Teaser, not the whole playbook
Community is
a room you build.
Here's the floor plan.
Ten years of building communities for Adobe, Mattel, AMD, Cisco and Logitech taught me the same lesson everywhere: engagement, service and advocacy are one system, not three. This is the shape of how I'd run it at Chomps - deliberately high-level, because the specifics deserve your team's input and your data.
Engaging fans
Fans don't need more content. They need a reason to show up.
Know the regulars by name
Every community has fifty people who carry it. I'd know who they are, what they post, and when they've gone quiet. At Mattel, that familiarity is what turned 1.1M moderated replies into a community that defended the brand on its own.
Give fans something to be right about
Weekly votes, flavor debates, pairing arguments - structured ways for the audience to have opinions we actually use. People advocate for things they helped decide.
Show up where the snacking happens
Gym, keto, carnivore, hunting, road trips, lunchboxes. Six communities already talking about the product in their own language. The job is joining those conversations as a participant, not a billboard.
Handling inquiries
Fast, human, and never improvised twice.
Triage in minutes, not hours
A clear sort: praise gets amplified, questions get answered, problems get moved fast. Response time is a brand attribute - people screenshot it either way.
One voice, written down
A voice and escalation doc a new hire could run on day one, built with CX so nobody improvises on a sensitive ticket. I've written these at Mattel and AMD; they pay for themselves the first weird week.
Every complaint is research
Inquiry patterns get tagged and fed back to CX, Ecommerce and Brand weekly. The complaint box is the cheapest focus group in the company.
The full escalation matrix - who touches what, at what hour, with whose sign-off - is the kind of thing I'd build with CX in week one, not guess at from the outside.
Building advocates
Advocacy is a pipeline, not a happy accident.
Spot them early
The person who answers other people's questions before we do, who posts the product unprompted, who shows up in every thread. There's a system for finding them, and it isn't follower counts.
Give them a lane, not a script
The same lesson from working with talent like Stevie Nicks, LeBron James, Billie Eilish and Venus Williams: protect their time, give them a clear creative lane, and make sure the community gets something real out of it. Advocates get the same respect as celebrities, just at a different scale.
Reward in public, thank in private
Recognition that the whole community sees, and gratitude that feels personal. The mix is what turns a fan into someone who recruits other fans.
I've run this play before.
I'd love to run it here.
35,000+ members grown at Adobe. 1.1M+ replies at Mattel. 17,000+ built from zero at ScholarshipOwl. The playbooks exist - what I'd tailor to Chomps is exactly what I'd rather walk through live.