Cult Marketing, an insights, strategy, and creative firm based in Columbus, Ohio, has revealed its unique approach to the marketing and branding of its clients, which involves narratology, which is the study of storytelling and narrative structure and how these affect human perception, and ethnography, which involves close observation of subjects in their natural settings.
According to Cult Marketing, it sets itself apart from other marketing firms by having a concrete, science-based process behind its work, which has led to various clients of all sizes, from small businesses to major multinationals. It seeks to get client brands to connect better emotionally with their customers, especially since around 90% of consumer decisions are made at an emotional level.
Doug McIntyre, Cult Marketing founder and CEO, says the company's biggest successes have involved transforming companies' messaging from factual, functional, cognitive-type language and branding to being able to engage at an emotional level with consumers.
One of the methods Cult Marketing employs to achieve this is narratology, which studies how people communicate through storytelling. This is because humans are naturally storytelling creatures, and most social interactions involve someone telling stories and the recipients reacting to these stories. Cult Marketing's team includes narratologists with degrees from top universities, using their expertise to help understand the deep emotional connections that people have with brands, as well as constructing the messages brands present to their customers.
Another method the company uses is ethnography, which is a branch of anthropology that involves closely observing people in a natural setting and exploring cultural phenomena from the subject's point of view. When doing market research, Cult Marketing studies customers by following them around when they shop, while taking note of various phenomena, such as the objects they look at, what draws their interests, how they react to it, and who they shop with. It also conducts home ethnography, where they observe customers in their homes and study how they use or interact with the brand in their daily lives. Cult Marketing also uses a narrative logic approach, which includes a one-on-one session, where people respond to images or stories related to the brand, in order to deduce how they feel about it and which messages resonate the best with them.
All-in-all, Cult Marketing works with the client in five phases – immersion/management discovery, gathering customer insights, coming up with creative ideas, marketing these ideas, and lastly, implementation.
McIntyre shared a case study where Cult Marketing transformed the messaging of a company that helps companies and individuals navigate the complicated US healthcare system. Initially, the company's main selling points was that it would save its customers around 5% to 7% in healthcare costs, which didn't stand out much. Cult Marketing did a deep dive using its different methods, including visiting customers in their homes and talking about their healthcare journey. McIntyre says Cult found out that customers were frustrated beyond belief that they didn't know how to handle their healthcare matters and get stuff paid, all the while dealing with the physical toll of their illness. He says that one of the concepts that emerged from its narratology exercises ended up being extremely transformative for the client.
“One thing that stood out was the idea of a warrior. Customers gravitated to an image of cute and cuddly rabbits, which appear sympathetic and empathetic, but these rabbits were also holding assault weapons. The idea was having somebody who was caring but also able to go out and fight on their behalf, get stuff done and find solutions to their healthcare problems. This helped us come up with the idea of the healthcare warrior, which became their main marketing message. This helped their membership grow more than tenfold – from 245,000 in 2016 to more than 3 million at present. This greatly changed the future of the brand and the company,” McIntyre says.
Media Contact:
Name: Doug McIntyre
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