Home About IUP Magazines Journals Books Amicus Archives
     
A Guided Tour | Recommend | Links | Subscriber Services | Feedback | Subscribe Online
 
Effective Executive Magazine:
To Believe is to Belong : Designing the Brand Community
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Primal branding is a perspective that treats brands as a belief systema system that attracts people who want to share their beliefs. This article discusses seven pieces of code called Primal code that go into every belief system.

A woman in New York City walks down the street, holding a cup of Starbucks coffee. A complete stranger stops her to ask where the nearest Starbucks is. They smile at one another as the woman gives directions.A teenager sits in a bus in London with sound pods stuck in her ears, her Apple iPod blaring. Her friend sitting next to her elbows her and they giggle.A man drives down Hollywood Boulevard in his Mini Cooper. He hears a quick honk and turns his head. Another driver waves to him from his own Mini Cooper.All of these people have one thing in common. They belong to a community: the Starbucks community, the iPod community, and the community of people who own Mini Coopers.

Brand equity is no longer measured purely by quantitative data, but by how many people you can attract to your brand.And that gets us to the big question. How many people actually consider themselves members of your brand community? To figure this out, ask yourself if you have a belief system that attracts people who want to share in your beliefs.

After 20 years of working with some of the world's largest corporations, we have realized that while everyone is well-schooled in the hard sciences of manufacturing, pricing, distribution and accounting, when it comes to the soft sciences of human persuasion, motivation and managing brand intangiblesthe very things that create community "feeling"managers have had to rely on anecdote, gut instinct, or even mimicking their competitors to try to create a steadfast community of brand advocates.

 
 
 

To Believe is to Belong : Designing the Brand Community,Primal branding, Starbucks community,iPod community, brand community,largest corporations, manufacturing, pricing, distribution,accounting,persuasion, motivation,
managing brand,competitive pricing, technology,media planner, project manager, computer engineer,manufacturing quality,customer community. consumer advocates, brand loyalists, patriots.