Why Companies Build Myths Around Ordinary Things

I came across an interactive Lacoste website where you move through a colourful factory and watch a polo shirt being made. Machines spin, fabric moves across the screen, and each stage of production becomes a small animated spectacle. It is beautifully made, but after a few minutes I kept returning to a less flattering question: who is this actually for?

Does anyone deliberately visit a website like this? Does someone finish work, open their laptop and think that they would like to explore the digital factory of a polo shirt? Probably not. Most people will arrive through an email, an advertisement, a QR code in a store, or a link passed around by designers. They will click through for a few moments, perhaps enter a competition, and then disappear. The experience may have taken months to design and build, while the average visitor spends less time inside it than they would spend choosing a Netflix show.

At first this can look like an absurd use of money. Lacoste already makes polo shirts and everyone knows roughly what a polo shirt is. The company could show a good photograph, explain the material, add a button that says Buy now, and be finished. Instead, it creates a fictional factory full of movement, colour and ceremony.

The more I thought about it, though, the more it seemed that the factory was not really there to explain production. It was there to make the polo feel like more than a polo. Without the surrounding story, it is a familiar piece of cotton with a small crocodile attached to it. Once it passes through the animated factory, it becomes the result of knowledge, heritage, precision and care. The experience changes the emotional category of the object. You are no longer comparing one shirt with another shirt. You are being invited into the world of Lacoste.

This is something the strongest companies understand unusually well. They do not only sell products or tell stories about products. They construct a larger reality around the object, then give the customer a role inside it. Sometimes the role is active and sometimes it is mostly imaginary, but the object begins to carry meanings that are not visible in its materials.

Nike is the obvious example. The company sells shoes and sportswear, yet most Nike advertising is not really about either of those things. It is about the moment when someone decides to continue despite being tired, afraid, inexperienced or unlikely to win. The shoe appears inside that moment, almost as evidence that the person has chosen to act.

Nike rarely needs to explain that one sole contains slightly better foam than another. It has placed the product inside a much larger story about effort and self-transformation. Buying the shoe does not make someone an athlete, but it allows them to participate in the idea of becoming one. The product becomes a small physical confirmation of a decision the customer hopes to make about themselves.

Apple did something similar with computers. A computer could have remained an office machine associated with accounting departments, technical manuals and grey corporate rooms. Apple presented it as a personal creative tool. The person sitting in front of the machine was not merely completing tasks. They were designing, writing, editing, inventing and occasionally changing the world.

This became especially powerful because the company made everything around the product feel ceremonial. The launches, stores, packaging and language suggested that the object had been carefully revealed rather than simply released. Even opening the box became part of the experience. The machine arrived with a role already waiting for the owner: the creative person who sees possibilities that other people miss.

It is easy to mock this now that Apple is one of the largest and most conventional corporations on the planet. The company that once positioned itself against the system has become part of the system, and many of its creative machines spend their days displaying spreadsheets and Microsoft Teams. Even so, the older mythology remains surprisingly durable. People still associate Apple products with creativity, taste and individual possibility long after the original rebellion became difficult to believe.

Ferrari works differently because it does not promise that everyone can become a racing driver. Its mythology depends on distance and exclusion. The company presents each car as a fragment of a much larger history involving Enzo Ferrari, Maranello, Formula 1, famous victories and generations of machines built for speed. The car becomes valuable partly because it appears to carry that history with it. The buyer is not only purchasing transport. They are gaining limited access to a bloodline.

This is why heritage matters so much in luxury. A new company can make a well-constructed bag or a fast car, but it cannot immediately manufacture a century of stories, founders, workshops, failures, victories and famous owners. History becomes a material in its own right. It can be placed around an object until the object seems to contain time.

Hermès has made the production process itself into mythology. The person making the bag is not framed as a factory worker assembling a consumer product. They become an artisan carrying inherited knowledge. The time required to make the object is not presented as inefficiency but as part of the value. The workshop becomes a protected place where modern speed does not fully apply, techniques are passed down, and objects are expected to survive long enough to be repaired rather than replaced.

Many luxury companies talk about craftsmanship, so the language alone no longer proves much. What matters is whether the company has organised enough of the product, service and distribution around the idea for it to remain convincing. This is where mythology becomes more demanding than a campaign. A company cannot keep presenting patience as sacred while everything the customer touches feels rushed and disposable.

This is close to what Lacoste is trying to do with its digital factory, although Lacoste has to work harder because the object is more ordinary. A polo shirt is familiar, mass-produced and widely copied. The interactive factory makes the manufacturing process visible and special. It gives the shirt a journey before it reaches the customer, even if that journey is mostly animation rather than access to the actual conditions of production.

The problem is that a visual story alone is not necessarily enough. I clicked, the machines moved, and the polo appeared, but my role remained thin. The experience was pleasant and carefully made, yet I was still mostly watching a long advertisement. It gave me the sensation of participation without asking me to do anything that mattered.

Red Bull went much further because it did not build one impressive microsite around an energy drink. It built an entire world of racing, flying, cliff diving, dancing, music, extreme sports and improbable human achievements. The drink itself is not especially cinematic, so the company moved attention away from the liquid and towards the kinds of people, events and moments the liquid could be associated with.

The surrounding mythology became so large that the original product almost disappeared inside it. A Red Bull can now feel like merchandise from the Red Bull universe rather than the reason the universe exists. This is what many branded digital experiences are trying to imitate, but they usually copy the visible layer. They build one colourful world and expect the audience to believe it has always been there.

Disney understood another part of this: stories become more powerful when people can physically enter them. A film has a clear ending, while a theme park allows the story to continue after the credits. Visitors can walk through the environment, eat inside it, take photographs, buy an object and bring part of the world home. The story moves across films, parks, toys, hotels, music and childhood memories, with each part making the others feel more real.

The impressive part is not simply that Disney tells stories. Many companies tell stories. Disney built a system where stories can become places, products, rituals and recurring family traditions. The mythology does not need to be explained each time because people enact it through visits, birthdays, costumes and objects kept long after childhood.

LEGO approaches this from the other direction. Instead of asking people to enter a finished world, it gives them a system for constructing one. The company provides the pieces, but the meaning is created through use. A child can follow the instructions, ignore them, combine sets or build something the designers never imagined. The product remains incomplete until someone participates.

This seems like a stronger kind of mythology than the Lacoste factory because the customer is not only being shown a story. They become one of its authors. The brick does not need to tell you that you are creative. It gives you a small, practical opportunity to behave creatively and see what happens.

Harley-Davidson also depends on participation, but the participation is social. The mythology of freedom and rebellion would be much weaker if it existed only in advertising. It becomes real because people ride together, customise their motorcycles, attend rallies, wear the symbols and recognise one another as members of the same culture.

Companies often say they want a community, but what they usually want is an audience that produces free promotional content. A real community is more demanding. People need relationships with one another, not only with the company. They need shared rituals, language, status and memories. Harley-Davidson managed to turn ownership into membership, which means some of the value sits in what happens between customers rather than in the company's own communication.

Patagonia is interesting because its mythology contains an obvious contradiction. The company sells new clothing while telling people to consume less. Instead of completely hiding that contradiction, it has made the tension part of the brand. Repairing a jacket, buying used clothing or keeping an item for longer becomes a way for the customer to participate in the company's environmental values.

The important part is that Patagonia has had to support the story with real behaviour. It cannot only publish photographs of mountains and write about protecting nature. It needs repair programmes, environmental commitments and business decisions that occasionally cost the company something. This may be where mythology becomes different from marketing. Marketing can make almost any claim for the duration of a campaign, but mythology has to survive repeated contact with reality.

If a company talks about craft but its products fall apart, the myth weakens. If it talks about rebellion but behaves cautiously whenever something is at stake, the rebellion begins to look like styling. If it talks about community but treats customers as entries in a conversion funnel, people eventually notice. The mythology does not need to be perfectly true, but the company needs to keep producing enough evidence for people to continue participating in it.

Myths are always selective. Ferrari does not spend much time talking about traffic, insurance or maintenance bills. Apple does not place factory labour at the centre of its creative vision. Nike's stories about individual determination can distract from the systems and privileges surrounding elite sport. The mythology works by selecting one interpretation of reality and repeating it until the product becomes difficult to see without it.

Liquid Death may be the clearest modern example because the underlying product is just water. There is no secret technology, rare material or legendary manufacturing process. The company built a ridiculous world of skulls, heavy metal, horror and environmental humour around something that comes from a tap. It works because the mythology is consistent enough to affect packaging, naming, advertising, merchandise and the company's tone. It does not feel like a normal water brand running one strange campaign. It feels like a strange entertainment brand that happens to sell water.

This also shows why most attempts at brand mythology fail. Companies copy the visible elements without building the underlying world. They create a cinematic website, add dramatic copy, commission some 3D animations and describe a familiar object as iconic. The experience may win a design award and still leave no lasting impression because the visitor has no meaningful role. There is nothing to believe, repeat or carry into their own life once the browser tab closes.

I think this is what bothered me about the Lacoste factory. It is beautifully executed, but the visitor mostly activates animations. I cannot design my own polo, make a choice that changes the final object, meet anyone else inside the factory, develop a skill or find a reason to return. It makes the process look special, but it does not make my involvement special.

Perhaps that is still enough. The experience may only need to make a few thousand loyalty members spend slightly more time thinking about Lacoste. It gives the company something to place in emails, stores, social media and design publications, and it makes a familiar product briefly feel fresh again. Not every experience needs to become a world people live inside, and not every visitor needs to come back.

Still, the strongest companies seem to understand that the lasting value rarely sits entirely inside the product. It accumulates around it through stories, rituals, symbols, places, communities and repeated behaviour. The shoe becomes evidence that I am trying. The computer becomes evidence that I am creative. The jacket becomes evidence that I care. The car becomes evidence that I have entered a history. None of those meanings are naturally present inside the object, but companies construct them and customers help keep them alive.

That may be the actual purpose of experiences like the Lacoste factory. It is not really there to explain how a polo is made, and it may not need millions of users. It is there to make the product feel as if it came from somewhere larger than a supply chain. I am still not sure the animation earns that meaning by itself, but perhaps the small gap between an ordinary shirt and the world imagined around it is exactly what the experience was built to fill.

Connected reading

• The Product Is No Longer the Product
• Every Interface Contains a Business Model
• The Gift Box Is a Fandom Interface
• Some Apps Explain Themselves

AI authorship note

This essay began with Kris Haamer finding Lacoste's interactive Polo Factory and asking why companies spend money building experiences that few people deliberately seek out. The discussion expanded into how Nike, Apple, Ferrari, Hermès, Patagonia, Red Bull, Disney, LEGO, Harley-Davidson and Liquid Death turn ordinary products into symbolic worlds. AI supported source discovery, comparison, drafting, editing, illustration code and implementation. Kris rejected the first structured, brand-strategy version and directed the final article toward a personal, skeptical essay built from developed paragraphs rather than a company ranking or mythology framework.