About The Cult Branding Company

Founded on the principles of integrity and accountability in business, The Cult Branding Company is the recognized leader in cultivating authentic customer loyalty.

Using its trademarked Brand Model 3.0, The Cult Branding Company helps businesses understand, connect, and serve their best customers. In serving their best customers, businesses increase profitability, ROI, marketing effectiveness, ROA, and customer retention.

These consumer insights also make advertising campaigns effective, giving advertising executives clear indicators of what will work—and what will not.

Proven Results

The Cult Branding Company has the privilege of helping a diverse range of clients understand their best customers and learn to serve them better than anyone else. Our clients include:

Our History

During the holiday season of 1999, BJ Bueno stood inside New York City's FAO Schwartz, marveling at the endless stream of people flowing in and out of the enormous Fifth Avenue store through the revolving door. As a marketing and advertising strategist during the dotcom era, BJ was well acquainted with what he now calls the "Revolving Door Syndrome": companies invest big advertising dollars to drive traffic but offer little reason for the customer to stay or return again. BJ noted that most customers entering FAO Schwartz left empty-handed.

BJ began examining those rare brands with customer communities that enthusiastically rallied around the brand’s offering. Customers from companies like Harley-Davidson, Apple, Oprah, Vans, WWE, Jimmy Buffett, and Star Trek were never hard to find. But the term "community" didn't fully capture the spirit of these gatherings. It honestly felt more like a cult, but in a benign, even beneficial way. Despite the negative connotation of the term "cult," it best represented what these brands—these Cult Brands—had developed.

In examining this unprecedented level of customer faithfulness toward these brands, BJ identified a series of patterns all Cult Brands shared—patterns that seemed to unite these collective groups of customers. As an avid student of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, psychiatrist Carl Jung, and mythology expert Joseph Campbell, BJ immersed himself in the world of these extraordinary brands, and the Seven Golden Rules of Cult Branding were born.

Teaming up with writer Matthew Ragas, BJ published The Power of Cult Branding (through Prima Publishing and then Random House) in 2002. Even before its publication, the industry's top marketing mavens like Al Ries, Jack Trout, Jay Conrad Levinson, and Jeffrey J Fox saw the genius in the concept and wrote glowing endorsements.

BJ worked as an independent marketing consultant for a few years, teaching businesses how to cultivate true customer loyalty through the power of Cult Branding. He quickly became an in-demand speaker, being invited to top universities like Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan, as well as major corporations like Coca-Cola, IBM, and CNN.

In 2005, BJ became a partner in Nonbox, a national advertising agency with locations in Portland and Milwaukee, and soon after founded Nonbox Consulting, a consumer insight firm headquartered in downtown Orlando.

BJ and his team continued to refine a brand model that enabled them to identify the core qualities that unify loyal customers within any business. The Cult Branding Company was rolled out in 2006 with the exclusive focus of helping businesses understand their best customers and develop strategies for better serving them.

In an effort to capitalize on the company’s strongest asset—its people—The Cult Branding Company went virtual in late 2006, leaving behind its 8,000 square-foot office. Developing project management processes designed to facilitate greater levels of creativity, the team built its "Virtual Private Office" (VPO). The 10-person firm now operates in multiple locations within Florida and New York, eliminating the need to commute to work, saving on gas expenditure and office overhead; plus, it operates from paper-free personal offices.

Following up on The Power of Cult Branding, BJ published Cult Branding Workbook in 2007. In the same year, The Cult Branding Company team published Why We Talk: The Truth Behind Word-of-Mouth, an in-depth study of the drivers of positive and negative talk within consumer groups.

What The Cult Branding Company can do for you

The Cult Branding Company can help any large corporation discover their best customers. If you have grown your business mainly by increasing your advertising budget or expanding to new locations, we can show you how to grow your ROI exponentially, increase your market share, and retain your most profitable customers—within your current budget.

Uncover the key drivers of growth for your business with the Brand Model 3.0.

If you have any questions, contact us scott[at]cultbranding[dot]com or call 888.584.3767.