Marketers have asked the perennial question: What makes customers happy? Cult Brands have already cracked the code. By definition, Cult Brands sell lifestyles and provide opportunities for their brand lovers to make experiential purchases. When youâre buying a Harley, youâre not only purchasing a material good, youâre also buying into...
Cult Brands Are inclusive and actively make customers feel welcomed In Alexander the Greatâs conquest of Persia, the Macedonian King upset his military compatriots and childhood friends by marrying Roxana. Roxana was the daughter of a minor Persian baron. That is, she was not from Macedonia; she...
What are fairy tales? Simple stories to keep children entertained in the nursery, perhapsâtales of giants and princesses spun out of simple fancy and wayward whimsy? Perhaps, they're something more. Fairy tales are some of the oldest stories in existence. These are tales that have been...
What do you know? It turns out you can buy happiness. Okay, I might be overstating the caseâbut only a little. Nearly a decade ago, researchers Scott Rick, Beatriz Pereira, and Katherine Burson found that retail therapyâgoing shopping specifically to lift the mood, a behavior typically...
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.Mark Twain[1. Gay McLaren, Morally We Roll Along, 1938.] Growing your brand can be challenging, but we don't experience...
"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy," John Updike once said, and it was with this in mind that I took in an old debate between journalist Johnathan Kay and conspiracy theorist Webster Tarpley on the 9/11 attacks. I'm not particularly interested in the...
What makes art art? Why is art so important to humanity? These are big questions and not ones that come up often in the context of connecting more effectively with your customers. That's a shame. Understanding what art is and why recorded imagery has such a...
Marketing used to be fairly straightforward: Throw money at advertising in order to influence people to buy your products and services. If your advertising campaign was decent, the resulting sales outweighed the cost of advertising. If your campaign was excellent, your business grew like a...
In our book Customers First, we looked at some of the world's biggest brandsâcompanies like Apple and Nikeâto discover how they connect so effectively with their customers. To build powerful, profitable connections, it helps to understand that customer behavior is driven largely by a combination...
Harley-Davidson, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Apple logos have been permanently etched into the skins of customers worldwide. Why do they do it? Why do these raving fans, or what we call Brand Lovers, scorch their bodies with a companyâs mark? And what can marketers and brand managers...