In 1981, Garrison Keillor, the popular host of Minnesota Public Radio’s satirical “A Prairie Home Companion,” offered listeners a free poster of his mythical sponsor’s “Powdermilk Biscuits.” To everyone’s surprise, more than 50,000 requests poured in; the station faced a $60,000 printing bill. To avert “financial disaster,” as MPR president William Kling later recalled, the station used the back of the poster to advertise products for sale, such as a Powdermilk Biscuits T-shirt. The idea worked. “I think we netted off that poster, which was really our first catalog, $15,000 or $20,000,” Kling said. “It instantly became clear that there were things like that you could do.”1
"As a business it's tempting to think of a 'tribe' as a 'customer base.' That's wrong. People aren't part of a tribe simply because they buy a product or service. What qualifies them as a tribe are their connections. Tribes of customers are connected to an idea, each other, products, services, employees, etc.-creating a network of connections to the business as a whole."
