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Whether it's tech or retail or any other niche industry, brand value is the crux of a company's continued success. Just ask Apple.
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For years, various market and consumer reports have hinted at the things that matter most for building good brand value. Things like commitment, novelty, authenticity, trust, presence.
With these, there's an underlying psychology at play. So how do you design products and experiences to make a brand psychologically capturing?
In all the trade secrets of brand strategy, one piece has been overlooked: rituals.
The science of ritual
There's a growing science and psychology of ritual that's started to shed light on many of the puzzling aspects of human behavior. Ritual, as we've come to learn, is the basis of all human culture and a core feature in the evolutionary history of the human species. Rituals emerge as a byproduct of physical interactions between people and the external environment.
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They start small. But, in time, mere physical actions get transformed into a symbolic ritual that stands for something big, something sacred.
While most recognize this to be true of religious life (think ritual prayer), research tells us it's the same underlying psychology and neurobiology for how consumers relate to their most cherished brands. It's been shown that when people look at their favorite brand logos, there's an activation in the brain's reward circuitry - not unlike that with cultural and religious symbols.
So, whether Apple, Amazon, Google, or Mercedes, we worship our most beloved brands. We become fanatical in our loyalty and following. That feeling of emotionally connecting to a brand and having that shared social identity comes from and through ritual.
If your brand or company wants a true fan, you need to get your customers to ritualize your offering.
Below are the three unique features of ritual that, if properly applied and integrated into design strategy, have the capacity to truly transform brand value for your customers.
When rituals get repeated, they are done "just so" and according to a ritual script. Unlike other brand-based behaviors, they leave little room for improvisation or change. This is critical for companies to understand as they think about the experiences they want their customers and users to have in interacting with their brand.
While freedom of choice for customers is important, companies should strive for a level of sameness in the brand experience. In today's day and age of pushing the "new," this advice may seem counterintuitive. But there's a reason why rituals stand the test of time: They stay the same, even as everything else changes.
Repeated behaviors can be achieved through rituals' "time specificity" and "spatial specificity" — tying their actions to a designated time or spatial layout. It's no coincidence, for example, that every Starbucks has the exact same physical store flow and queueing design. It's the same logic for digital layouts, too.
Then there's rituals' "sequence specificity" — how certain steps tend to be scrupulously adhered to. Heavy-hitting health and beauty brands know all about this. From Clinique's three-step skin system encouraging consumers to "find the regimen that's right for your skin" to L'Oreal's world-wide approach to beauty rituals, these brands are utilizing these practices to delight repeat customers.
2. They are meaningful — and almost sacred
Humans are wired to "receive" ritual as a source of meaning. It's an innate process. Research shows that people perceive ritual-like actions — the repetition, the redundancy — to be more meaningful than mere ordinary actions. Even children and babies as young as 18 months are capable of discerning ritual.
Here's an interesting nugget of insight. If you get a person to perform the simplest made-up ritual style behaviors — without telling them that it's meant to be a ritual — in less than a week they'll experience more meaning through the regular enacting of the behavior itself. That initial uptick in personal meaning then becomes more elaborate, and it gets shared. Narratives get attached to the ritual. It becomes bigger than the behavior itself, a sacred symbolic act representing a core belief or value.
Financial institutions and meaning are strange bedfellows. But even in the world of money and lending, bank brands and credit unions benefit from meaning-based rituals. Consider Vancity, a "values-based financial group" whose mission is to build healthy communities inspired by financial inclusion. These organizations recognize a fact supported by the research: that rituals related to money can empower the consumer to save more for a better and brighter future.
3. They are social and unifying
Humans are such a social species because of early ritual behaviors. Tens of thousands of years ago, our early human ancestors began practicing rituals, which led to the advancement of complex societies.
No two ways about it: Any group of any kind will benefit greatly from having rituals. Historically, research shows that societies with more rituals are more likely to withstand socioeconomic collapse than similar groups with less rituals. Because of rituals, sports teams are more successful, work groups perform better, and people unify under a common purpose.
Rituals bring people together and unify them under shared experiences. If a person is a true fan, they share in their adoration for the brand with other like-minded individuals. Because of an unchanging ritual script, which can be a held standard across different markets and geographies, a company pushing their brand value can rest assured that all their consumers/users are getting the same experience, doing the same thing, and feeling the exact same way.
Bacardi, a reputable global brand, talks about this in reminding us that "clearly defining your brand has to be a priority if you want it to remain stable and consistent." Against the riptide of fast-moving markets, countless product launches, and changing trends, the best way to ensure this clear definition is to anchor the brand identity to a shared ritual, a practice that standardizes and secures the experience for millions of consumers across the globe.
Integrating the science of ritual will give brands and companies a distinct competitive advantage in today's crowded market. Rituals may appear on the surface to be silly superstitions. But don't be fooled. True fans are cultivated through the magic of ritual.
Nick is the cultural change advisor at BEworks and chief behavioral scientist at The Behaviorist. He consults people-minded organizations on how to create meaningful brands and workplace cultures to drive sustainable growth. Find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and email.
Nathaniel Barr isa scientific advisor at BEworks and a professor of creativity and creative thinking at Sheridan College. His expertise is in human cognition, reasoning, decision making, and creativity. Find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and email.
Kelly Peters is the chief executive officer and cofounder of BEworks, the world's first management consulting firm dedicated to solving complex challenges with behavioral economics. She pioneered the BEworks Method, which is being applied at Global 1000 firms and in policy groups around the world. Find her on Twitter, LinkedIn, and email.
