A brand community is a community of brand lovers bound together by a common string that is the love for a brand. It is a specialized community and bereft of any geographical boundaries. At the center of a brand community is a brand or a product, and like other communities, brand communities are also bound by shared consciousness. With the advent of network computers, many online communities have today come to the fore. The communication patterns of these communities are different from those found in face-to-face communication among individuals. The paper takes the example of one such online community, an online fan club of the Indian Railways and their efforts to portray the brand from a new perspective. Looking through the lens of the triangular theory of love (Sternberg, 1986) and the analogy of consumer-brand love (Shimp and Madden, 1988), we look at the love for a brand which has little or no competition. Going through the official website of the online community as well as other Internet sources, we also look at the shared feelings for the brand among the members of the community and how these feelings drive the brand community.

Vrooom…there goes a Harley Davidson… followed by 10 more such bikes….

Grrrrrr...a Jeep Cherokee swirls past the highway with four more in tow….

Hmmmm…there goes the vinyl record with such melodious tunes….

There is a common thread which runs across all of the above. They are all examples of brand communities formed by people who just cannot stop loving their brands. The love for a brand can get to such extreme where a consumer starts to connect to another consumer in love with the brand. Hence, brand communities form where the members share similar passion and intimacy with the brand and stay connected to each other. The brand communities are like a mesh where the consumers take the onus to enrich the brand and add a certain value that even the marketers cannot offer. With the formation of such closed groups, the task for the marketers gets increased twofold:

• To keep the consumer base intact and sustain their interest; and
• To find newer offerings of the brand

Brand Management Journal, Brand Communities, Indian Railways Fan Club Association (IRFCA), The Triangular, Decision, Commitment, Theory of Love, Emerging Marketing Tool.