Beyond Belief: What Todays Marketers Can Learn From World Religions

Much has been written about the importance of belief in marketing a brand, company, product or service. The Strategy Distillery defines it this way:

A core brand belief attracts consumers who believe what it believes; it answers their social or self-esteem needs; it strongly resonates and it creates an emotional reaction.

But what exactly does belief mean when it comes to brand marketing? It turns out that the world’s most popular religions spiritual philosophies can not only enable us to be better people, but to be better marketers through a deeper understanding of the power and the application of belief.

Arguably, some of the most successful brands in the world are Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. Marked by extraordinary longevity and converts in the billions, they have been able to reach, persuade and recruit more people than any one brand in history. Like the best marketers, they successfully recruit, convert and created faithful evangelists. But most importantly, through metaphor and symbolism, each of these religions tells a compelling version of the Hero’s Journey to achieve what we marketers consider the Holy Grail: Belief.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy dedicated to understanding the nature of existence, being and the world. Considered to be the foundation of philosophy, it concerns itself with first causes and the foundational principles. The word itself stems from the root words "meta" meaning beyond and "physics" meaning the physical world. In today’s parlance, it can be understood as “the ultimate reality” which for most of human history has been rooted in religion or spirituality.

In our secularized Western world, fewer and fewer people are putting their faith in organized religion, but that doesn’t mean they don’t seek to understand the world or have a relationship with the divine. The human hunger to believe in something and feel a relationship with something bigger than oneself seems to be inborn, universal and insatiable. But it doesn’t necessarily have to live just in the realm of religion or spirituality. In fact, this same drive can be seen in the causes we care about, the music we listen to, the films we watch and the social tribes we join.

Today’s best marketers understand that it is this very same human impulse that informs the brands we adopt and evangelize. According to an article in The Harvard Business Review, every organized religion offers three key benefits to its followers, a) a set of core beliefs and values, b) symbols, myths, and rituals, and c) relationships with members of a like-minded community. Viewed through this lens, it becomes clear why brands like Harley Davidson, Apple and Nike have been so successful in inspiring an almost religious appreciation and dominating the market in their respective categories.

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