How to Build a Brand People Would Defend in a Car Park Argument
A few weekends ago, hundreds of adults gathered in a room to competitively complete jigsaw puzzles.
Not metaphorical puzzles. Actual cardboard puzzles.
Some wore matching shirts. Some had professional sorting trays. One Australian competitor reportedly completed a 500-piece puzzle in just 36 minutes, which is impressive considering most of us spend the first 20 minutes looking for a corner piece and blaming the dog for missing bits.
And yet, competitive puzzling is booming.
There are championships. Rankings. Fan communities. Livestreams. Fierce debates about puzzle brands. Somewhere in Australia right now, a fully grown adult is passionately discussing edge-piece strategy.
It sounds ridiculous until you realise something important:
Competitive puzzling is not really about puzzles.
It is about belonging.
The Businesses Winning Today Build Tribes, Not Audiences
Seth Godin has argued for years that the internet changed one thing forever: geography stopped mattering.
People no longer gather because they live in the same suburb. They gather because they share the same interests, frustrations, values, or weird little obsessions.
That is what Godin calls a tribe.
And tribes matter because customers are no longer just buying products. They are buying identity, connection, and participation.
Small businesses often miss this because they focus entirely on transactions:
- Sell the thing
- Promote the offer
- Post the discount
- Repeat until exhausted
But the strongest brands do something different.
They create spaces where people feel understood.
Why Tribes Matter More Than Followers
A tribe is not just an audience. Audiences watch. Tribes participate.
That difference matters enormously for small and medium businesses because participation creates loyalty that advertising alone cannot buy.
People stick around when they feel connected to:
- Shared values
- Shared language
- Shared rituals
- Shared identity
- Shared experiences
The puzzling community understands this instinctively.
Nobody joins a speed-puzzling competition because they urgently need more cardboard landscapes in their life. They join because they like being around fellow puzzle people.
The same principle applies to business.
Your customers are looking for people like themselves.
The Best Brands Feel Like Clubs
Think about the businesses people become emotionally attached to.
Harley-Davidson did not just sell motorcycles. They sold rebellion and identity.
CrossFit did not just sell exercise. They sold community and collective suffering.
LEGO built an enormous adult following by embracing passionate fans instead of pretending grown adults should stop playing with tiny plastic bricks.
Closer to home, you see this everywhere in small business:
- The café that becomes cycling headquarters every Saturday morning
- The barber shop where clients stay an extra half-hour talking rubbish
- The brewery that hosts local music nights
- The fishing store where customers swap stories more than they buy gear
- The bakery with regulars who would defend the sourdough like medieval knights
These businesses understand something important:
People return to places where they feel recognised.
What Seth Godin Got Right
One of Godin’s simplest but most powerful ideas is this:
People want leadership and connection around something meaningful.
Not necessarily world-changing. Just meaningful. A tribe forms when someone says:
“Hey, people like us do things like this.”
That sentence quietly drives almost every strong community on earth. For business owners, this means your marketing should not just answer:
“What do we sell?”
It should answer:
“Who is this for?”
And perhaps more importantly:
“Who belongs here?”
How SMEs Can Build a Tribe Around Their Brand
You do not need millions of followers or a massive marketing budget. In fact, smaller businesses often build stronger communities because they feel more human.
Here are a few ways businesses can create belonging:
Give Customers a Shared Identity
People love feeling part of something.
This can be subtle:
- A nickname for your community
- Insider references
- Traditions or recurring events
- Shared values or causes
- A recognisable tone of voice
The goal is not exclusivity. It is familiarity.
Create Participation, Not Just Promotion
Most businesses broadcast constantly. Very few invite people in.
Try:
- Customer spotlights
- Community events
- Shared challenges
- User-generated content
- Behind-the-scenes stories
- Asking for opinions and input
People support what they help shape.
Lean Into Your Niche
This is where many businesses panic unnecessarily. They worry that focusing too narrowly will exclude customers.
Usually the opposite happens.
Niche communities attract attention because passion is magnetic. Nobody deeply cares about “generic business solutions.” People care about businesses that stand for something specific.
Competitive puzzling is a perfect example. It is wildly niche. Yet the community is growing precisely because it embraces its oddness instead of sanding it down.
Belonging Is Becoming a Business Advantage
Right now, many customers are overwhelmed, distracted, and quietly lonely. That sounds dramatic, but it is true. Businesses that create genuine connection stand out because they offer something algorithms and discounts cannot replicate very well:
A sense of belonging.
And that does not require corporate jargon about “engagement ecosystems” or “brand affinity optimisation,” which sound vaguely like software updates no one asked for.
It requires humanity.
People remember businesses that make them feel seen.
The Puzzle People Are Onto Something
At first glance, competitive puzzling seems like one of those wonderfully strange internet-age hobbies. But beneath the sorting trays and stopwatch timers is a useful lesson for businesses of every size.
Humans are constantly searching for their people.
The brands that succeed are often the ones that help them find each other.
Even if that shared identity happens to involve aggressively assembling tiny cardboard cottages at record speed.
