True brand advertising is therefore an effort not so much to persuade as to convert. At its most successful, it creates a product cult, whose loyalists cannot be influenced by mere information: companies like Apple, Hermès, and Porsche are among those that have achieved this kind of immunity to competition, at least among their true believers. What is offered to adherents is not merely a good product (though often it is), but something deeper and more deeply fulfilling—a sense of meaning that comes with the surrender of choice.
