Oh wow, that sounds incredible!

Wow this looks incredible! What a great spot. What was the retreat about? Looks like a great writing spot

Neal Arthur: "It wasn't a celebrity meal, it was a community meal." @marctothec (For The Culture) nails this - McDonald's democratized ordering. Your meal could be famous. They celebrated the ritual, not the celebrity. That's culture, not marketing.

Results: Quarter Pounder sales 2X in week 1. National shortages of beef, lettuce, Sprite. Fans stealing posters for eBay. Burger King copied with celebs but failed. Why? McDonald's merged fandoms (theirs + Travis's) and acted like a fan, not a corporation.

@marctothec would call this cultural invention at its finest (For The Culture). Every engagement ring proves culture can be manufactured. Traditions can be created. Meaning is whatever we agree. The most powerful products don't fulfill needs. They create them.

The scam: Diamonds aren't rare (De Beers controlled supply). "Forever" because resale value is awful. Yet proposals went from 0% to 80% in US, 5% to 60% in Japan. They didn't sell jewelry. They sold a ritual. Made diamonds = love. Invented tradition from thin air.

That's a really interesting perspective.

Lots of talk about Slot, Salah too old, formations etc., but those discussions are missing the bigger picture, perhaps

This flips everything. Stop chasing potential customers/voters/donors. Find people who already believe what you believe. Give them a way to connect. You don't create communities. You reveal them. The congregation already exists. They just don't know each other yet.

Our brains seek worldview alignment before products. The Beyhive wasn't about Beyoncé the artist but the beliefs in her music. "Independent Women" to "Who Runs the World" weren't songs. They were cultural artifacts people used to signal identity & find their tribe.

Features tell. Stories sell. But worldviews transcend price. The car still had broken cup holders. But it became a middle finger to conventional luxury. Sometimes the worst product makes the best identity statement.

C.C. Chapman says "start with the soul, end with the sale." @marctothec shows this in "For The Culture" - appeal to identity (limbic system) before logic (neocortex). The buyer didn't buy transportation. They bought a $150K statement about rejecting consumer culture.

@marctothec explains in "For The Culture": REI found their congregation - people who already shared their beliefs - and gave them permission to act. True differentiation isn't what you sell. It's what you'll sacrifice for what you believe. That's culture.

REI's belief: "a life outdoors is a life well spent." Keeping stores open when everyone has the day off violated this. So they acted on conviction. 170 companies followed. State parks opened free. People weren't buying gear. They were voting for a worldview.

Brands evolved from ownership marks (livestock) to identity markers (lifestyle). The winning ones don't just sell products. They provide artifacts for identity construction. Ways to say who we are without words. That's not marketing. That's meaning.

Your brain processes aligned brands as part of your extended self. The medial prefrontal cortex activates the same way for your favorite brand as for your own name. When someone attacks your brand, they're attacking you. When they celebrate it, they're celebrating you.

We're all interpellated into something. Family values, company culture, national myths. These aren't ideas you have. They're ideas that have you. The question isn't IF you're in a cult. It's which ones, and whether you chose them consciously.

Your brain can't tell the difference between beliefs you chose & beliefs that chose you. Via repetition, ideas reshape your neural pathways until they feel like YOUR thoughts. The same mechanism that creates NXIVM members creates Apple fanatics. Intensity differs. Process doesnt

Kodak changed this by repositioning photos from "serious art" to "capture joy." Smiles appeared in the 1920s. Not because teeth improved. Because meaning shifted. This is the lesson: Want behavior change? Don't change the logic. Change the social meaning.