopper marketing for specialty brands, we have to glean insights from a different kind of person than mass brands do. There are lots of names for these people: some folks call them influencers, Malcolm Gladwell calls them mavens, around here we call them Category Enthusiasts.

The Category Enthusiast: Defined
A CE is someone like me, someone who has such a passion for something like a sport, an activity, a type of gear, their pets or even a brand, that they seek information about their passion on a regular, a daily, even an hourly basis. The CE simply must know what’s new, what’s best, what’s bad, what’s hot and what’s not when it comes to the thing they’re enthusiastic about. But it goes much, much further than just seeking information. CEs eat, drink and sleep their passion. They use it, they study it, they talk about it, they share it. They live it.

In raw numbers, the CEs are only a minor percentage of the overall marketplace. Therefore it’s logical that that they cannot matter much when it comes to marketing specialty brands to a much broader target audience—right? Wrong. Though the numbers may be small, the influence they wield is a much bigger stick. There are lots of people studying this phenomenon. Here’s just one example.

In the great short film INFLUENCERS, Paul Rojanathara and Davis Johnson explore "what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment.” It’s a lovely piece of filmmaking that does a great job of explaining where Category Enthusiasts come from and why they are so important.

But let’s bring the discussion a little closer to home, and back to the world I know best – soccer – for an explanation of how CEs can transfer their enthusiasm to others, thereby increasing the perceived value of one brand over others.

Transferring Enthusiasm 101: The Shin Guard Factor
As a soccer CE, I get several catalogs each month with the newest gear offerings from adidas, Nike, Puma, Lotto, Diadora, Umbro, Kappa and other companies the casual fan—like the parents of the kids I coach—haven’t heard of. So they say to me, “Hey, Jack outgrew his shin guards, what’s a good brand or style for him?”

Now this is the kind of question I, as a CE, love. I could pontificate for hours on end about the various kinds of shin guards on the market, how they differ from the ones I wore when I played, and which ones I think are best for a 9-year-old. So I launch into a diatribe about how this is good, that is not, these are rumored to be uncomfortable, I like the compression sleeve this pair comes with, and this other style seems okay but tends to fall apart. You get the idea. I have the info, I have the enthusiasm, and I’m more than happy to bend the ear of the poor sap who asked a simple question about shin guards.

But along the way, something magical happens. Jack’s dad buys the guards I recommend, even going to the specialty store I indicate. Oh, and I talked him into a more expensive brand than he could have found at, say, Walmart. He searched out my reco and eventually acted on it because he wanted to be a good father, to protect his son, to know he’s being a good parent. And because Jack’s dad is feeling like a good father, he tells another parent his version of Shin Guard 101, and another parent gets the info and buys the right stuff.

See, my love for soccer allows me to transfer my enthusiasm to a non-initiated parent (Jack’s dad) and turn him into a brand “fan.” Then, because he feels so good about being a good father, he translates that knowledge to someone else. Oh, sweet victory.

Making Marketing out of Enthusiasm
By identifying and learning from your brand’s CEs, you can develop insights that target the masses.

• Find out who your CEs are. They don’t have to be brand zealots or even advocates, they just need to be overly interested in the thing you provide to the world.

• Talk to them, get them engaged in conversations. Find what makes them enthusiastic and what they like and dislike about your product or service and everybody else’s in the category. Get inside their heads.

• Use that knowledge to target others. For every CE, there are tons of non-CEs who are likely to be affected by the same pros and cons. Use what you know, what you’ve learned from the CE.

When the CE can point to a couple of things about you that are different or interesting or better, or that deliver more “psychic income” (the buzz you feel when you’ve made the right decision about a product or service), you can take that knowledge and use it to attract regular Joes. So you identify the CE, learn from them, and take that knowledge and use it to make more people enthusiastic. Not about a general category, but about a specific brand—yours. In soccer terms, you just won 8-nil.