Cult loyalty is the ultimate level of devotion for your brand. It’s an ingredient that keeps you at the top of the game and can sustain your popularity and relevance if you follow the steps towards achieving and retaining this status. Having introduced three components of cult loyalty previously, it’s time to dive into further ways your brand can achieve unconditional affection from consumers.
Giving a status
Whether they like to admit it or not, what drives many people to buy products or use services is status. Human beings are status-seeking species and for many, the urge to maintain a high-profile status is strong – especially with the culture of Instagram. A brand has reached cult loyalty he moment its products are widely deemed as needed to gain a status.
Take street-wear brand Supreme as an example, it has reached such cult status that its latest ‘drops’ sell out within seconds, the queues outsides its shops can last hours and it’s even a favourite of fake clothing market stalls worldwide! What were some of Supreme’s techniques to making this happen? – sell minimal quantities so that owning a T-shirt that many failed to buy in time makes you have something others don’t. Supreme has managed to create an image competition among its consumers, who vie to be the ones to grab the rare pieces of clothing and showcase their commitment to being the most up-to-date ‘hypebeast’.
Other ways your brand can give statuses to customers can be through VIP packages, priority status or exclusive offers to those deemed most loyal. Airlines are a good example of providing the VIP treatment to loyal customers through SkyMiles and Frequent Flyer programmes.
The launch hype
This is the move to make when your brand has already gained enough of a loyal following to showcase and boost your image further. Similar to the way in which Supreme has made a culture and community out of its Thursday morning weekly drops, staging high-profile launches for your latest products is a PR match made in heaven. Think of the reputation Apple has for its flashy new product launches. Think back to the days of children waiting with excitement to hear J.K Rowling read an excerpt of the latest Harry Potter book. Think of the hordes of make-up fans vying to get a selfie with influencer Jeffree Star at launches of new stores. Getting attention and anticipation for how your brand will launch its next product guarantees interest in your latest product before it has even launched.
Building hype doesn’t have to always mean a high-budget launch event but can also mean getting people talking by shutting down your online store, putting suggestive messages out and thus getting bloggers’ tongues wagging with speculation even weeks before the product launches.
Keeping it real
While you may have achieved initial cult loyalty through making ownership of your brand a status, then furthering the loyalty through hype around your launches, maintaining your cult loyalty is essential and not always a given. Being authentic is your life-support to prolong the love your customers had found in your products or services. While it is important for businesses to keep up with the times and innovate its products to stay relevant, some can take it too far and lose the very quirk that made them special. Often in fashion, some brands land themselves in PR disasters when making poor choices in the name of ‘being bold’.
One brand’s risk-take deemed to pay off was that of Virgin’s venture into air travel. True to the bohemian nature of its brand, Virgin Atlantic went all-in as an edgy, stylish alternative to mainstream providers. They knew exactly the type of customers they needed to target – the same kind it targeted in all its other products that it knew they loved – and offered these devout customers a unique set of amenities unavailable anywhere else in the market. Sticking to what you know and what makes people love your brand is what keeps you at the top when branching out.
Deliver on your promises
A deal-breaker for brands’ cult loyalty is letting its consumers down. A betrayal of trust is the death to any form of loyalty – and some brands may never recover from it. In the wake of controversy around its attitudes to privacy, trust in Facebook from its users dipped by 66%. Even now, it faces a slow process and a lot of PR-fixing to regain its cult loyalty status. Acknowledging your brand’s promise and transparency as an agreement with your customer is critical when any loyalty begins with trust.
In building brand loyalty from a trusting relationship, your business benefits from leeway in terms of inevitable slip-ups and gaffes. When Apple release a new iPhone and a bug is discovered, its loyal customers are often patient and forgiving because they trust Apple to fix the issue.
Unlocking brand loyalty from a practical level starts with ensuring your business has the right people to connect with customers. AIESEC provides companies with young, in-touch talent ready to change the world through business. Check our partners portal to start your journey to brand loyalty.
