top of page

The Unspeakable Brand Appeal of Conspiracy

I am an advocate of building unbreakable emotional bonds with customers. The best way to build these bonds is by understanding and leveraging your brand affinity.  It goes beyond awareness, consideration, purchase, and loyalty. Brand affinity is the point where your customer self-identifies with your brand. They are no longer a person who shops at Target. They are a Target Shopper. They are no longer a person who uses an Apple device. They are an Apple user. Your customers see themselves and the brand they are identifying with as one and the same.

If you want to know what your brand’s affinity is, take the assessment. Every brand has a unique set of affinity factors that work much like our DNA to build a unique appeal. There are seven affinity factors as I present them, and each of those are positive, “white hat” appeals to the customer’s personal desires. The positive factors are:

  1. Nurture

  2. Aspire

  3. Exceed

  4. Elevate

  5. Remember

  6. Practice

  7. Service

You can read more about each of them and how they work here.

The Other – Darker – Affinity Factor

However, there is another way to build brand affinity. It plays right to the core of our fears rather than our desires – Conspiracy. We are seeing this factor growing in our political landscape right now, and make no mistake, political candidates and parties are brands. Like every other brand, they have the choice to build affinity positively, or negatively. Here’s why the negative approach is so appealing, and an exploration of whether it is a valid option for the long haul.

How Is Conspiracy Even A Thing?

Rarely have we ever seen consumer brands spread conspiracy theories about their competitors. They might suggest they do something better than their competition, or with fewer errors or frustrations. However, conspiracy is another thing altogether. Why do they avoid it? Because there are laws and regulations binding them to “truth in advertising.” When consumers see or hear an advertisement, whether it’s on the Internet, radio or television, or anywhere else, federal law says that ad must be truthful, not misleading, and, when appropriate, backed by scientific evidence.

Although I am affirming political parties and candidates are brands, the law views their situation quite differently. In this era of fake news, criminal accusations, and allegations of misconduct made toward politicians, some people may wonder why they don’t sue to set the record straight. The main reason may be that, because the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and of the press, any action based on the content of statements must satisfy narrowly defined requirements, and politicians, as public figures, must also meet significantly higher burdens of proof than an ordinary person.

This is compounded by individuals, passionately supporting their preferred candidate, are more than willing to spread information that is not, strictly speaking, an advertisement, without ever checking the facts behind what they are spreading. It is a perfect storm of deception.

The Appeal of Conspiracy

The greater our sense of powerlessness and bewilderment that our circumstances are what they are, the greater the appeal of conspiracy. There are several factors behind this.

Conspiracy is deeply fulfilling because we can point to someone creating a situation on purpose rather than having no explanation at all. We crave clear, tangible answers, even if they are not real, simply because to name the source of the situation gives us an illusion that we can control it.

Second, once we form a belief, we look for validating information, and disregard anything that does not support the existing belief. This is known as confirmation bias, which works in concert with belief perseverance phenomenon. Belief perseverance refers to the fact that we seek to maintain our beliefs even after the information that originally created it has been effectively debunked. Once we’re set in our beliefs, evidence to the contrary will be dismissed, actively – and some would say aggressively.

Lastly, we crave being uniquely knowledgeable, in ways others aren’t. Knowledge is power. And we all prefer feeling powerful to feeling powerless, bringing us full circle.

Does Conspiracy Work?

On the surface, if you can get away with it, conspiracy is a highly effective way to build unbreakable emotional bonds with a following that will forgive any transgression.  However, there is a built-in lifespan for every conspiracy-based brand. The reason this is true is that in cannot be sustained over time, it takes tremendous energy and effort to maintain a constant flow of falsified information as well as to hold onto a false belief in the face of constant information to the contrary.  Conspiracies, as a brand strategy, are depleting of the brand’s resources and the loyal following’s ability to withstand.

There is another factor that must be considered as well. Customers don’t buy your brand for what you do. They buy why you do it, as Simon Sinek has famously said. Your brand’s “why” simply cannot be solely against something. It must be for a higher ideal. As an example, a non-profit, fighting “against” racism is actually fighting for inclusion. It is possible to have a ideological foe to rally against, but if there is no promise of a better tomorrow, then there is no hope. Brands sell hope. That is to say, successful brands sell hope.

1 view0 comments
bottom of page