A breakdown of how Zach Pograb, Apple, and Equinox built cult-like followings. Zach uses a motto and black flag emoji. Apple's "Mac vs PC" campaign created a cultural split. Equinox markets itself as exclusive, for high-achievers only. The formula: make your views unmistakably visible, attract like-minded people, and reinforce that followers are part of something bigger.
Everyone says cults are bad, but I think they're wrong. And sure, they can be dangerous, but there are some benefits. Cults bring people together, a sense of unity. They help you find yourself, and they make cult leaders ridiculously wealthy. So let's talk about how to start a cult. You probably already follow some cult leaders. I know I do. One such cult leader is named Zach Pograb. He's done an excellent job building his cult, and I respect it a lot. Zach has a motto, "Follow obsession." Anybody who knows Zach knows his motto. It makes him stand out, seem obsessed in the best way possible. Being obsessed is seen as a bad thing to most people, but Zach has turned being obsessed into a good thing. It's what makes it so powerful. People who follow Zach and follow obsession feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. Zach also did something else really brilliant. He adopted the black flag emoji as his symbol and then asked his followers to put the black flag emoji in their bios if they were also obsessed, and they did it. You can see the black flag all around Twitter, and that represents following obsession. Another thing he's done is associating his cult with some of the highest status people in the world. You look at his marketing, there's photos of Steve Jobs, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and other world leaders showing that all the world leaders and creators and builders are following obsession as well. Speaking of Steve Jobs, Apple does a very similar thing. Remember the Mac versus PC ads that were everywhere in the 2000s? Well, How is Apple showing there are two camps, the non-creatives and the creatives? They were trying to bring us over to the creative camp, the creative cult, and they won. Everything I do is on a Mac or iPhone. The last cult that I want to study is Equinox. It's a luxury gym with locations all around New York, all around the world. What's crazy about Equinox is that they take pride in the fact that they're luxury. They don't try to hide the fact that their gym is for high achievers and high earners. My fiancée went to a class there one time where they screamed, "You are the best. You guys are the highest achievers. You're here at 6:30 AM." They literally scream this kind of stuff because they want you to feel like you're a part of something bigger than yourself. In a recent ad, Equinox just put the words, "We don't speak Januarys." They are dedicated to helping the best of the best, the high achievers, and they want you to know it. When you're building a cult brand, you want to have your views be obvious. You wanna attract like-minded people, you wanna bring them together and show that they're a part of something bigger than themselves. Go find some patterns, nerds.
