Community Building? What Cults Can Teach Marketers

When we think of cults, we often imagine mind-numbed automatons blindly following a Svengali-like figure into the abyss. (Does Jonestown ring any bells?) The fact is, though, not all members of cults fall into this stereotype. In point of fact, many members of cults tend to be well educated and from stable family backgrounds. They tend to be normal, like your neighbor. (That assumes your neighbors are normal, admittedly a bit of a leap.)

Douglas Atkin--author, account planner extraordinaire and a long-time friend of Miami Ad School--has long sought to apply insights from the most intense forms of belonging (cults, such as Krishna) to lesser and newer forms (brand cults, such as Apple, and online communities.) Six years ago he published those insights in The Culting of Brands: turn your customers into true believers. In the time since, brand communities have mushroomed along with the emerging technologies that support them.

Douglas thinks its high time for a review. How are brand communities being built today? What strategies are being implemented to do so? Are companies using platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to their best advantage? And, in the end, should marketers even bother to actively create brand communities?

Get the whole story at Forbes.com

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