Go Sell It on the Mountain: The Religions of Iconic Brands Apple, Nike, and Disney The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Graves, Vann. 2014. Go Sell It on the Mountain: The Religions of Iconic Brands Apple, Nike, and Disney. Master's thesis, Harvard University, Extension School. Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37367539 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Go Sell It on the Mountain: The Religions of Iconic Brands Apple, Nike, and Disney R. Vann Graves A Thesis in the Field of Visual Arts for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University March 2014 © 2014 Reynoldo Vann Graves ii Abstract Western popular culture often suffers from a lack of understanding of religious doctrine and tradition. A 2010 U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that the level of American religious illiteracy is extremely high: 45% of Catholics in the United States do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize, but actually become the body and blood of Christ. 53% of Protestants cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. 43% of Jews do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish. 47% of Americans know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. 38% correctly associate Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism. 27% of Americans correctly answer that most people in Indonesia—the country with the world’s largest Muslim population—are Muslims. (Pew 1) Some marketers and advertising executives have capitalized on this illiteracy through organizing branding campaigns and strategies based on generic religious components. This thesis evaluates how some brands, including Apple, Nike, and Disney, have elevated themselves to the status of consumer religions by using familiar religious archetypes, frameworks, and stereotypes. These elements are not only derived from a true theological understanding of religion, but are equally derivative of misrepresentations of religious iii traditions. This study explores how accurate and inaccurate assumptions about religion inform marketing and advertising strategies. By relying on widespread illiteracy about religion, brands can imitate only the aspects of religion that best sell their respective products to the widest audience. Apple, Nike, and Disney’s marketing strategies have incorporated the tenets of religion so powerfully that they have set themselves up as virtual religions. iv Dedication I lovingly dedicate this thesis to my best friend and wife, Autumn. v Table of Contents Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………v List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………vii I. Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 II. Apple ……………………...……………………………………………………..13 Mind = Knowledge = Apple……………………………………………..13 III. Nike………………………………………………………………………………29 Body = Fitness = Nike………………...…………………………………29 IV. Disney……………………………………………………………………………42 Spirit = Uplifting = Disney………………………………………………43 V. Conclusion………………………………………………………………...……..56 Epilogue……………………………………………..………………………………...…58 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..62 vi List of Figures Fig. 1 Steve Jobs. Time Magazine, 2008.......…………………………...………15 Fig. 2 Apple Rainbow Logo………...………………………………………...…16 Fig. 3 Apple Computer Advertisement 1………………………………………..20 Fig. 4 Apple Computer Advertisement 2………………………………………..21 Fig. 5 Christy. Apple Tattoo 1………………..…………………………...…….25 Fig. 6 Nicole. Apple Tattoo 2…………………………..…………………….....26 Fig. 7 NikeTown. New York City…………..…………………………………...36 Fig. 8 Nike Tattoos………………….…………………………………………..40 Fig. 9 Disney Castle. Orlando, Florida……..……….…………………………..46 Fig. 10 Mecca. Hejaz, Saudi Arabia…...………………………………………....47 Fig. 11 Women of the Seraglio……………...……………………………………49 Fig. 12 Disney Princesses..………………………………………………..……..50 Fig. 13 Disney Fairy Tale Wedding Advertisement………...……………………51 Fig. 14 Disney Princess Diamond Engagement Rings……………………...……52 Fig. 15 Annfaye Kao……………….……………………….………………….....53 Fig. 16 Anonymous Disney Follower……………………..……………………...54 vii Chapter I Introduction Brands are the new religion … They supply our modern metaphysics, imbuing the world with significance … Brands function as complete meaning systems. (Atkin 97) This thesis explores the intersection of religion and the world of consumerism through the lens of brand building. It examines how these apparently very different traditions intersect in the realms of consumer products, marketing, and branding. Companies rely heavily on product positioning, marketing strategies, and their sales force to build brand loyalty. A company’s ability to succeed in a given market is inextricably linked to the degrees of confidence and belief that consumers place in its products. Through the use of market research, focus groups, taste tests, and surveys, companies track the level of “faith” that consumers have in their brands, which provides them with important insights that they can use to improve brand loyalty and success. The strong belief and steadfast loyalty to brands that many consumers demonstrate can be compared to the foundations of religious devotion, thus suggesting that an exploration of the nature of religious faith can offer a powerful roadmap for how branding might evolve in the future. Gavan Fitzsimons, Professor of Marketing and Psychology at Duke University Fuqua School of Business, notes, For eons, organized religion has provided a sense of community, has provided a way to say who we are to others, has provided a source of meaning in the world … Brands, as they have evolved, have just moved into that exact same space with those exact same functions. (Hicks 1) 1 According to Mara Einstein, author of Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age, “Much as religion created meaning for people’s lives over the centuries, now marketers create meaning out of the products that fill our existence. These products come to be not just clothes to wear or cars to drive, but elements of who we are” (71). This thesis explores how some companies have successfully elevated their brands to the status of religious icons. It delineates the ways in which corporations employ marketing and branding practices that create ideologies and philosophies that have no actual spiritual, supernatural, or religious components, but that mimic the methods of religious institutions. These practices encourage consumers to function in a manner that psychologically resembles the behavior of religious believers. Einstein also observes that “The sources of identity formation have changed. Whereas once our family, friends, schools, and religious institutions gave us a basis for understanding who we are and what we value, these groups have been usurped by marketers and mass media.” She adds, “It seems that marketers have learned their craft from religion—turning diehard product users into evangelists” (74–75). To create a framework for this paper, it is important to establish a working definition of religion. This assumes that a single definition for religion exists and that the definition is universally accepted—neither of which is the case. Understanding religion is a multifaceted and complex endeavor. According to Emile Durkheim, religion is A unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices 2 which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them … [Religion is] the self-validation of a society by means of myth and ritual. (46) Catherine L. Albanese defines religion as “a system of symbols (creed, code, cultus) by means of which people (a community) orient themselves in the world with reference to both ordinary and extraordinary powers, meanings, and values” (9). In Spiritual Marketplace (1992) Wade Clark Roof states that “Lived religion” … involves three crucial aspects: scripts, or sets of symbols that imaginatively explain what the world and life are about; practices, or the means whereby individuals relate to and locate themselves within a symbolic frame of reference; and human agency, or the ability of people to actively engage the religious worlds they create. (65) Lastly, in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (2004) American anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes that to understand religion, which, in his view, is a cultural system, intuition is necessary. He asserts that religion and society shape each other. For Geertz, religion is a cultural system that he defines as (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. (90) From these broad definitions, it can be concluded that, at a minimum, religion is based on faith. It is composed of certain axioms—with respect to human life and the world we live in—that are felt to be true; and although they cannot be verified, they are accepted.