How to start a cult in 8 steps?

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In 1970, a motivated individual named Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Rajneesh and Osho, founded a cult in India. With a vision and enough motivation, he traveled to Oregon in 1981 in search of a large enough piece of land on which to build a utopia.

In 1982, he began building his commune on a mud ranch and gathering followers who, together with him, began working on building a real small city. He called his commune Rajneeshpuram.

The commune was not intended for hippies or people who would bangladesh whatsapp list expected to join a cult of any kind. The commune attracted educated, well-off professionals who worked in cities around the world and lived an urban lifestyle.

The media initially adored Rajneeshpuram and gave it a lot of space and positive words, which of course helped spread the word and interest a large number of fans. The commune was also quite progressive, especially for its time.

They were among the first to engage in sustainable agriculture and organic food production. They turned the land that was abandoned, bare and polluted into a veritable green oasis of cleanliness and a healthy lifestyle.

The ranch was growing at an incredible rate. From about 10 people at the beginning, there were soon hundreds. Work was going on at every turn. The ranch was turning into a city where everyone wore red, the color of the sunset.

By 1983, the ranch had a population of over 7,000 and had the infrastructure of a real city with police, fire, restaurants, and public transportation. But, like most cities and communities, it wasn't without its problems.

The people at the top were greedy and corrupt. They would do anything for power and wealth. They took millions of dollars from their members. They poisoned the food in a bar in a neighboring town so that residents could not vote against them in local elections. They began walking around openly armed, which eventually led to police intervention, arrests, and deportations of all those who were not American citizens.

This wasn't the only cult. You don't have to be of the hippie generation to know about Charles Manson and his “family” cult. You probably remember the incident in 1997 when 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult killed themselves simultaneously, wearing identical Nike sneakers and black clothing.

The People's Temple, founded by Jim Jones, is probably the most infamous cult known for the mass suicide of 909 people, including 304 children. What drove all these people, most of whom were just like the rest of us before joining the cult, to join the cult in the first place, and then kill themselves and their children?

Don't worry, this isn't a text about psychology in the medical sense. This is a text about brand psychology and the power that branding has on consumer behavior. Because what is branding if not creating an army of brand fans who are willing to spend more than their finances allow for it?

Branding means belonging. Recognizability. Uniqueness. Prestige. Desire. Branding means that you agree with the philosophy that a particular brand preaches, practices or offers. Branding means that you are part of a cult and that the cult of the brand is part of you. Branding and brands are not too different from cults because they all have the same idea – selling a story, a philosophy and a way of life.

The power of branding is that it's very easy to spot the ones with an apple on the lid in a sea of ​​laptops. That almost everyone associates a specific shade of turquoise with Tiffany. That when you think of jellyfish, you think of Versace. That Birkin means Hermes, not Jane Birkin. That you associate the color orange with Harley Davidson.