There’s a reason brands like Apple, CrossFit, and Harley-Davidson get called “cult brands.” It’s not just lazy marketing speak. These companies have figured out something that most businesses struggle with for years: how to make customers feel like they belong to something bigger than a transaction.
The uncomfortable truth? The psychological mechanics behind intense brand loyalty overlap significantly with techniques used by high-control groups. Before you close this tab, I’m not suggesting you start a commune or convince your customers to wear matching robes. But understanding how these groups create such powerful attachment can sharpen your marketing in ways that feel authentic rather than manipulative.
The difference between ethical community building and exploitation comes down to intent, transparency, and whether you’re genuinely creating value for people. Let’s unpack what actually works and where the ethical lines sit.
Why This Matters for Modern Marketers
Alexandra Stein, a social psychologist who spent years inside a controlling group before becoming a researcher, identified something crucial about how these organizations function. They don’t start with extreme demands. They start by meeting genuine human needs: belonging, purpose, community, answers to difficult questions.
Sound familiar? That’s exactly what good marketing does. The best brands don’t lead with features and benefits. They lead with identity and meaning.
The problem most marketers face isn’t that they’re too manipulative. It’s that they’re not compelling enough. They spray generic messaging at broad audiences and wonder why nobody cares. Meanwhile, organizations with intense followings (both ethical and not) understand something fundamental: people don’t just buy products. They buy into worldviews.
The Psychology of Belonging
Robert Jay Lifton’s research on thought reform identified that totalist systems succeed by first isolating people from outside perspectives, then providing a complete alternative worldview. Strip away the sinister applications, and there’s a kernel of marketing truth here.
Your customers are drowning in options and information. They’re exhausted by choice. When a brand provides a clear, coherent perspective on how to live, what to value, or who to be, that clarity becomes genuinely attractive.
Peloton doesn’t sell exercise bikes. They sell membership in a community of achievers who show up for themselves every day. Their leaderboards, live classes, and instructor relationships create the kind of peer accountability that keeps people coming back. CrossFit built an entire subculture around shared suffering and mutual support. Lululemon turned yoga pants into identity markers for a particular kind of aspirational lifestyle.
None of this is accidental. These brands understand that identity fusion, where personal identity merges with group identity, creates loyalty that transcends rational comparison shopping.
The ethical version of this doesn’t trap people. It gives them something genuine to belong to while remaining transparent about what you’re offering and why.
Small Commitments Build Big Loyalty
The foot-in-the-door technique has been studied extensively since the 1960s, but high-control groups have perfected its application. They never ask for everything upfront. They start with small, reasonable requests that align with the recruit’s existing values. Each small yes makes the next, slightly larger yes feel natural.
For marketers, this means rethinking your conversion strategy. Instead of pushing for the big commitment immediately, create a ladder of escalating engagement.
A free tool or resource gets someone’s email. That email leads to a webinar that provides genuine value. The webinar introduces your methodology. The methodology creates curiosity about working together. Each step feels like a natural progression rather than a sales push.
At Emarketed, we’ve seen this play out with our free marketing tools. Someone uses the AI Keyword Researcher to solve an immediate problem. That interaction demonstrates competence and builds familiarity. When they’re ready for more comprehensive help, we’re already a known quantity rather than a cold pitch.
The manipulation version of this exploits sunk cost fallacy, making people feel they’ve invested too much to walk away. The ethical version creates genuine value at each stage, so continuing makes sense on its own merits.
The Power of Shared Language
Every tight-knit group develops its own vocabulary. Researchers studying cults noted how specialized language serves multiple functions: it creates insider/outsider distinctions, it shortcuts complex ideas into simple phrases, and it makes members feel like they’re part of something exclusive.
Brands do this too, though usually less deliberately. Think about how tech companies name their user tiers (members, insiders, founders). Think about CrossFit’s WODs and AMRAPs. Think about how Apple fans talk about the “ecosystem.”
This isn’t about inventing meaningless buzzwords. It’s about developing authentic language that captures your brand’s perspective on the world. When your customers start using your vocabulary in their own conversations, you’ve achieved something ads can’t buy.
The Content Marketing Playbook we put together addresses how to develop this kind of distinctive voice. It’s not something you manufacture in a branding workshop. It emerges from having genuine points of view and expressing them consistently.
Creating Rituals and Shared Experiences
One of the most underutilized tools in marketing is ritual. High-control groups understand that regular, predictable practices create emotional anchors. Morning devotions, weekly meetings, annual gatherings. These aren’t just scheduling conveniences. They’re psychological architecture that reinforces identity and belonging.
Brands with intense followings have figured this out. Apple’s product launches became cultural events that customers planned their schedules around. Supreme’s drop model turned buying clothes into a weekly ritual. Peloton members have their favorite instructors and class times. The experience becomes part of their routine, not just a product they occasionally use.
For most businesses, this might look like:
- A weekly email that people actually look forward to opening because it consistently delivers value or entertainment
- A monthly community event, virtual or in-person, where customers connect with each other
- An annual gathering that becomes the highlight of your industry’s calendar
The key is consistency and genuine value. People don’t form attachments to sporadic, transactional touchpoints. They form attachments to reliable experiences that become woven into their lives.
Fear and Urgency: Handle With Extreme Care
Here’s where we need to talk about the dark side. High-control groups are masters at creating fear of the outside world and urgency around staying within the group. They position themselves as the only safe harbor in a threatening sea.
Some marketers have learned this lesson too well. Scarcity marketing, countdown timers, fear-based messaging about what happens if you don’t buy. These tactics work in the short term. They also erode trust and attract the wrong customers.
The ethical line is clear: urgency should be real, not manufactured. If you’re running a genuine limited-time offer, say so. If your cart is always “about to close,” you’re training customers not to believe you.
Fear-based marketing also tends to attract anxious customers who buy for the wrong reasons and become high-maintenance or resentful. The brands with genuine cult followings don’t operate this way. They create desire, not desperation.
The Single Solution Trap
Research on high-control groups consistently finds a pattern: leaders position themselves as the singular answer to followers’ problems. This creates dependency rather than empowerment.
Some brands fall into this trap accidentally. They become so focused on customer retention that they create ecosystems designed to make leaving difficult rather than staying desirable. Excessive lock-in, proprietary formats that don’t play nice with competitors, cancellation processes designed to frustrate.
The brands that build genuine loyalty do the opposite. They make their products valuable enough that customers choose to stay, not trapped enough that they can’t leave. They celebrate when customers succeed, even if that success eventually takes them elsewhere.
This approach actually improves retention because it shifts the relationship dynamic. Customers who feel free to leave but choose to stay become advocates. Customers who feel trapped become critics the moment they escape.
Building Community Without Exploitation
The research on cult psychology emphasizes that these groups exploit fundamental human needs: belonging, meaning, identity, connection. The ethical marketing question isn’t whether to address these needs. It’s how to address them genuinely.
The difference between building a community and running a manipulation scheme comes down to a few key questions:
- Are you creating genuine value, or just extracting it?
- Does participation make people’s lives better, or just your revenue bigger?
- Can members leave easily, and do they speak well of you when they do?
- Are you transparent about what you’re doing and why?
Brands like Patagonia have built intense loyalty by genuinely standing for something. Their environmental activism isn’t a marketing strategy designed to create tribal identity. It’s a reflection of actual values that happens to attract like-minded customers. The authenticity is the strategy.
Practical Takeaways
If you’re building a direct-to-consumer brand or any business that depends on customer relationships, here’s what this research suggests:
Start with genuine shared values. Figure out what you actually believe, then find the people who believe it too. Don’t manufacture a worldview for marketing purposes.
Create escalating engagement opportunities. Give people small ways to participate before asking for big commitments. Make each step valuable in its own right.
Develop distinctive language and perspective. Don’t just describe what you sell. Articulate how you see the world. The right customers will recognize themselves in your worldview.
Build rituals and regular touchpoints. Consistency creates attachment. Give people something to look forward to, then deliver reliably.
Avoid manufactured urgency and fear. These tactics attract the wrong customers and erode trust. Create desire through genuine value instead.
Make staying a choice, not a trap. Customers who feel free to leave become your best advocates when they choose to stay.
The uncomfortable truth about cult psychology research is that it reveals how malleable human behavior can be under the right conditions. That knowledge comes with responsibility. Used ethically, these insights help you build genuine communities around brands that make people’s lives better. Used exploitatively, they create the kind of manipulation that eventually destroys trust and reputation.
The good news is that the ethical approach actually works better long-term. Brands built on genuine value and authentic community outlast those built on psychological tricks. The customers you attract by being genuinely worth following are worth far more than those you capture through manipulation.
References
- Understanding The Manipulative Tactics Of Cults - Davenport Psychology
- How cult leaders brainwash followers for total control - Aeon Essays
- BITE Model of Authoritarian Control - Freedom of Mind Resource Center
- Psychological Manipulation and Cluster-B Personality Traits of Cult Leaders - Walden University ScholarWorks
- Cult-Related Activity - Bethune-Cookman University
- Brainwashing: Cults, Indoctrination, Manipulation - Britannica
- Lessons from Jonestown - American Psychological Association
- Dark Psychology: The Hidden Art of Control - The Brink
