Cult Branding: A cultivated Effort

How do American brands effectively market themselves in ways that make them "brand cults"?

Just as all religions need followers in order to survive and thus market themselves to gain them, non-religious organizations also seek to "sell 'community, meaning and identity'" in order to become one of the elite brand cults in America (Einstein, 91). Community, meaning, and identity do not  occur naturally though, they need to be carefully cultivated, nourished, and legitimized. To do so, companies market themselves to niche groups, promising the "rituals, traditions, and a shared worldview" that people of all walks of life inherently seek (Einstein, 91).

Take Harley Davidson, when it started over 100 years ago, it did not have a cult following, a ritualistic hand signal between drivers, or a large celebrity backing. It was simply a brand with a new concept of how to get around on a bike with an engine. Through its marketing strategy, it became one of the main military tools in WWI and WWII, building a cultural identity for itself of reliance, dependability, and American freedom. Then it became the bike of Elvis, furthering both its traditions of excellence and rebellion, and enlarging and legitimatizing the community of Harley drivers. Now, it is the motorcycle company of America. It is a "religious icon" and it is a brand cult (Einstein, 91)

Cult brands do not always take decades to be created though. The Hunger Games has, in less than a decade, progressed from a brand new book series to one of the largest cult followed series in history, making over $1.5 billion on the first three movies alone. Much of this has to do with how recent social media advances have enabled the relationship between brands and fans to explode, significantly depleting the gap between companies and their target audiences. In this context, avid fans like Kaylee are able to track the movement in production of the films and follow the lives of the celebrities that participate in the movie in greater detail, and are then encouraged to share this information with their friends, thus working as unpaid marketers for all things Hunger Games. In this relatively recent change to the marketing industry, the lines between the threefold relationships of community, "community member to brand, community member to firm, and community members to each other", have blurred, allowing all three to happen in the reading of a tweet online and re-tweeting it to fellow Hunger Games community members (Einstein, 89).

This marketing change has significantly expedited the process of making brands into brand cults, while ensuring that the focus on community, meaning, and identity remain. They have transformed the art of marketing into a religious process focus on bringing community together in an identifiable way; Christianity has its services and blessings, Harley has its "Harley wave" and rallies, and The Hunger Games has its three-fingered greeting and four-toned whistle.

Other resources:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/generation-like/
http://www.harley-davidson.com/content/h-d/en_US/home/museum.html