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Brands are having trouble gaining customer commitment.
Bombarded with a cascade of products that have few real differences,
people need some other criteria to determine what they should buy.
Moreover, consumers are so media literate, blasted as they have been
with too much advertising, that they have learned how to edit what
they don’t want, to find the little that they do. The result
is that they often bypass marketers’ efforts altogether and
go to friends and family for recommendations on what to purchase.
Amazingly, faced with this threat, the marketing world is still doing
the same thing over and over desperate to improve a their brands’ lackluster
performance. It’s in denial as it churns out yet more “Yell
and Sell,” and is blind to the obvious fact that consumers
are becoming immune to the old ways.
Other organizations are not having trouble.
Brands are finding it more and more difficult to find committed users.
Other organizations are not. So why not consult those groups that
don’t have a problem and apply the lessons learned to those
that do?
The Marine Corps generate an enviously strong brotherhood that extends
well beyond the time served (“There’s no such thing as
an ex-Marine, just an old Marine,” as I was once corrected
by one of the latter). Grateful Dead fans recognize each other in
business meetings by secret signs and think wistfully of the tours
they followed in their youth. And fraternity members never, ever
divulge their initiation rites and look favorably on job candidates
who come from the same house. How do these organizations do it? How
do they create such strong, life-changing commitment?
I resolved to find out eight years ago on a rainy night in New York
City, as I watched eight enthusiastic sneaker wearers at a focus
group express the kind of intense conviction I had only imagined
possible at a revivalist meeting or cult gathering. Their language
verged on evangelical; their passion was on the brink of zealotry.
What I saw was ironic considering that I had just left a meeting
of anxious marketers who had been fretting that brand loyalty was
dead. Those handwringers clearly hadn’t met the consumers I
was watching in that research room.
Where did that kind of cult-like devotion come from, I wondered?
How can anyone venerate something so banal…a piece of footwear?
Perhaps, I hypothesized, I could find insight by looking at the ultimate
expression of commitment, the kind found in cults. If these people
had cult-like devotion, then why not look at the original, cult-devotion?
How do these organizations generate such famously intense attachment?
And by extension, how do the few brand cults that exist elicit such
similarly strong commitment? Are the dynamics of attraction the same
whether the object of someone’s devotion is a cult or a brand?
And if so, are the insights transferable?
I began to research organizations that appeared to breed cult-like
devotion. In the years that followed I met members of cults both
famous and furtive; I met CEOs of companies and the brand addicts
they had nurtured; I met with soldiers, Trekkies, fans, and cult
deprogrammers. A Mac user told me that “PC users must be saved” and
a young cult member insisted that his religion is a “brand.”
Brand and Cult devotees are not that different.
The hypothesis that I started with was that devotion is blind to
its object. The things that make people committed to a brand are
likely to be similar to those of a religion. The only difference
I could foresee was the degree of passion expressed for each.
This hypothesis was proven correct during the course of listening
to hundreds of interviewees. What also became clear was that I had
to discard any prejudice I had about cult members, or of cult brand
members, for that matter.
They’re not strange; they’re just like you
and me.
The people who join cults are most likely to be like you. The popular
image of cult members is that they are psychologically flawed individuals,
gullible and desperate. While some do conform to this image, the
majority do not. Demographically they tend to be from stable and
financially comfortable homes and are above average in intelligence
and education. They are, in fact, a desirable target audience.
A moment’s thought will suggest that successful cults (the
ones we will study) cannot be populated by the socially inept and
emotionally disturbed anyway. To grow their membership, devotees
will have to be attractive enough and have the social wherewithal
to proselytize. People in significant numbers are not going to join
an organization populated by social failures. They will be drawn
to a religion such as the Latter Day Saints, and a brand such as
jetBlue through word of mouth. That mouth has to belong to someone
whom potential recruits will trust and respect.
Suspend your prejudice about cult brands, too. They are not necessarily
small, niche, and populated by consumers unrepresentative of the
larger market. The focus of this book will be on large or leading
cult brands such as Harley, Saturn, JetBlue, and Ebay. Yes, you can
have a large cult brand. Yes, they can be populated by ‘normal’ consumers;
no, they need no consist of just leading-edgers.
The real point, however, became clearer the more research I did.
The same dynamics were at play behind the attraction to brands as
the attraction to cults, and even religions. They may have varied
in degree (although not always), but not in type. When you consider
it for a moment, this is not surprising. When research subjects explained
their reasons for joining and committing, they described profound
urges to belong, make meaning, feel secure, have order within chaos,
and create identity. This is the stuff of the human condition. When
you are dealing with attraction and the act of buying into something
you tend to be dealing in universal constants. Any interview, whether
with a Mormon, a Krishna follower, a Harley rider, or a Marine, surfaced
these essential human needs. The sacred and profane are bound by
the essential desires of human nature, which seeks satisfaction wherever
it can.
What this book is about.
This book is not just an exercise in examining the techniques that
can be employed to generate extreme loyalty. It is also about the
cult and cult brand members’ motivations, desires and attitudes
that allow those techniques to work in the first place. Why do cult
members sacrifice money, time, sometimes their jobs and the respect
of their peers, even their family to devote themselves to a castigated
organization? In the same vein, what makes someone unreasonably committed
to a brand?
A person I interviewed spent his Saturdays at a computer store barging
into sales assistants’ pitches for PCs to sell the buyers Apple
instead (he did not work for the store.) Why does he do this? It’s
clearly not just because of the product features. There is something
else there that is driving such devotion (another I interviewed would
dust off the Macs, switch them on and move the PC models to the back
of the shelf).
There have been plenty of books about the service programs and product
features that can generate loyalty to a brand. But there have been
few about the emotional and psychological dynamics of attraction
and commitment. Why do people want to join a brand community? What
is the most effective first contact, and why? Without understanding
the ‘why’, the ‘what’ will be harder to apply,
and so we will study both.
This book examines universal needs (to belong, to make meaning to
create identity) satisfied by a large range of groups, and it analyzes
the timeless techniques applied over centuries to satisfy those needs.
I continue to interview what seems like an infinite rank of candidates
for insight into unreasonable attachment. Every time I mentioned
this study to anyone they would suggest another source, another cult
or cult brand that I simply must examine. However, within the first
year or so (I started this exercise in 1997) it became clear that
the insights I was uncovering were common across all belonging phenomena,
whether followers of Phish or members of ‘The Fellowship of
Friends’ (a controversial cult based in California). After
all, they deal with the stuff of the human condition. They are infinitely
relevant and eternally applicable.
Some of the heresy in this book.
Conventional wisdoms dominate our business and daily existence. Taking
a cue from this book’s main subject—cults and cult-like
organizations—it will challenge many of those norms. And your
organization should, too. Most of the successful businesses and cultural
organizations have at some time offended the establishment…a
habit of heretics. Here are some of the ideas that will offend the
accepted wisdoms of the establishment:
You can’t please everyone. An organization that pursues commitment
cannot dilute its relevance in the attempt to appeal to all. It has
to declare its difference from the norm to those potential “congregants” who
also feel different from the norm. However, this does not necessarily
mean that you will condemn your organization to minority status,
as you will see.
Business is ignoring one of the most fundamental consumer needs.
Managers flatter themselves that they have found the Holy Grail of
commerce: being customer focused. Hundreds of millions have been
spent on research to find ‘the killer consumer insight’.
But the marketing industry has been blind to a need that is so essential
it is second only to the compulsion for food and shelter: the desire
to belong. To ignore this basic need is to overlook a major source
of business.
‘Community Marketing’ is going to be the next big
thing. The
smartest marketers have realized that it is possible for communities
to be formed around brands. Sometimes consumers are doing it anyway
even when brand managers are not bothering to help them. This is
a whole new way to sell things that is beyond both mass marketing
or narrowcast, ‘one-to-one’, strategies.
Get over ‘Command/Control Marketing. For the past fifty years
this has been the model. We’ve had ‘campaigns’,
we’ve attacked competition’, ‘penetrated markets’ and ‘targeted’ consumers.
It’s over. We can no longer imitate the military in our attempt
to sell stuff. Community marketing (of which cults are the most extreme)
requires different, subtler skills. It needs the ability to ‘support’, ‘nurture’,
and ‘listen’ to the group that is participating in your
brand.
You are a priest, not a brand manager. You are in the business of
building committed congregations. You must help create a sense of
community around a unifying set of values and worldview. Don’t
just figure out the next revolutionary product innovation (although
it’s crucial). Determine what your brand means to your congregation
and build solidarity around it.
Be deviant, but not repellent. Deviancy is good because difference
from the norm is a non-negotiable requirement of a cult-like organization.
Cults and cult brands will always offend the norm. But people will
not come to you in large numbers if your organization is so strange
that it repels. Find some point of familiarity that enables a connection
yet maintains a clear sense of separation from the rest.
Sorry, but brainwashing and exploitation are not options. Cult devotion
may be fierce but it is not blind. The cults and cult brands that
have catastrophically failed are those that have attempted to coast
on unalloyed worship. Your “congregation” will expect
as much, if not more commitment from you as they give to your organization.
By the way, ‘mind control’ is a mythological practice,
impossible to perform. For those of you reading this book hoping
to learn the skill, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
People join cults not to conform, but to become more individual. This is the great ‘Belonging Paradox’ and is most apparent,
and perhaps most surprising, when manifested in cults. This is not
really a heresy but a finding that is counterintuitive to most people
familiar with images of mass weddings and suicides. But it is the
essential dynamic at the heart of cult-like devotion and must be
understood in order to create strong commitment. |
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