Making Believers: How to Build a Brand Cult

I came across a great post from Ilya Vedrashko on Ad Lab that touched on Douglas Atkin's 2004 book, The Culting of Brands. I remember reading about some of the issues it raised at the time, and that it made a lot of sense. Ilya's post not only brought that book back to mind, but cast the contents in a new light, especially considering our current, non-stop fixation on all things social media.

Of course, social media can be a valuable tool - but what Ilya points out is that Apple - one of the most admired companies out there - really isn't very social, though we sometimes have this impression that they are.

What is really going on? Ilya has some valuable insight here; check out his original blog post on ab0ut Apple and the enlarged "10 easy steps of brand culting" image found HERE.