Individual personalities are often key to building community-first brands. Think fitness brand Peloton, which cited superstar instructors such as Robin Arzon in its IPO filing as key to its success. Other brands might fulfill this objective by behaving in ways that are simply more human, like Steak-Umm with its distinctive personality-driven Twitte... See more

Much has been written about how brands like SoulCycle built cult-like followings by tapping into the collective desire to connect to something larger than themselves. Today, this practice has gone mainstream, so the question becomes, How can brands go beyond selling and engage with people’s spiritual lives?

Understand that people are already turning to brands to fulfill their need for connection

Over the last several decades, newspapers have gone through a large-scale unbundling—essentially a dismantling of its components thanks to the rise of digital technologies—with individual apps and websites delivering the various stand-alone value offerings that newspapers used to provide all in one place. And they’re delivering those products and s... See more

Religious tradition is in the midst of a large-scale unbundling process

Forty percent of millennials say they have no affiliation with a religious tradition, and Casper says that number is expected to rise as high as 50 percent for Gen Z. As these traditional religious affiliations decline, people are naturally looking to fill the void left by their disappearance with other sources of meaning. The take-away for busines... See more

We may be abandoning religion, but we’re not abandoning our search for meaning