Cult Brands
Maslow's postulated that we humans have an ascending order of needs and used a hierarchal pyramid to prioritize them. At the bottom levels of the pyramid are our physiological needs, which include basic things like food, shelter, and clothing that we all need to survive. At progressively higher levels in Maslow's Hierarchy are the needs for safety and security, social interaction, and self-esteem. At the very top is self-actualization, a term Maslow coined to describe the ultimate human need to learn, grow, and reach one's full potential as a person.
We all desire on some level to self-actualize, both to be at peace with ourselves and to try to be the best we can be. As humans, we are drawn to people, places, groups, causes, companies, and, ultimately, brands that we believe can help us towards our ultimate goal of self-actualization and total fulfillment.
Higher level needs influence future human behavior much greater than lower level needs. It is the brands that can fulfill human needs on the higher levels of the hierarchy that become irreplaceable in the mind of the consumer.
Brands sometimes like to think of themselves as religions. These are called cult brands (Holt) and organize their community of clients as a congregation, with a holy land or place, churches, rituals, etc. It has to be said that few of these brands actually evoke religious fervor in their subscribers.
That's what customer loyalty is really all about. Being irreplaceable.
True customer loyalty is not only about getting a customer to consistently choose your brand over another. It's for that same customer to always believe (and then go tell the world) that your company's brand has no equal!
This is when the customers form a cult. You need not look much farther than a Harley-Davidson rally, a Star Trek convention, or a Jimmy Buffett concert to see the cult branding phenomenon at work: thousands of passionate, faithful fans spreading the good word and spending lots of money.
Not all brands have the dash of edginess, the devoted fan base, or the niche positioning to be cult brands. But those that do tend to share similar characteristics that make them successful.
Douglas Atkins' definition of "cult brand":
"A brand for which a group of customers exhibit a great devotion or dedication. Its ideology is distinctive and it has a well-defined and committed community. It enjoys exclusive devotion (that is, not shared with another brand in the same category) and its members often become voluntary advocates.
While watching this film, one issue in particular raised was that of cult marketing which is called, Pseudo-Spiritual Marketing which focuses on making consumers feel as if they belong to something bigger than themselves. Companies often attempt to instill within their consumers a certain form of loyalty to their specific brand which persuades a consumer to purchase only their brand despite the quality or price of the product instead of purchasing that of their
People require brands to experience the feeling of being special. People spend their money to have something from famous brands, like a bag from Coach or Louis Vuitton which they think they need, yet all that is just
Everyone is in a consumer’s hypnosis, even if you think you are not. When you go to a store and pick one brand over the other, you are now under their spell. The spell/ hypnosis is how companies get you to buy there things over other companies and keep you hooked. Either through commercials or offering something that you think will make your life better by what they tell you. For example, you go to the store and you need to buy water, once you get to the lane and look, there is 10 different types of water you can buy. You go pick one either because the picture is better or you seen the commercial the other day and you want it. During the length of this paper we will talk about two important writers, Kalle Lasn the writer of “The Cult You’re in” and Benoit Denizet-Lewis writer of “ The Man Behind Abercrombie & Fitch”. They both talk about similar topics that go hand and hand with each other, they talk about the consumers “Dream”, how companies recruit the consumers, who cult members really are, how people are forced to wear something they don’t want, and about slackers.
A customer’s response falls in two categories, judgment and feelings. Consumers are constantly making judgments about a brand. These judgments fall into four categories: quality, credibility, consideration, and superiority (Keller, 2001). Customers judge a brand based on its actual and perceived quality, and customers judge credibility using the perception of the company’s expertise, trustworthiness, and likability. To what extent is the brand seen as “competent, innovative, and a market leader,” “dependable and sensitive to the interest of customers,” and “fun, interesting, and worth spending time with” (Keller,
Branding is something that will never go away as long as there are things to sell. If branding didn’t exist and people bought products on impulse, companies would find it difficult to sell their products and services. The loyalty that branding produces makes it easier and more efficient for companies to survive. Branding is essential to companies because of the way society operates, through association of ideals to products. As long as companies continue to intensify their image and relate to desirable conditions, people will continue to buy their products and services, and businesses will continue to strive.
Abraham Maslow did studies of the basic needs of human beings. He put these needs into a hierarchical order. This means that until the need before it has been satisfied, the following need can not be met (Encyclopedia, 2000). For example, if someone is hungry they are not thinking too much about socializing. In the order from lowest to highest the needs are psychological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization. The first three are classified as lower order needs and the last two are higher order (Hierarchy, 2000). Without meeting these needs workers are not going to be as productive as they could otherwise. The first three are considered to be essential to all humans at all times. The last two have been argued but are mostly considered to be very important as well.
A company’s brand is one of its most valuable assets (Green and Smith 2002). Brands owners invest millions of dollars every year in advertising and promotion to raise awareness and create demand for their brands.
The source of the brand features is in a connection between customers and companies that sell services or products. Consumers who choose a specific company fundamentally acknowledge to prefer that brand more than other brands rooted from the recognition of the brand’s worth.
According to Heath and Heath (2008), consumers seem to have a mistrust of marketing resulting in a disconnection between the agenda of brand managers and consumer interests. This mistrust lies with the consumer view that marketers are pushing for “excessive consumption” rather than really understanding attitudes and perceptions that lead to satisfying the needs and wants of consumers (Heath & Heath, 2008). Today, consumers are opposed to push strategies, and prefer making decisions about brands more independently. Hipperson (2010) has found that companies may have to “change from delivering push communications to creating pull interactions” (p. 263). This reflects the importance of listening to what consumers are demanding and then implementing strategies that will satisfy this ...
[a] company may have a unique vision, a superior product, strong management and an efficient distribution system – yet if it is not able to convey the core benefits of the brand to its target audience it will ultimately fail. [5]
in this segment are often brand conscious and enjoy the latest fads and trends. They...
Early on in the twentieth century, when mass marketing and production became commonplace, company branding allowed consumers to identify with a company. The consumer made a one sided personal relationship
From the study it is clear that people often purchase branded products since they are aware of the brand performance or perhaps they have a good past experience about the brands. This makes customer’s become loyal with the specific brand.
Even with commodities, there are quite a few parameters which brands can use to position themselves to capture a place in the consumer’s memory and consequently in their shopping basket. A few of the more widely accepted of them are: Consistency of Product Quality, Customization of the product to the extent possible, Providing a wider range of products, Identifying the most profit generating segments of the market and modifying or adding an offering to cater to their specific needs, Unique packaging, Emotional Branding and even basing branding on building a unique image to the extent of professing to have a brand personality. In fact focusing on getting consumers to build an emotional identification with the brand and its personality has a far longer lasting effect and builds far greater loyalty than focusing on just functional and utility attributes which a competitor would also able to easily match if not surpass.