Found the secret to Marketing...
by Mike & Rick Tielemans“We believe marketing is just the sharing of your brand beliefs.”
- Mike & Rick Tielemans
The philosophy of a Cult Brand is that people are wired to find others like themselves. Humans are naturally attracted to those who share similar values and beliefs as themselves.
Chris Crandall, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas confirms this:
“You try to create a social world where you’re comfortable, where you succeed, where you have people you can trust and with whom you can cooperate to meet your goals. To create this, similarity is very useful, and people are a�racted to it most of the time.”
So let’s look at how we can intentionally create this:
If you’ve read Mark Manson’s “Everything Is Fucked” book, he shares that people live through what he calls a ‘Value Hierarchy.’
This means that our actions and behavior are in accordance with whatever our highest values are.
When a mother has a child, her top value is no longer her career or health or freedom or whatever it used to be—it becomes the health and safety of her child. Her value hierarchy changes and she now lives through a new set of filters. This changes how she spends her time, where she spends her hard earned coin, and even who she hangs out with.
Regardless of who you are and what you believe, every decision you make is filtered through your value hierarchy. If wealth is higher on your value hierarchy than relationships, you will probably choose working late over your son’s soccer games.
While many stale brands are still marketing to demographics like location, age, gender and income or whatever filters they can find on Facebook ads... Cult brands market to the core values of their ideal people.
Let’s look back at Harley Davidson for a hot sec. They don’t focus on middle aged men who make over $80k/ year and desire a set of wheels. Instead they use their value of FREEDOM to attract people who want to escape the mundane and get a taste of the open road.
The right people will feel an emotional tug, while the rest of us will simply scroll on by.
Let’s take this a little deeper...
B E L I E F S:
Beliefs are the assumptions we hold to be true.
Within our value hierarchy is a unique set of belief systems based on the unique experiences we’ve curated over our lives.
And this is another level in which we seek out people like ourselves.
Humans will have belief systems around just about everything.
We have religious beliefs, interpersonal beliefs, self beliefs, beliefs about what diet works best for us, beliefs about the world, etc.
Most people are shy about sharing their beliefs, as if it’s too personal. But these days, people are voyeuristic as hell and there’s almost nothing “too personal” on the internet. Customers these days want to mix business and pleasure and it’s these beliefs that add the personality needed to set us apart from boring brands.
“The road is our mistress and time is our enemy. Like rebels without a cause, our
mission is simple, freedom.”
By sharing your brand beliefs, you can turn a mere product into a community, or even better, a cult brand.
The more a Cult brand can simply and authentically express their beliefs, the easier it will be to dominate their corner of the internet and create a unique cult-like loyalty of “your kind of people.”
Chubbies is a clothing brand that sells some pretty sweet shorts, and unlike most companies you see nowadays, they have their beliefs pasted right on their homepage:
“Welcome to Chubbies. Here is what we believe.
We believe in the weekend
We believe that “short shorts” is a redundancy
In fact, we believe that 4 inch inseam shorts, 5 inch inseam shorts, and 7 inch inseam
shorts are just about all you need.
We believe in swim trunks, swim shorts, bathing suits, swim suits or whatever the heck
else you wanna call ‘em because we believe that if you’ve got a pair of those on, well,
you must be doing something right
We believe in the right your quads have to a life of freedom and sunshine
We believe in comfort
We believe in our fathers - they led the way; we are but revolutionaries standing on the
shoulders of amazingly mustachio’d giants in proper length shorts
We believe sweat shorts are the greatest innovation in lounging since hammock cup
holders were invented in the early 1780s
We believe Black Lives Ma�er
We believe Love is Love
And we damn sure believe in Friday at Five
Onward to the Weekend”
— Team Chubbies
This helps Chubbies stick their metaphorical flag in the sand and attract those who want to party on that island with them. They have an ethos that makes people want to be a part of, rather than competing on features and benefits. They attract people who feel the same way, believe the same things and value fun (jester brand for sure), rather than just anyone hunting a pair of 5” thigh huggers.
As humans we’re wired to find people who view the world the same way we do. As a brand, you can attract people a lot easier by showing them what you value and how your beliefs shape your brand.
Nike supported Colin Kaepernick for protesting rational inequality and police brutality when he took a knee during the national anthem.
The response to Nike’s "Dream Crazy" advertisement was angry customers burning Nike products all over social media—but despite the pushback, Nike remained strong, and the week the ad debuted, Nike's sales increased by 31%, doubling the same time period the year prior.
And winning a Cannes award for it.
Those who don’t agree with you simply aren’t a fit for your brand, and that’s fine because those who do agree become even more die-hard for what you stand for.
So as you build your brand belief system, don’t be afraid to be polarizing or even edge on the side of crazy...
Go build a belief system and marketing becomes easier.
