Your greatest asset is your relationship with your customers. If you erode it, you’ll play a Sisyphean game of trying to gain sales from new buyers faster than your customers leave you.
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Cult Branding was founded on Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. Maslow’s hierarchy offers a simple framework for understanding customer behavior: humans have inherent needs that they try to fulfill—consciously or unconsciously—in everything they do.
Although Maslow’s hierarchy offers significant explanatory power, it does not provide a complete explanation of brand loyalty. A more complete explanation involves taking a step back from Maslow and understanding how humans react when something happens to them.
Every marketing company claims to have “the answer.” But, solutions to marketing problems aren’t simple 2+2=4 answers.
Solutions to marketing problems are like learning acting: Sanford Meisner, one of the greatest acting teachers of the 20th century, would sometimes expel students from his class, not because they were bad actors and didn’t have a chance in the field, but because he knew he wasn’t the right teacher for them.
What makes a theatre production great is what makes a brand great. This shouldn’t be surprising: strong brands are expressions of a core idea that their customers love; and, great shows make us fall in love with language, a character, a relationship, an idea, or pure visual beauty—something that cuts to the core of what the show is really about.
If we want to know what a business is, we have to start with its purpose. And the purpose must lie outside the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society, since a business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management
At some point in the past, you developed a marketing strategy to create customers and your marketing tactics worked well and they became a standard practice. The purpose of business hasn’t changed since then, but the environment has.
By: Greg Breeding – President & Creative Director at Journey Group.
I’ve served as an art director for the U.S. Postal Service for seven years. It’s a curious and delightful job and one that has brought me a great deal of creative fulfillment throughout my tenure. The process is quite fascinating, involving not only folks from the Postal Service but also American citizens who’ve been selected to help decide appropriate stamp subjects. Yet, as an art director, one of the most rewarding aspects of my work is developing relationships with the artists themselves.
The stamps I art direct — such as Johnny Cash or Batman — are typically assigned to me, but every now and then, I get to pitch my own ideas. There’s an open call to propose topics for ongoing series of stamps, such as those that feature the American flag or celebrate holidays or love. While there’s no shortage of creative ideas floating around my work/life atmosphere, as a designer and as president at Journey Group, it’s knowing when to capture the right idea that’s key — and then where to find the perfect collaborator.
Part I: Art directing and designing a stamp
The Love series started in 1973 with a stamp by pop artist Robert Indiana, and stamps from the series remain a favorite choice for those mailing valentines, wedding invitations or love letters. As an art director, Love stamps present an engaging creative challenge. You want to pitch something fresh and new, but the subject also needs to appeal to a broad audience — and reference the soaring emotion of love without being too saccharine or melodramatic.
As I was pondering ideas I had banked away, my colleague, Mike Ryan, creative director at Journey Group, campaigned to have Anna Bond design a stamp.
Anna Bond, for those who may not recognize her name, is the creative genius behind the wildly successful Rifle Paper Co. I first met Anna about 10 years ago when she was just beginning her design career and have kept up a long-distance friendship with her since then.
“Since I was little, it’s been my dream to design a stamp. I’ve always said that’s one of my top-five career goals.” — Anna Bond, Rifle Paper Co.
I, along with the rest of the world, love her vintage-inspired illustrations and aesthetic sensibilities. Upon hearing Mike’s suggestion, I knew she’d be the perfect illustrator for a Love stamp, and I had a hunch she would be up for the challenge. In 2015, Journey Group interviewed Anna for a feature story for the Postal Service website Beyond the Perf.
When Anna was 8 years old, she was given her grandfather’s stamp collection in a binder.
“I didn’t realize it, but looking back, it’s obvious that I was drawn to the graphic design of stamps,” she said. “Since I was little, it’s been my dream to design a stamp. I’ve always said that’s one of my top-five career goals.”
With the help of the team at Journey Group, I was excited to help make that dream come true.
The work
I struck up a conversation with Anna at a stamp show in New York, and we met for coffee to brainstorm about the future stamp. She was immediately on board, and I was delighted about the collaboration that was taking shape.
A floral design felt like both the obvious and right choice for this stamp, based on the series and on Anna’s aesthetic. I am also a sucker for hand-lettering, and I have always loved Anna’s loose, cheerful script on her stationery. We agreed that the design should be in the middle of the plate, with the word “Love” written in her script and surrounded by her signature flowers.
Anna began to work her magic, and in short order, we had two leading designs, one version on a dark green background and one on a white background. The stamp with the white background was ultimately chosen as the final design.
The result
The Love Flourishes stamp, which released on January 18, promises to be a thrilling success.
Anna and I were present for the First Day of Issue ceremony in Love, Arizona, and I was delighted to receive affirmation that Anna was the right choice. The audience was composed of many stamp collectors, as well as many fans of Anna’s work.
Part II: Translating stamp art
We were thrilled with the final stamp, and we were equally excited to extend the stamp’s success to another product that we work on at Journey Group: the Postal Service magazine USA Philatelic. For the spring 2018 issue, we knew that the Love Flourishes stamp would make a gorgeous and eye-catching cover.
Journey Group’s art director Ashley Walton and production designer Brittany Fan were enlisted to translate the stamp art to the magazine. Inspired by the stamp artwork, Ashley wanted to make the two-dimensional design come alive by using actual flowers and paper cut-outs for the cover.
With this concept in mind, Ashley and Brittany trekked to Washington, DC, to hunt for flowers at wholesale markets. A particular challenge was finding flowers with the right color, texture and feeling that would evoke Anna’s illustration — without knowing the exact names of the seemingly countless floral varieties.
Arriving with their arms full of flowers, Ashley and Brittany worked with photographer Len Rizzi to prepare the shoot in his studio, including laying out the design with hand-cut paper shapes and type, styling the flowers and mounting them in foam core, and managing consistent shadows, despite the differing depths of the material.
The team wanted to conjure up a cover that was soft, romantic and delicate and yet would stand up well next to Anna’s original artwork.
From start to finish, we were delighted with how the partnership with Anna Bond played out. As a person who works intimately with stamps, it was a pleasure to work with someone who still loves using stamps and sending mail through the post.
“It’s so special to receive a letter in the mail these days,” Anna said. “I’m used to getting mail that I don’t want to open, so I think a letter automatically makes you feel good because you know someone put effort into it. It shows they care.”
Anna’s effort and care with this design emphasizes the key to any successful creative collaboration. As an art director, what I’ve learned is that you give someone like Anna basic parameters and boundaries, and then you let her go. That’s when it goes well. The hardest and best thing I do as an art director is select the right artist. If I do that, the work flows beautifully. Choosing Anna for this project was the right call for the right time, and I loved helping her work find its way onto a stamp.
About the Author of this Post:
For Greg Breeding, strong communication—visual or spoken—is always about clarity. A graphic designer at heart and by trade, Greg’s decidedly Swiss perspective is shaped by years designing magazines, art-directing postage stamps for the U.S. Postal Service and taking an annual pilgrimage to (where else?) Switzerland to study the craft. Since co-founding Journey Group in 1992, he’s brought strong design thinking to many client relationships, building rapport through genuine interest, well-told stories and a subtle Southern drawl.
By: Tyler Williams – Lead Link of the Brand Aura Circle, Zappos
Here is our mindset shift at Zappos. One of our insights is that our current customers are incredibly loyal and love us. Similar to how my mother loves JC Penney and literally asks for a JC Penney gift card for every birthday, anniversary, Christmas, etc.
I remember my mom got really disappointed when JC Penney tried to revamp their stores and branding to appeal to a younger demographic. This backfired on them in two ways. One the younger generation was not impressed, and would rather be caught dead than shopping in one, and it alienated their hyper-loyal, an aging customer.
So how does a brand stand the test of time?
Is it by taking your marketing dollars and trying to appeal to the up and coming consumer, and continually making that evolution? Is it clever ad campaigns, social content, environmental or social responsibility, new value props? While those things can help prolong your companies life, I don’t believe its what will make your brand be around 1000 years later.
Since I’ve been leading our Brand Aura here, I’ve been racking my brain on how we can penetrate authentically into these markets. Sports, Esports, Streetwear, Fandom/Nerd Culture, etc. The list of opportunities is endless, and as our customer base ages, but continues to love us, do we walk away from them and cater to these other markets? Then I started imagining how I would see JC Penney coming into these markets, and it wasn’t a pretty thought. So how can we do it?
As a Zapponian it’s been drilled into my very soul that we are Customer Service first!! In fact, we call ourselves a Service company that just happens to sell (fill in the blank). Once I completely put myself in the Customer Service Mindset, it became evident. The purest service is to be in service to others.
So I believe the secret to an aging brand (we are the old farts in the e-commerce space) is to step behind others and make them the hero.
About the Author of this Post:
Tyler Williams is the Lead Link of the Brand Aura Circle; a circle that specializes in creating Zappos’ unique and quirky persona via events, campaigns and experiences nationwide. Tyler is also the long-time company Fungineer, responsible for such popular internal events as “Boots and Shorts Thursdays” and “Tutu Tuesdays.”
Nobody buys anything for the sake of having it.
Purchases always solve problems. And, problems are always driven by deeper needs. In between the problems and the deeper needs are tensions. These tensions are value-driven: in other words, they are driven by wanting the world to be one way and not another.
Each value has two poles: a positive and a negative (e.g., clean/dirty, love/hate, freedom/suppression, etc.).1 It is the battle between these two poles—because moving towards the negative is always a possibility—that creates tension in customers’ lives. It’s these tensions that companies should seek to solve.
A company’s goal should be to create offerings that move the customer closer to the positive end of the value spectrum. By doing so, the customer associates positive movement in their lives with the brand.
Different companies can solve similar problems in people’s lives. It’s the way in which they uniquely reduce the tension that differentiates one brand from another.
Consistently giving customers tools to overcome tensions reinforces behaviors. Reinforcing behaviors is what makes customers develop a relationship with a brand and makes them likely to consider that brand first when making a new purchase. Reinforced behaviors lead to purchases.
When an ad falls flat, it’s usually because it has nothing to do with tensions or it solves a problem that the customers don’t associate with the brand—it isn’t linked to a reinforced behavior. It may be visually appealing; it might even be clever enough to win an award. But, just being visually appealing or clever doesn’t drive purchase. The lack of effectiveness results in companies constantly switching directions. And when they constantly change directions, they lack the consistency required to create reinforcement.
Companies that don’t solve a tension have weak brands. Companies with strong brands consistently help customers overcome tensions and become the heroes in their own journeys.
The best way we’ve found to uncover these tensions is to talk to your customers: specifically your Brand Lovers—the customers that love you the most. These customers love you because you help them in their lives over and over again. As a result, they have a better perspective of what you can do when you’re at your best than your average customer does.
Once you understand these tensions, you can more clearly express your ability to solve problems and more easily reinforce desired behaviors to a larger customer base.
And, that makes your brand pretty irresistible.
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While revolution must be led from the top, it rarely starts at the top. The spirit of revolution already exists in the hearts and minds of motivated employees and loyal customers. It shows up in the individual stories that employees tell about the work they do. And it shows up in the individual stories that customers tell about the products they love. Often a leader need only act as a kind of managing editor, shaping the stories to align with a shared vision.Marty Neumeier1
Despite what many agencies still claim, brands aren’t logos or taglines and they can’t be made or changed with a single ad campaign.
A brand is a living entity with three elements: vision, culture, and customer. These elements influence each other and collectively create a perception about the company. That perception is the brand.
There’s more than one way to create a brand. But, we think there’s only one way to create a brand that will be relevant now and in the future. And, that’s creating an Authentic Brand.
We are thrilled to tackle an opportunity-packed topic that impacts every industry.
Because the topic of Cult Branding is so humanistic, we tried something new:
We built a Google Slides version of the insights so you can present it to your team along with a worksheet to jumpstart your next 30-minute brainstorm.
Click on through to see The 7 Rules of Cult Branding and gain actionable insights from Apple to Ikea to SouthWest Airlines. Discover how Cult Brands are already changing what your customers think is possible.
Remember, these insights are opportunities waiting to happen. Read, and then act!
P.S.
Feel free to download the presentation and make it your own.