Cult branding involves creating a deep connection between a brand and its customers by fulfilling their higher-level human needs, as outlined by Maslow's hierarchy. Brands that successfully leverage archetypes, such as Nike with the warrior archetype, achieve significant customer loyalty through consistent representation. Understanding the archetype associated with a brand and ensuring that marketing reflects it meaningfully can enhance brand strength and success.

1. Archetypal
Branding: Cult Branding 2.0

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CREATED BY aaron shields DESIGNED BY melissa thornton
©2009 The Cult Branding Company

3. A Cult Brand is born when
a group of customers rally
around a brand’s lifestyle.

4. Cult Brands enjoy an unusual
level of customer loyalty.

5. Cult Brands achieve this level of loyalty
because they do more than just sell
products or services...

6. They help fulfill their customers’ human needs.

7. These human needs stem from
instincts and act with the same
motivational force.

8. Instincts operate at the
deepest biological level; they
are natural dispositions
towards patterns of behavior.

9. The psychologist Abraham Maslow
arranged these human needs in a
hierarchy, with higher-level needs less
likely to be fulfilled.
Transcendence
Self-Actualization
Aesthetic Needs
Cognitive Needs Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs
Esteem Needs
Belongingness and Love Needs
Safety Needs
Biological and Physiological Needs

10. Cult Brands leverage higher-level needs
to develop mutually beneficial
relationships with their customers.

11. Esteem Needs: Freedom

12. Self-Actualization: Personal Growth

13. Esteem Needs:
Dominance and Mastery

14. Maslow’s hierarchy helps explain why
customers love their favorite brands.

15. But it isn’t the whole picture...

16. Psychiatrist Carl Jung’s concept of
archetypes explains consumers’ love
for their favorite brands at the level of
the psyche.

17. Archetypes are universal mental
images. They set the patterns of behavior
for our interaction with the world.

18. The Sage

19. The Mother

20. The Warrior

21. Archetypes are “the forms which the
instincts assume.”
- Carl Jung

22. Two sides of the same coin:
Human Needs Archetypes

23. Two sides of the same coin:
Human Needs: Archetypes
Esteem Warrior

24. Nike capitalizes on the
archetype of the Warrior
using battle imagery in its
depiction of athletes.

25. Customers who buy Nike
products associate with the
Warrior archetype, fulfilling
the esteem needs of
dominance and mastery.

26. The archetypal image must be used
consistently and frequently in order to
become associated with your brand.

27. Nike has spent over three
decades finding creative
ways to represent the
Warrior archetype.

28. Every brand plays into certain
archetypal images and biological
needs.
This insight is the key to building a
strong brand.

29. Most brands fail because
they don’t understand what
they represent to their
customers.

30. Infiniti attempted to link
their Q45 to Zen-like
imagery of serenity and
inner peace.

31. Serenity, a quality of the sage
archetype, is unlikely to
happen while driving a car.

32. Before you develop your next
campaign, or try a “creative” new
strategy, ask yourself...

33. “Do I understand the
archetype my brand
taps into and the human
needs it fulfills?”

34. “Does my advertising
consistently reflect that
archetype in a meaningful
way to my customer?”

35. Need help determining
your brand’s archetype
and how to use it?
Visit: www.cultbranding.com/model

36. for more on
how to build a
Cult Brand, visit:
www.cultbranding.com/101

37. from the creative minds @ www.cultbranding.com
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