How To Brand A Yeti Using Primal Branding

If we can create belief around things that aren’t even real, we can do it around IRL products, people, places and things. Illustration: Terri Kasuba

Branding is a process of attracting community around a person, product, place or “thing.” The most strategic and surefooted way of accomplishing this is Primal Branding®, a systematic approach to building narrative that can be deployed to become a desirable brand surrounded by adoring fans.

(Primal Branding is required reading at YouTube and has its own chapter in The YouTube Formula by Derral Eves.)

While it is easy to understand why corporations and entertainment megastars can manage their brands and become wildly successful (after all, they have zillions of dollars to support them, right?), it’s a real puzzle to explain how some things — as goofy or inexplicable as they, capture our attention and occupy spaces in our brains.

Like the Yeti — a creature that may (or may not) exist. A being that exists in the Himalayas, with similar characters in the Northwestern United States and in Eastern U.S. (somewhere in North Carolina). Whether called “Yeti,” “Sasquatch,” “Bigfoot” or just “Hairy Big Thing”, people in different cultures seem to agree that this creature does (or does not) exist.

You could say the same thing abut UFOs, unicorns, or the National Debt.

Let’s explain that.