The Big Brother reality TV series has captured the interest of a huge audience worldwide. But to increase interest and engagement in the TV shows, the programme producers have initiated or nurtured numerous other channels online and offline – websites, chat rooms, SMS news bulletins, newspapers and so on –through which customers can feed their interest around the clock. In the process, the producers actively support the creation of a community: customers share news and views, increase their engagement with the Big Brother series, and generate new ideas that help to shape its future. And as their commitment grows, they become prepared to spend more to access new streams of Big Brother information.

This paper uses a recent Swedish series of Big Brother as a case study to argue that by effectively directing customers’ attention, businesses of many kinds can use a variety of relevant channels to organise customer communities that sustain and develop interest in the underlying product or service which is the focus of the community. The authors provide a number of pointers to help firms identify the opportunities open to them, and to organise a ‘consumption hierarchy’ of products and communication channels to cater for different levels of customer knowledge and commitment. The ultimate aim is to present customers with new opportunities to expand their interest in the product or service – and increase their spending on it in the process.

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