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537: Step-by-step community engagement for your product – with Jake McKee

1d ago 39:41

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How LEGO built a passionate community that drives product growth

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TLDR

Community-driven product development transformed LEGO from near-bankruptcy to industry leadership by engaging adult fans and positioning LEGO as a creative medium. This approach creates authentic relationships with customers who become collaborators, advocates, and co-creators for your products, ultimately driving innovation and business results.

Key Topics

Relational not transactional: Build genuine relationships where “everybody goes home happy” rather than viewing community as free marketing or support
Four-part framework to build a community: Find the right people, identify the right timing, define clear outcomes, and design engaging activities
The “Octopus Theory”: Community engagement delivers multiple simultaneous benefits including better product decisions, advocacy, team motivation, and competitive differentiation
Ecosystem thinking: Communities influence broader audiences beyond direct participants
Executive champions: Senior-level support is crucial for sustainable community initiatives
Power of direct interaction: Engineers and product teams respond to feedback when hearing directly from customers
Shared purpose: Rally around something bigger than either individual benefits or company goals

Introduction

Today we are talking about building passionate communities that drive product growth. How can you create authentic, engaged communities that transform your product’s trajectory? We’re talking about turning fans into collaborators, advocates, and even co-creators. As a product manager, you need to know how to build something customers don’t just use—but love. This discussion will explore the steps to tap into the power of community, learning from successful examples at LEGO and Apple.

Our guide to make all this happen is Jake McKee—the original LEGO Community Guy. He didn’t just grow a community—he helped change the culture of one of the world’s most iconic brands, reviving a rapidly declining company. Today, he advises organizations on how to build loyal communities that fuel innovation and drive business results.

This discussion will help you avoid disaster and instead deliver sustained growth.

The LEGO Turnaround Story: A Community-Driven Renaissance

When Jake McKee joined LEGO in the early 2000s, the iconic brand was heading toward a financial cliff. By 2003, the company was nearing bankruptcy – a fact that many people today don’t fully appreciate. The problem stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding of what made LEGO special.

In an attempt to stay relevant in a world where children had less free time for play, LEGO had simplified their products – replacing multiple bricks with larger, single-piece components that reduced building time. As Jake explained, this strategy backfired spectacularly. The simplified products lost the core appeal of LEGO– the ability to build and rebuild with flexible components. The result was “the world’s worst toy” – not good as a traditional toy and not good as a LEGO product.

Jake joined LEGO Direct, a division tasked with centralizing all direct-to-consumer efforts, including:

Catalog sales
Early online presence
Exclusive kits development
Adult fan engagement

What’s particularly interesting is that Jake took on a dual role – performing his official job as a senior web producer while simultaneously building relationships with adult LEGO fans, a group the company had completely ignored for decades.

Initially, this community work gained little traction within LEGO. But when the financial crisis hit and marketing budgets were slashed, Jake’s “free marketing” approach through community engagement suddenly became attractive to colleagues who had previously dismissed it.

Key Phases of LEGO’s Community-Driven Turnaround

Phase	Challenge	Community Solution	Result
Pre-crisis	Declining sales	Identifying adult fans as untapped market	Early exclusive kits for adults
Financial crisis (2003)	Near bankruptcy	Leveraging fan enthusiasm for marketing	Opening company to external collaboration
Recovery	Rebuilding brand relevance	Co-creating with adult fans (Mindstorms 2.0)	Featured on Wired magazine cover
Long-term growth	Sustaining innovation	Establishing LEGO as a creative medium	Adult fans now represent 45% of business

This transformation didn’t happen overnight. Jake spent years building relationships and gradually shifting the company’s perspective. The breakthrough moment came with the Mindstorms 2.0 (NXT) project, where LEGO brought in adult fans to help design the product – a radical departure from their previous closed development approach.

Beyond Demographics: The Ecosystem Approach to Community Building

One of the most valuable insights from my conversation with Jake was his emphasis on thinking beyond demographic segments. Rather than simply targeting adult LEGO fans as a market, he positioned LEGO as a creative medium – a perspective that opened possibilities across multiple audience segments.

This ecosystem approach created several new marketing avenues:

Adult enthusiasts build impressive displays at public venues
Parents and grandparents see these creations and recognize LEGO’s creative potential
They purchase LEGO as a creative medium rather than a disposable toy
Educators incorporate LEGO into classrooms as a learning tool
These expanded uses inspire new product ideas and innovations

Jake emphasized that community building isn’t just about catering to your most passionate fans – it’s about understanding how their enthusiasm can influence the broader ecosystem around your product. When an adult brings a LEGO model to work, they’re not just expressing their personal interest; they’re demonstrating the product’s creative potential to new audiences.

This perspective shift from “LEGO as toy” to “LEGO as creative medium” allowed the company to sell products across age groups while maintaining brand consistency.

Jake’s Apple Experience: Building a Global Support Community

Jake managed Apple’s Global Support Community – a platform that handled tens of thousands of technical support questions monthly across multiple languages.

Apple Community Component	Function
200+ Volunteer Super Users	Answered significant percentage of community questions
Internal Support Team	Validated community responses and addressed complex issues
Community Moderators	Maintained community standards and facilitated discussions
Regular Users	Asked questions and occasionally provided answers

Unlike his LEGO role, which focused on co-creation and product development, Jake’s Apple work centered on peer-to-peer support – demonstrating how community strategies can be adapted to different business objectives. The multi-tiered approach he managed included approximately 200 volunteers who provided a substantial portion of support answers, supplemented by internal teams that validated responses and addressed more complex issues.

This structure illustrates a different but equally valuable community model for product managers to consider. While product development communities like those at Lego might involve smaller numbers of highly engaged participants, support communities scale to handle larger volumes of interactions with varying engagement levels.

Jake explained that the key to successful support communities lies in creating an ecosystem where:

Questions receive prompt, accurate answers
Super users feel valued and recognized for their contributions
Internal teams maintain quality control without stifling community participation
Knowledge flows efficiently between all participants

The Apple experience demonstrates how community-driven approaches can extend beyond product development into other aspects of the customer journey. Communities can support various organizational goals throughout the product lifecycle, from initial concept through ongoing support and retention.

The Four-Part Framework for Building Product Development Communities

Based on Jake’s experience with LEGO and subsequent work with other companies, he developed a four-part framework for community-driven product development. This practical approach can help product managers integrate customer voices throughout the development process.

Two Levels of Community

A community may consist of two different levels, and a particular product could be associated with either or both.

Customer voices for product development: a small community, perhaps 5 to 50 people, that works side-by-side with the product team
A space to maintain interest after product launch: hundreds or thousands of users who are passionate about the product and participate in activities or programs together

1. Finding the Right People

The first step is identifying community members whose voices will resonate with the broader customer base. When you announce that you developed a product with community input, other customers should react with: “I’m jealous they were involved, but I understand why they were chosen and believe they represented my interests.”

Selecting the right representatives builds credibility with your wider community and ensures the feedback you receive reflects diverse user needs.

2. Identifying the Right Timing

Community involvement should be strategically timed throughout your product development cycle. This could mean increasing the size of the community as you near completion, or you could stick with the same community throughout.

The timing and size of community involvement depends on several factors:

Project secrecy requirements
Technical complexity
Development timeline
Available resources

Some community members might participate throughout the entire process, while others join for specific stages. The key is designing intentional touchpoints rather than random engagement.

3. Defining the Right Outcomes

Before engaging your community, clearly define what you hope to achieve. Are you looking for:

Fresh ideas and perspectives?
Validation of existing concepts?
Identification of potential issues?
Specific feedback on particular features?
Testing in real-world scenarios?

Community engagement isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Your outcomes should align with specific business needs and development challenges.

4. Designing the Right Activities

The final component involves creating structured activities that are enjoyable and productive for all participants. This requires:

Formal program design (not ad-hoc interactions)
Consistent engagement (not disappearing for weeks)
Relationship-building opportunities
Meaningful contribution channels

Community-driven product development differs fundamentally from traditional research studies. Rather than one-off surveys, it builds ongoing relationships that allow for deeper insights, more honest feedback, and collaborative problem-solving.

The “Octopus Theory”: Eight Benefits of Community-Driven Development

Octopus theory: product communities create multiple business benefits

Jake described what he calls the “Octopus Theory” – the idea that effective community engagement delivers multiple benefits or “tentacles” simultaneously. When you bring passionate customers into your development process, you gain significant advantages including:

Great Feedback Leading to Better Product Decisions: Direct customer input improves feature prioritization and design choices
Deeper Relationships: Ongoing engagement creates comfort with giving and receiving challenging feedback
Real-Time Marketing Insights: Product marketers can observe what features generate excitement before launch
Built-In Launch Advocacy: Community participants become day-one advocates when products reach market
Team Motivation: External enthusiasm reinvigorates internal teams facing development fatigue

Jake shared a personal example of team motivation: When he shows a detailed scale model he’s built to family members, they express polite interest without truly understanding the achievement. But when he shows the same model to fellow scale modelers, their specific, knowledgeable enthusiasm is deeply motivating.

Product teams experience renewed energy when interacting with passionate customers who truly appreciate their work’s complexity and impact.

Product communities drive team motivation

Common Mistakes in Building Product Communities

Despite the clear benefits, many organizations struggle to build effective product communities. Jake identified several common pitfalls that product managers should avoid:

Transactional vs. Relational Mindsets

The most fundamental mistake is approaching community as a transaction rather than a relationship. Many companies view communities primarily as cost-saving mechanisms:

“If we have a community, users will support each other and we can hire fewer support professionals”
“If we have a community, they’ll do marketing for us and we can reduce our advertising budget”

While communities can deliver these benefits, starting with a transactional mindset undermines the relationship-building necessary for sustainable engagement. As Jake put it, his mantra for over 20 years has been “everybody goes home happy” – ensuring both the company and community members get value from the relationship.

Missing the Shared Purpose

Successful communities rally around purposes larger than either individual benefits or company goals. Without a compelling shared purpose, engagement feels hollow and manipulative.

At LEGO, Jake faced initial skepticism from adult fans who assumed he “just wanted to sell them things” or get them to “work for free.” His solution was to start by asking what they needed from the company and delivering on those needs first. Only after establishing trust did he request their help with company priorities.

The LEGO community’s purpose is to drive the idea that “LEGO is as a creative medium.” Jake’s responsibility is to fulfill this purpose by making and selling amazing products. LEGO sales support the community’s shared purpose and create value for both the company and customers.

Selecting the Wrong Community Managers

Not everyone is equipped to build effective customer communities. While you might assume extroverts make the best community managers, Jake noted that many successful community professionals (including himself) are actually introverts who have learned to play extroverted roles.

What matters most is:

Genuine passion for both the product and the community
Understanding of social dynamics
Commitment to relationship building
Ability to serve as an effective “party host”

Lacking Executive Champions

Community initiatives often stall without senior-level support. Jake emphasized the need for executive champions who understand the long-term value of community engagement and can provide necessary resources and political backing.

Conclusion

Building passionate product communities has evolved from a nice-to-have into a genuine competitive advantage. The transformation at LEGO demonstrates how powerful this approach can be – taking the company from near-bankruptcy to industry leadership by reimagining its relationship with customers. What began as a small initiative to engage adult fans eventually reshaped the entire business model and product philosophy.

For product managers looking to drive sustainable growth, the community-driven approach offers a pathway to deeper customer insights, more effective advocacy, and products people don’t just use but truly love. By applying the frameworks and principles Jake outlined, product managers can harness the transformative power of passionate community engagement – turning their most enthusiastic users into partners in innovation and growth.

Useful Links

Visit Jake’s website
Listen to episode 391: Product VP of Wyze uses community for product innovation and you can too – with Steve McIrvin

Innovation Quote

“Somewhere someone is practicing and when you meet them they will beat you.” – Michael Jordan

Application Questions

Community Assessment: How could you identify the passionate users in your current customer base who might form the foundation of a product community? What signals or behaviors would indicate they’re potential community contributors rather than just satisfied customers?
Relational Approach: How could your team shift from transactional interactions with customers to building more relational connections? What specific activities or touchpoints could you redesign to emphasize relationship-building rather than just extracting value?
Community-Driven Innovation: Where in your current product development process could you integrate community voices? Which stages would benefit most from external perspectives, and how might you structure these engagements to get meaningful feedback while protecting confidential information?
Shared Purpose Development: What larger purpose could unite your company and customers beyond the product itself? How could you articulate this shared purpose in a way that resonates with both internal teams and external community members?
Executive Alignment: How could you build support for community initiatives among your leadership team? What metrics or success stories would demonstrate the value of community engagement to executives who might be skeptical about the return on investment?

Bio

Hi! I’m Jake McKee, the original Community Guy. Going all the way back to 1996, I’ve played an instrumental role in building online communities for some of the world’s most successful and recognizable brands, including LEGO, Apple, Southwest Airlines, Canon, and H&R Block.

I consult with organizations of all sizes to help solve community and business challenges of all kinds. I’ve co-authored books on social media and community strategy, and spoken to and run workshops for audiences of business professionals countless times. I created CX 5essions, a community project that connects senior-level online professionals every month for conversation, connection, and camaraderie. As if that’s not enough community nerdery, I also created a web comic about community management, Confessions of a Community Manager.

Thanks!

Thank you for taking the journey to product mastery and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.

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537: Step-by-step community engagement for your product – with Jake McKee

Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators

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published 1d ago