Marketing

This could be called the first law of Cult Branding.

Know thy Customer better than they know themselves.

This could be called the Secret Law of Cult Branding.

Customers Don’t Know Why They Buy.

This might be deemed the problem with the conventional market analysis.

Don’t Ask Why, Observe!

If customers don’t know why they buy then how do we discover why? Jane Goodall became a primate expert. She permanently moved in proximity with a troupe of chimpanzees and lived with them for years. She watched chimps grow up, grow old and die. She unraveled the vibrant social life of chimpanzees and how it affected their behavior. Humans are vastly more complicated than chimpanzees. It takes more than an anthropology study to grasp the mechanisms at play when it comes to human behavior.

Most of the Human Experience is Below Conscious Radar.

The Landscape of the Subconscious is much, much bigger than the Conscious realm. Human behavior is a dynamic interplay of the conscious/subconscious. This is one critical reason that Cult Branding has become well versed in the science of the subconscious.

Human Behavior is Primarily Social.

The evolution of human beings is fundamentally the story of social systems.   Virtually all human behavior is socially driven or has social implications.

Where We Live Matters, and it is Changing!

Cult Branding understands that human behavior is complex and highly reactive. They also know that the world is in a state of flux and the old rules don’t apply. To understand the customer, you have to look at the environment they operate in.

Why is Cult Branding Different?

To know thy customer requires a profound grasp of human behavior, the subconscious mind as well as the marketplace. Taking this information and extrapolating the more profound memes and themes of the mind of your customer and using it to create a more compelling customer experience is what Cult Branding is all about.

Do you Know Thy Customer?

Dominant organizations occupy positions of ultimate profitability.  They do this by providing their customers what they want, even before their customers know they want it.  Whenever Apple unveils their latest iGadget, they already have legions of excited customers eager to buy.

How do they do that?  Those points of ultimate profitability are clearly out there. Apple, Harley-Davidson, and Ikea have all found them. They pointed their telescopes into the night sky of customer behavior and discovered their habitable planets, those consumer communities where their brands can live and thrive.

The tools and techniques that connect astronomers and astronauts with the final frontier can be used to connect your organization with tomorrow’s Brand Lovers.

The result? Organizations that use modeling to identify who their most profitable customers are, what they want to buy, and how they want to buy it enjoy increased—even dominant—market share, greater customer loyalty, and enhanced profitability. Knowing which way to point your telescope is the single most critical step in ensuring business success.

What insights will keep your brand relevant in the future?

Many businesses suffer from catering to deadly customers.

Deadly customers aren’t customers that hate you. They like you and probably account for a large portion of both your current base and target market. Chances are that, collectively, they purchase a lot from you. Playing to deadly customers may seem lucrative: there’s a lot of them out there and they likely contribute a significant portion of your bottom line. And, they’re easy to make happy.

The problem is: they don’t push your business forward.

The deadly customer is happy with the status quo—they don’t ask for anything new; in fact, they may not want anything new. They may make you think you’re doing better than you actually are. Serving the deadly customer encourages stagnation instead of innovation. By focusing on the deadly customer, you hand an unfair advantage to your competition in the future.

Are you catering to deadly customers?

Archetypes are at the core of effective marketing. They provide the most powerful way to attract the right customers. But archetypes are often misunderstood. This week, we examine the archetypal power of one of the world’s strongest brands.
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