Super fans are eager to par­tic­i­pate in brand­ed expe­ri­ences, but they have to be rel­e­vant, authen­tic, and empow­er­ing. If the brand fails at any point, super fans will glad­ly air their griev­ances and it’s up to brands to learn by being savvy lis­ten­ers, digest­ing this crit­i­cism, and adjust­ing the expe­ri­ences accord­ing­ly.

With 15.7 mil­lion view­ers of its Sea­son 4 finale in March, as well as 30.4 mil­lion Face­book fans and 2.7 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers, AMC’s “The Walk­ing Dead” is one of the most pop­u­lar shows on tele­vi­sion – and, as a result, it has a pre­dictably pas­sion­ate fan base.

These are fans eager for relat­ed con­tent, but they have exact­ing stan­dards. And that means the brand and its part­ners have both huge oppor­tu­ni­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Accord­ing to Greg Braun, exec­u­tive cre­ative direc­tor of adver­tis­ing agency Inno­cean, super fans are actu­al­ly super mar­keters.

“It’s some­one that is inher­ent­ly not sat­is­fied with being a wit­ness, but wants to par­tic­i­pate,” Braun said dur­ing a recent Adver­tis­ing Week pan­el. “We as mar­keters have to give them oppor­tu­ni­ties. We can’t just inter­rupt – it has to be relevant…and the last thing is authen­tic­i­ty. If we’re not authen­tic to that prop­er­ty, they’ll tear a brand apart.”

To that end, Braun worked with Hyundai to cre­ate the Walk­ing Dead Chop Shop, an effort that gives “Walk­ing Dead” fans the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate their own zom­bie sur­vival machine through an app and web­site. Fans start by choos­ing a Hyundai mod­el – such as those fea­tured in the show – and add armor, sur­vival acces­sories, and designs from a range of options, includ­ing near­ly 300 dif­fer­ent car parts, accord­ing to a press release when the effort was announced in August 2013. Fans are then able to share their cre­ations, get sur­vival scores and test the vehi­cles in sce­nar­ios inspired by the orig­i­nal “Walk­ing Dead” com­ic books.

Accord­ing to Braun, the key to build­ing the cam­paign was look­ing for ways to empow­er fans, or what he calls “savvy lis­ten­ing,” not­ing, “It’s not always what you want to hear.”

Case in point: The Chop Shop, which start­ed out as what Braun called a prod­uct place­ment and expand­ed to include a 1:1 scale zom­bie sur­vival machine for Com­ic Con, was loved by gen­er­al “Walk­ing Dead” fans, but not hard­core fans.

“They were very spe­cif­ic – ‘There’s not enough ground clear­ance to get over skulls,’” Braun said. “Or they said, ‘The low pro­file tires are going to slip on the guts.’ We lis­tened and regrouped and said, ‘If you can do bet­ter, let’s see it,’ and we gave them the tools to do that.”

Since then, the Chop Shop has since yield­ed 296,000 zom­bie sur­vival machines.

But, Braun said, the brand and its agency part­ners con­tin­ued to lis­ten. Hyundai ini­tial­ly pro­vid­ed fea­tures like flame throw­ers, machine guns, and saw blades, but when those most pas­sion­ate fans asked about smoke screens, the brand deliv­ered, empow­er­ing those con­sumers with more crowd­sourced parts.

“It’s about respect­ing the audi­ence and lis­ten­ing,” Braun said. “The lis­ten­ing nev­er stopped.”

Hyundai even sold a few of the machines as a result – although not, Braun not­ed, mod­els with machine guns.

“We knew we had to be authen­tic,” Braun says. “We part­nered with [‘Walk­ing Dead’ cre­ator] Robert Kirk­man and his com­pa­ny, which is always very dili­gent about being authen­tic to this prop­er­ty.”

Are you lis­ten­ing to your super fans? What have you learned from your audi­ence? Share your insights with us in the com­ments.