It’s not one you’ll find in a slogan.

It’s what you experience the moment you walk into Disney.

Disney has used taglines like “The Happiest Place on Earth” or “Where Dreams Come True,” but that’s not what makes it iconic.

What makes Disney unforgettable is that it delivers on those promises—without having to say them out loud.

That’s the difference between marketing and meaning.

Most brand slogans today? They’re polished, inoffensive, and completely forgettable:

“Because you’re you.”
“We care.”
“Tomorrow. Today.”

None of these say anything real. They’re engineered by committees, tested to death, and stripped of all conviction. They sound like they’re trying to be everything to everyone—and in doing so, they stand for nothing.

Here’s the hard truth: If your brand doesn’t stand for something meaningful, no tagline will fix that.

At The Cult Branding Company, we’ve spent decades studying what makes customers fall in love with brands—why they tattoo logos on their skin, travel cross-country to attend brand events, and refer products like they’re spreading gospel.

It’s never because of a clever turn of phrase.

It’s because the brand reflects something they believe in.

Take Disney. People don’t return year after year because of a line on a brochure.

They come back because of what Disney represents: wonder, care, consistency, magic—and a level of intentionality so detailed that it creates memories that last a lifetime.

You don’t need a slogan when every touchpoint delivers your message.

That’s what most modern marketers forget.

They chase efficiency. They A/B test language. They cut creative corners to hit quarterly KPIs.

And then they wonder why no one cares.

If your brand needs a line to explain itself, ask a better question:

What do we actually stand for?
What experience do we consistently deliver?
What emotional territory do we own in our customer’s life?

Because cult brands don’t start with slogans.
They start with belief.

And once you get that right, the words become obvious—if you even need them at all.

P.S. If this resonated with you, don’t miss our latest white paper: Cult. Creative. It features cutting-edge research on building culturally magnetic brands in the age of distraction—plus a curated collection of some of the best TV spots ever made to inspire you and your team. You won’t download a PDF—you’ll view it live, right in Google Slides. Click here and request access to explore the work.

The post The Best End Line Was Never Written—It Was Experienced at Disney appeared first on cultbranding.com.

Contrary to what many dashboards suggest, purchasing isn’t a straight path from ad to cart. It’s more like a loop—an emotional, non-linear journey of curiosity, consideration, and sometimes confusion.

We call this journey the “Messy Middle.”

The Two Mental Modes in the Messy Middle

The latest behavioral research shows that people shift between two distinct mental modes on their path to purchase:

• Exploration – a wide-ranging, open-ended search for possibilities. It’s imaginative. Emotional. People want to discover what’s out there, what feels right, and what surprises them.
  
• Evaluation – a narrowing down of choices. It’s more deliberate. Rational. Here, people compare options, read reviews, visit pricing pages, and try to make “the best” decision.
  

Now here’s the kicker: every action your customer takes—on search engines, social platforms, review sites, or marketplaces—falls into one of these two modes.

This means every experience you create, every message you deliver, and every asset you design needs to align with one of these mindsets.

Are you inspiring curiosity? Or are you helping customers feel confident in their choice?

The Trap of Assuming Logic Wins

Most brands cater almost exclusively to Evaluation mode. They flood their pages with comparison charts, star ratings, testimonials, and case studies. These are important, no doubt.

But if you don’t earn attention in Exploration mode, you won’t make it to Evaluation.

And in today’s crowded markets, the brands that spark fascination and intrigue are the ones that win hearts—and wallets.

How Cult Brands Work the Loop

Cult Brands do this differently. They build stories, values, and symbols that invite people into Exploration. They feed curiosity and provide meaning. Then, when it’s time to evaluate, they provide clarity and trust.

Think Netflix or Trader Joe’s. These aren’t brands people simply compare. They’re brands people feel something about. That emotional connection starts in Exploration—and makes Evaluation a formality.

What This Means for You

As a brand leader, ask yourself:

• Are we only showing up during Evaluation—or are we sparking interest during Exploration?
  
• Do we understand what motivates our customers emotionally before they rationalize their choices?
  
• Are we creating content and experiences that meet both mindsets?
  

The goal isn’t just to be the logical choice—it’s to be the brand they want to believe in. And that means playing a more nuanced game.

One that understands that people aren’t data points—they’re human beings.

And as long as that’s true, Exploration and Evaluation will always guide their journey.

It’s your job to show up powerfully in both.👋 I’m BJ Bueno, branding strategist and author of The Power of Cult Branding. If you’re looking to build lasting brand relationships, explore more insights at CultBranding.com.

The post How Exploration and Evaluation Shape the Path to Purchase appeared first on cultbranding.com.

But there’s a problem: what feels like smart marketing on a dashboard is often the first step toward starving your future.

Let me explain.

The Dashboard Deception

We’ve all been in the room when a team proudly reports on how they’ve optimized their campaigns by cutting “low-converting” traffic. They beam as they show higher CTRs, better ROAS, cleaner funnels. It’s a dopamine hit for the data-driven mind.

But zoom out. What’s being cut is not just inefficiency—what’s being cut is discovery.

That top-of-funnel “inefficient” traffic? That’s tomorrow’s loyal customer. That mobile evening browser? She’s not converting today—but she’s getting to know your brand. And when she’s ready to make a purchase—likely on a desktop, likely in the morning—you may have already cut the thread that connected her to you.

The Hidden Cost of Hyper-Efficiency

We’ve worked with some of the world’s most beloved cult brands. One pattern we’ve seen again and again is that they don’t treat attention like a transaction. They treat it like a relationship.

Relationships require patience. Not everyone converts on the first touchpoint—or the fifth. But if you’re only investing in people who are ready to buy today, you’re ignoring the journey that leads them there.

And more importantly, you’re handing tomorrow’s buyers to your competitors.

Building for Tomorrow

Too often, marketers focus only on quick wins—optimizing for immediate conversions while unknowingly shutting down the pathways that lead to long-term growth. When discovery moments—like evening mobile browsing—are ignored or undervalued, the brand misses a crucial chance to make an early impression.

Instead, the brands that win are the ones planting seeds. They understand that someone browsing on their phone at night might come back the next morning on a desktop, ready to convert. That trust, built quietly over time, is what drives tomorrow’s results.

This is the “messy middle” that Google describes—a nonlinear, emotional journey filled with loops, detours, and returns. If your brand isn’t showing up early in that journey, you may never be in the running when the final decision is made.

CEOs: This Is a Leadership Issue

The temptation to prioritize short-term gains is strong. Your board wants results. Your team wants wins. But leadership isn’t about chasing the nearest carrot—it’s about having the courage to invest in long-term value.

Ask yourself:

• Are we cutting spend that builds awareness simply because it doesn’t convert fast enough?
  
• Are we designing our customer experience to support exploration and evaluation, or are we fixated only on conversion?
  
• Are we building loyalty, or just transactions?
  

Remember: cult brands aren’t built on conversions. They’re built on connections.

The Cult Branding Mindset

Cult brands don’t optimize people out of their funnels. They create magnetic experiences that pull people in. They understand that brand love is a journey—and they’re willing to invest in it.

If you’re serious about building a loyal following, stop starving your future pipeline in the name of short-term efficiency. Get curious. Get expansive. Play the long game.

You’re not just building for today—you’re building for tomorrow.P.S. Want to see what bold creativity looks like in action (without sitting through another dull pitch deck)? Cult. Creative. is our latest live deck—packed with killer ideas, unforgettable ads. View it in Google Slides—no downloads, just instant inspiration. [Request access here.]

The post Why Cutting Low-Converting Traffic Starves Your Future Growth appeared first on cultbranding.com.

Media teams are targeting down to the decimal. Audience segments are sliced to the molecule. Programmatic budgets are tweaked daily to squeeze out fractional gains in click-through rates and conversion metrics.

And yet, amid all this precision, we continue to overlook the most critical—and most wasteful—aspect of advertising.

The idea itself.

According to new research from Adam Sheridan (Ipsos) and Jones Knowles Ritchie, an astonishing 85% of advertising dollars are spent on assets that aren’t truly distinctive.

That’s nearly $4 trillion globally—spent on creative that fails to leave a mark.

Let’s pause there. 

In a world where marketers fight over budget and ROI, we’re funneling the vast majority of our investment into assets that people don’t remember, don’t recognize, and don’t associate with our brands.

How did we get here?

Recognition Is the First Principle of Branding

As Sheridan notes, we’ve become so focused on the bottom of the funnel—trying to extract an extra 0.01% conversion bump—that we’ve forgotten the first rule of brand building:

If people don’t know it’s you, it doesn’t matter what you said.

Recognition isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation. It’s what makes everything else—trust, preference, loyalty—possible. And yet, we continue to allocate massive budgets to media while underinvesting in the creative elements that actually drive memory.

Distinctiveness Is Difficult—But Not Mysterious

Let’s be honest: creating distinctive, ownable advertising is hard. You can’t always predict what will become iconic.

But we now have clear evidence of what increases your odds:

• Ipsos found that high-performing creative uses a broader mix of brand assets 34% more often than low-performing ads.
  
• Sound, fluent scenarios, recurring characters—these can generate up to 9x more branded attention than a logo alone.
  
• The best ads aren’t just “branded” at the end—they feel like your brand from the very first second.
  

And yet, we’re still measuring logo placement and brand mentions as if that’s what creates recall. It’s not.

Creative Quality + Media Quality = Profitable Growth

Too often, creative and media are treated as separate silos. But they’re not. They’re co-dependent. The best media strategy in the world can’t rescue bland creative. And brilliant creative won’t perform in the wrong channels.

Real, sustainable brand growth happens when you pair distinctive creative with high-attention media.

Think radio. Think print. Think TV. These are the channels that drive memory, narrative, and emotion. They’re not just media buys—they’re brand-building engines when used with intention.

Time to Rebalance Our Attention—and Our Budgets

As marketers and brand leaders, we’ve spent the past decade mastering efficiency. Now it’s time to master meaning.

Because brand growth doesn’t come from better clicks, it comes from deeper connections. From storytelling. From memory. From being truly, unmistakably you—over and over again.

So the next time your team is reviewing media performance or creative strategy, ask a different question:

Will anyone remember this ad next week?
Will they remember it’s us?

If the answer is no, go back to the idea. That’s where the ROI really lives.

P.S. Want to see what bold creativity looks like in action (without sitting through another dull pitch deck)? Cult. Creative. is our latest live deck—packed with killer ideas, unforgettable ads. View it in Google Slides—no downloads, just instant inspiration. [Request access here.]

The post The $4 Trillion Blind Spot: Why Creative Quality Is Your Real ROI Problem appeared first on cultbranding.com.

And it’s time the CFO paid closer attention.

A strong brand does far more than differentiate your company in the marketplace. It enhances almost every key business metric that matters to the CFO:

• It lowers customer acquisition costs by creating recognition and trust before a sales conversation even begins.
  
• It commands pricing power by anchoring value in the minds of customers, often allowing for premium margins.
  
• It increases customer lifetime value by deepening loyalty and retention.
  
• It reduces talent acquisition costs by attracting employees who want to be associated with a purpose-driven brand.
  
• And it protects market share, serving as a moat against newer or cheaper competitors.
  

In other words, brand strength shows up not just in marketing dashboards, but in the P&L and the balance sheet.

This is especially true in legacy businesses. Consider First American, a company with more than 130 years of history and billions in revenue. Its CMO, Chelsea Sumrow, understands the delicate balance required when managing a brand with such deep roots. In her words:

“Don’t get stuck in old routines.”
“Test, learn, pilot, and fail fast.”
“Effectiveness is about outcomes over outputs.”

It’s a message every CFO should hear: legacy shouldn’t mean inertia. Innovation isn’t a threat to brand value—it’s essential to sustaining it. That’s why the most successful heritage brands are the ones that invest in experimentation while staying true to their core identity.

Too often, CFOs and CMOs speak different languages. One talks in margins and ROIs; the other in emotion and storytelling. But when you look closely, brand investment and financial performance are tightly linked.

In fact, numerous studies—including those from McKinsey and Kantar—show that companies with strong brands outperform their peers in revenue growth, profit margins, and shareholder returns.

So here’s the bottom line:

If your brand vanished tomorrow, would anyone notice? Would your revenue suffer? Would your customers still know who you are—or care?

If the answer is yes, then you have a real asset worth protecting and growing. And that makes brand a matter not just of marketing strategy, but of financial stewardship.

It’s time to bring the CFO into the brand conversation—not as a skeptic, but as a strategic partner. Because in today’s world, a brand is not a cost center. It’s a growth engine.

And those who understand that—at every level of leadership—will be the ones who win.

The post Why Your CFO Should Care Deeply About Your Brand appeared first on cultbranding.com.

Before we had words, we painted our stories on cave walls. 

Stories helped us make sense of the world before we could explain it. 

They still do.

We’ve been obsessed with stories ever since—not just for entertainment but for survival, meaning, and identity.

As marketers, many of us already understand that stories are powerful tools. 

Great brands like Apple, Coke, and Nike know how to use storytelling to captivate customers and create deep emotional resonance. 

But I believe the true power of the story goes even deeper.

Stories don’t just entertain—they reveal. 

They show us what matters to our customers. 

They expose motivations, fears, desires, and aspirations that no spreadsheet ever will.

And when we understand those inner stories, we can do more than sell—we can serve. 

We can become allies in our customers’ own journeys.

Our Brains Are Wired for Story

If you ask most people why they love stories, they’ll probably talk about escapism. But neuroscience tells a different story.

When someone watches a narrative unfold, their brain doesn’t behave like a passive observer—it lights up as if they are part of the action. We don’t just consume stories. We experience them.

And that experience matters. It means that when we craft brand stories well, we don’t just get attention—we generate empathy, involvement, and trust.

The Hero’s Journey: A Universal Blueprint

Joseph Campbell, a scholar of comparative mythology, spent his life studying global stories. What he found was astonishing: despite cultural differences, stories across the world shared a common structure—a recurring arc he called the monomyth, or hero’s journey.

The hero begins in an ordinary world. They face a challenge, cross into the unknown, and encounter trials. Along the way, they meet mentors and enemies. Eventually, they win a decisive victory, transform, and return with new wisdom.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s the blueprint for Star Wars, The Matrix, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings—and almost every top-grossing franchise of the last 50 years.

Why does this structure resonate so deeply? Because it mirrors the story we’re all living. The hero’s journey is your customer’s journey.

Your Customers Are the Heroes

Your customers aren’t waiting for your brand to save them. They’re already on a quest. They have struggles, hopes, and dreams. Your job is to understand what those are—and figure out how your brand can help them along the way.

Great brands know this. Apple gives customers the tools to express themselves and rise above the ordinary. Nike helps people transform into stronger, more disciplined versions of themselves. Harley-Davidson offers freedom from the status quo, even if only for a weekend ride.

These brands don’t just solve problems—they help people grow. They support their customers in becoming who they want to be.

Great Stories Are Built on Tension

Every great story starts with a problem. Without tension, there’s no reason to care. No reason to change.

What’s your customer’s core tension? What are they up against—emotionally, psychologically, spiritually? And how does your brand help them overcome it?

When you answer those questions with honesty and empathy, you don’t just gain insight. You gain purpose.

The Secret to Deep Consumer Insight

Consumer insight isn’t just about demographics or buying behavior—it’s about decoding the personal narratives your customers are living. It’s about understanding what they’re striving for, what they fear, and where they need help.

When you see your customers as heroes, you stop trying to control the story—and you start listening to it. That’s where the magic begins.

So I invite you to ask yourself:

• What journey is your customer really on?
  
• What stands in their way?
  
• How can your brand be the unexpected ally that helps them triumph?
  

Answer those, and you won’t just gain market share—you’ll earn a place in your customer’s heart.

P.S. If this hit home, check out Cult. Creative. — our new live white paper on building culturally magnetic brands. No PDFs. Just inspiration, research, and iconic TV spots, all in Google Slides. [Click here to request access.]

The post Your Customer is the Hero. Your Brand is the Guide. appeared first on cultbranding.com.