Normally, when we talk about watching paint dry, we’re referring to something tedious or boring. But for the leadership at Ace Hardware, paint is pretty exciting. According to this New York Times article, a new product line (coupled with an insightful marketing approach) may be what it takes to allow the 4,300+ hardware and home improvement store chain to double their share of the domestic paint market.
Brand Modeling and the Search for a New Growth Strategy
Dominant organizations are engaged in a continual search for growth opportunities. What are the best ways to increase market share, raise a brand’s visibility, and connect more effectively with their customers? Many companies, particularly those in the gaming sector, are targeting international markets by adapting to local preferences. For instance, identifying the beste online casino for norske spillere has become essential for casinos aiming to attract Norwegian players, as catering to specific preferences and regulations can significantly boost engagement. While it’s easy to generate potential strategies that should create growth, it’s remarkably difficult to assess ahead of time which strategies will succeed, especially in a competitive landscape.
Which brings us to Ace Hardware. This well-established brand has numerous options available to it. Ace Hardware has the resources and ability to pursue growth in any of several directions. We think that Ace’s leadership team has made a smart decision by focusing on the paint portion of their business. Their approach shows that there’s been a concerted effort to understand and better serve their customer.
Know Your Customer To Build Your Brand
What is the power of paint? Some analysts have compared painting the house to the famous lipstick effect—a quick and affordable way to lift the spirits when it’s not economically feasible to make larger, more indulgent purchases. Ace Hardware’s customers may not be in a position to renovate the entire kitchen or do over the bathroom. Yet they’re still driven by the need to make positive changes in their environment.
Painting a room delivers a powerful visual and emotional impact for a relatively small financial investment. Ace is demonstrating superior customer knowledge by providing a way to fill a significant emotional need while being sensitive to the current economic tensions and challenges their customer base is facing.
At the same time, Ace has used a very gender-specific, romance-oriented approach to marketing their new line of paint. Color choices are overwhelmingly made by women, according to Dana Larsen, an Ace Brand manager. The new campaign is based around the need for strong, satisfying, loving relationships—finding the perfect shade, color, or hue is referred to as finding your “soul paint.”
This recognizes and capitalizes on the biological driver that urges us to form lasting bonds. Couple it with some visual humor (after all, there’s something inherently funny about a line-up of 8 purple people) and you have a message that appeals to Ace’s customers on a number of levels.
Will Ace be able to meet their goal of doubling their market share by 2015? Appealing to their customers through multiple psychologically-appealing channels is not a bad start. Understanding the tensions and pressures facing their customer base, providing an economical means to satisfying compelling emotional needs, and honoring the underlying unconscious drivers of customer behavior are all steps dominant organizations use when they want to grow. That’s the value of putting customers first.
Business leaders instinctively know that customer loyalty is important, but many feel it is a fruitless endeavor to try to truly win the hearts and minds of their customers. Instead, the “merchant mind” takes over and the focus becomes on the next transaction instead of building a long-term relationship with your customer.
When executives first hear about the notion of building a Cult Brand, they often wonder, “Can we really do it? Can our brand achieve “cult” status? And if so, what would that look like?”
The answer, of course, is, “Yes, you can.” To see what a Cult Brand looks like, watch this brief video of an IKEA store grand opening.
How does IKEA do it?
Knowingly or not, they follow the Seven Rules of Cult Brands.
Learn why brand communities form and what you can do to support them:
The Cult Branding Company has been studying the unique qualities of Cult Brands for over ten years. The initial research introducing the concept of Cult Branding and profiling 9 magnetic brands including Apple, Oprah, and Harley-Davidson was published in The Power of Cult Branding (Random House) co-authored by BJ Bueno in 2002. The Cult Branding Company’s research team continues to study the factors behind true customer loyalty.
We don’t take this certification lightly. A panel of reviewers including Cult Brand expert BJ Bueno evaluate each potential brand, analyzing it from the perspective of the Seven Rules of Cult Brands.
Do you think you know a brand that qualifies for Cult Brand status?
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Abraham Maslow, one of the founding fathers of humanistic psychology, taught us that human beings have a higher, transcendent nature, which he visualized most eloquently in his Hierarchy of Human Needs. This simple pyramid gives us a framework from which to understand the essence of Cult Brands and how they inspire their most loyal and devoted followers.
The bottom four layers of the pyramid are what Maslow called Deficiency needs or D-needs. Nothing is felt if these needs are met, but in their absence, anxiety ensues.
The Answer: To Be
When the top level of self-actualization is reached, D-needs are transcended, and Being values (or B-values) are realized. These “intrinsic values of Being” when fulfilled, motivate and inspire humans to grow and reach their fullest potential.
The complete list of B-values includes:
- Truth
- Goodness
- Beauty
- Wholeness
- Aliveness
- Uniqueness
- Perfection
- Completion
- Justice
- Simplicity
- Richness
- Effortlessness
- Playfulness
- Self-Sufficiency
Simply stated, individuals who are more self-actualized tend to embrace more B-values than those suspended at lower levels.
Just like self-actualized individuals, Cult Brands are those self-realized companies that encompass more B-values than Iconic Brands, Average Joe Brands, and all other brands that fall under their shadow. These brands galvanize others towards greater fulfillment, wholeness, and integrity.
Let’s see how Cult Brands actually do it.
The Golden Rule of Social Groups tells us that consumers want to be part of a group that’s different. Here, Star Trek, Apple, and Volkswagen lead the pack, in their wholehearted embrace of the B-value of Uniqueness. These brands are not afraid to go against conventional wisdom, and celebrate their differences. Cult Brand loyalists happily congregate and revel together on common ground, proudly declaring their “be weird together, be weird no more” mantra.
When Cult Brands listen to the choirs, and take consumer feedback to heart, they uphold the B-values of Truth and Perfection. Apple’s commitment to their Mac User Groups serves as the perfect example. By interacting with these groups and constantly integrating their feedback, Apple honors and ultimately relies on their Brand Lover. Through this dynamic process of uncovering the truth about consumers’ experiences, they continually strive for perfection in their offerings.
What other Cult Brand than Jimmy Buffet, the King of Fun, and his loyal following of Parrot Heads could better personify the B-values of Aliveness and Playfulness? Cult Brands like Star Trek and Harley Davidson are also aligned with these B-values, in that they create consumer communities that celebrate lifestyles filled with youthful fantasy and adventure.
In the Golden Rule of Freedom, Cult Brands promote personal freedom and draw power from their enemies. No other Cult Brand has accomplished this with more grace, style, and ease than Oprah. Oprah drew power from her backwater competitors and aligned herself with more positive, uplifting stories rather than succumb to the ubiquitous drama of catfights and bar brawls.
Oprah wanted to showcase people at their best, unlike other talk show hosts who exposed the darkest sides of human behavior. Her intention to do good in the world is magnetic and irresistible, as evidenced by her loyal fans and ever-expanding media companies. Cult Brands like Oprah, through their devotion to charitable causes, their mission to improve people’s lives, and their commitment to promote freedom personify the B-values of Goodness, Beauty, and Justice.
In more simple terms, Cult Brands want to improve the lives of others. By harnessing the power and magnetism of B-values, these brands tap into our innate reservoirs of self-actualization.
We are drawn to Cult Brands because they make us feel good about ourselves, but on a deeper level, they lift us higher up the hierarchy to illuminate our Being needs. This drive towards self-actualization is intrinsic to our nature. Maslow understood it, and Cult Brands do too.
Some called them brave—others, crazy. The American motorcycle manufacturer born in a Milwaukee shed in 1903 drifted out of greatness in 1965. Japanese motorcycle makers began churning out less expensive, superior quality bikes. Worse yet, unreliable engines were plaguing this great American legacy—the curse of any manufacturer.
Led by CEO Vaughn Beals on February 26, 1981, thirteen brave Harley-Davidson Motor Company executives decided to buyback their failing business in an $81.5-million leveraged buyout. Now, these thirteen strong had no choice: turnaround the company or let it die.
The Merchant Mindset
Most businesses focus primarily on generating the next transaction. Customer loyalty is perceived as unattainable to merchants who figure, “We might as well try to squeeze one more sale out of them.” But if you’re battling for the next transaction, over time, you’re destined to lose. Customers who choose you based on price will leave you for the same reason.
Businesses with passion and heart build relationships with their customers. There are decision-making factors that far exceed price, selection and location. A company like Wal-Mart is masterful at connecting with customers and offering them an intangible benefit they can’t get anywhere else. Do you think millions of people shop at Wal-Mart everyday because of price alone? If so, why do you think people drove 20 miles past their local K-Mart to shop at Wal-Mart? Both retailers had similar products with comparable prices. Wal-Mart made the customer its boss, an approach heralded by founder Sam Walton himself, and Walton’s loyal patrons felt it.
Cult Branding Defined
A rare few businesses go a monumental step further. A Cult Brand is born when a benign group of individuals rally around a brand’s lifestyle. Psychiatrist Carl Jung called it the participation mystique. These brands spark a magical participation with their customers; they embrace a certain way of being, aligned to a specific set of beliefs.
You can be a corporate attorney running frantically from meeting to meeting, but when you enter a Jimmy Buffett concert you morph into a Parrothead. Litigation, conference calls and the stress of daily life slide into shadow. Now, you’re all about burgers, cocktails and connecting with friends in the paradise of Margaritaville.
Cult Brands embrace what psychologist Abraham Maslow called B-values—values that inspire humans to grow and reach their potential. B-values include truth, goodness, beauty, wholeness, aliveness, uniqueness, perfection, completion, justice, simplicity, richness, effortless, playfulness and self-sufficiency. Within any Cult Brand you’ll find B-values being awakened in their beloved customers. Trekkie conventions and Mac User Groups embrace the value of uniqueness. Margaritaville personifies the values of aliveness and playfulness.
Unlike destructive cults that damage people and their surrounding communities, members of Cult Brands behave in constructive ways towards their communities. Here, people fulfill deeply-rooted human needs and enjoy the lifestyle the brand offers. Within these coveted communities, you get to be who you really are—you are allowed to be happy, to be yourself, to be weird together and feel weird no more.
Few authentic Cult Brands grace the business world, but we know who they are. Their customers make sure we do: Apple, Harley-Davidson, Oprah, Ikea, Southwest Airlines, Linux, Vans, Star Trek, Jimmy Buffett, WWE and VW Beetle—the list isn’t very long. Cult Brands have been in business for an average of over forty years, fueled by the people who love them the most.
Our decade of research and study of Cult Brands shows that great brands don’t happen by accident. Unequivocal customer loyalty—to be chosen over and over by a core group of customers who refuse to shop at your competitors—takes conscious effort.
Embracing Your Brand Lovers
Cult Brands don’t just foster casual relationships with their customers; they find ways to play an integral part in their lives. They embrace their customers like members of a loving family, providing a safe community for them to be who they really are. These brands are bold and courageous — often disliked by many, but loved by a precious few. We call these special few Brand Lovers.
These customers love their brand for reasons they probably don’t fully understand, but they love their brand nonetheless. A small legion of Brand Lovers will do more for the growth and sustainability of your business than all the transactional customers in the world. Not convinced? We’ve found that Pareto’s Law (the 80/20 Principle) holds: a small percentage of customers can drive over 80 percent of profitability. It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than keep an old one. Most importantly, the customers who love you the most—your Brand Lovers—spread the word and create new customers for you (just ask anyone who owns a Mac, an iPod, or an iPhone).
Are all of your customers contributing equally to your profits? It’s unlikely. There are certain customers who choose you more often. These precious few are the lifeblood of your business.
Do you know who your best customers are? Without this knowledge, you will take yourself out of business or your competitors will do it for you.
- Does your company really listen to the feedback and suggestions of its most loyal followers? What are these customers saying?
- Customers want to be appreciated. They want their suggestions to be heard and used. How do you reward your best customers? If you haven’t been rewarding them, do it quickly before someone else does.
- Every company can do more to show its customers appreciation for their business. What are new ways you can show your customers that you “listen” and that you appreciate them?
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, those thirteen Harley-Davidson executives listened intently to their Brand Lovers the way only Cult Brands do. In 1984, they released a new engine called the Evolution that extinguished many of their quality concerns. More importantly, they worked hard to strengthen their relationship with their customers, forming the Harley Owners Group (HOG) in 1983 — an international customer club with over one million devoted owners. Did their $81.5-million buyout pay off? A $10 billion company valuation seems to answer that question quite nicely.
Why are certain brands so important and meaningful to some customers that they feel compelled to tell the world about them? What makes them go that extra mile?
Understanding human behavior—what motivates people to do certain things and act certain ways—is at the very core of successful marketing.
This is where the work of the late, great psychologist Abraham Maslow comes in.
Maslow postulated that we humans have an ascending order of needs and used a hierarchy of needs to prioritize them. At the bottom levels of the pyramid are our physiological needs, which include basic things like food, shelter, and clothing that we all need to survive.
At progressively higher levels in Maslow’s Hierarchy are the needs for safety and security, social interaction, and self-esteem. At the very top is self-actualization, a term Maslow coined to describe the ultimate human need to learn, grow, and reach one’s full potential as a person.
We all desire on some level to self-actualize, both to be at peace with ourselves and to try to be the best we can be. As humans, we are drawn to people, places, groups, causes, companies, and, ultimately, brands that we believe can help us towards our ultimate goal of self-actualization and total fulfillment.
Why the Hierarchy of Needs Is a Crucial Tool for Branding?
Perhaps the most important thing to take away from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs is his theory that all human beings start fulfilling their needs at the bottom levels of the pyramid.
In short, we fill our low physiological needs first. Higher needs like safety, social interaction, and esteem basically do not exist at this point. Logically, survival comes first.
However, once an individual has satisfied his or her lower level needs, the higher level needs become influential in motivating behavior.
As Maslow notes time and time again in his work, “Man is a perpetually wanting animal.”
Maslow’s writings break down the underlying drivers of human behavior and decision making. Maslow never mentions the phrase “brand loyalty” in his books, but his Hierarchy of Human Needs and concepts like self-actualization are key to understanding why consumers consistently choose one brand over another and enjoy such strong relationships with them.
So, why is fulfilling higher level needs so integral to building strong customer loyalty? What’s the connection, you ask? The answer is, higher level needs influence future human behavior much greater than lower level needs. It is the brands that can fulfill human needs on the higher levels of the hierarchy that become irreplaceable in the mind of the consumer.
That’s what customer loyalty is really all about: being irreplaceable.
True customer loyalty is not only about getting a customer to consistently choose your brand over another. It’s for that same customer to always believe (and then go tell the world) that your company’s brand has no equal!
This article is an excerpt from The Power of Cult Branding.