Your marketing can promise the moon, but if your people can’t deliver it, the brand breaks. Every CEO I’ve worked with who built a cult brand started by aligning culture with the brand promise. Salesforce’s Dreamforce is a masterclass; even the volunteers feel like part of...
If you’re in the CEO chair, you’re carrying two brands at once: your corporate brand and your personal one. And they’re inseparable. What you say, post, or endorse can strengthen trust or shake it overnight. Cult Branding teaches us the principle of Openness, be intentional and...
The customer doesn’t care about your org chart. They don’t separate the “marketing experience” from the “operations experience.” It’s all the brand experience. The most effective CEOs I know break down turf wars and get the C-suite aligned around a single narrative. Here’s how: Create a Brand Council....
AI is everywhere in the CEO conversation. The mistake I see? Treating AI like a cost-cutting tool rather than a connection-deepening tool. The cult brands don’t bolt technology onto an old culture; they integrate it to make the customer feel known and valued. Top brands used...
If you’re a CEO, you already know the quarterly game can trap you. I’ve watched too many leaders mortgage their brand’s long-term equity to please the market in the short term. That’s a slow path to irrelevance. Brands that last, such as Apple and Patagonia, resist...
“I once asked a truly great chef how he got to be so good. He said, ‘It’s all in the recovery. How you correct your mistakes.’”—Billy Joel, And So It Goes There’s a quiet brilliance in that quote from Billy Joel’s new documentary. It’s not about...
Reclaim the Inner ChildPlay. Create. Touch the parts of you untouched by judgment. Life becomes dull when you abandon the one who still dreams. Pick up a brush, a journal, a guitar, anything that brings wonder back to your fingertips. Confront the ShadowDon’t look away. Turn...
Many brands chase growth by casting the widest possible net. More impressions. More clicks. More eyeballs. But in the race for reach, they often miss the people who matter most—their Brand Lovers. From The Cult Branding Workbook: “The sole purpose of business is to create a customer.” ...
Most companies chase the “ideal customer.” They build entire campaigns around demographic precision, age ranges, income brackets, and buyer personas. But Cult Brands do the opposite. They don’t narrow their audience.They open their arms. The Cult Branding Rule of Openness is simple: Cult Brands are radically inclusive....
In Cult Brands, leadership isn’t just about strategy, operations, or profit.It’s about creating clarity, especially when it comes to the customer. As the Cult Branding Workbook puts it: “Each team member must clearly understand how he or she contributes to the customer’s experience.” This one sentence captures what...