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Cheers,

Mark Gallagher
Brand Expressionist®

Polaroid:
Shaking the photo so it will develop faster

Tootsie Pop:
Counting the licks it takes to get to the center

Kit Kat:
Breaking the chocolate cookie apart (considered good luck in eastern cultures)

Popsicle
Breaking the double stick into two, single popsicles

Mobil:
Speedpass payment

Olympics:
Carrying the torch and the lighting of the flame

If you have others, please share!

Cheers,

Laura Savard
Brand Expressionist®

Rituals are designed into brands every day. They add authenticity by attaching meaning to action.

There is no doubt that most attempts fail, but those that succeed, provide tremendous value by becoming brand signals: tangible cues that directly equate to the brand.

You may not recognize the value of ritual as a brand signal, but Corona surely does (the act of squeezing a lime into a bottle of beer is distinctly Corona), as does

Porsche:
Starting the car with your left hand

Guinness:
Patented pouring technique

Apple:
iPhone's sliding/pinching interface designed to have "ritualistic qualities"

Toblerone:
"Whacking" a Chocolate Orange to separate the slices

As you can see there are many examples and we invite everyone to contribute more examples. These rituals go largely unnoticed by consumers as "brand rituals," but create value nonetheless. We chose to focus on a single brand ritual (squeezing a slice of lime into a Corona) because we wanted to keep the post short. It is a blog after all.

Thanks for your feedback. We now know why the comment plugin we chose is called "Intense Debate."

Cheers,

Mark Gallagher
Brand Expressionist®

While this is not new with respect to products – the champagne cork comes to mind – it does seem like we're seeing more of it as consumers seek to participate more in brands. One dimension of this phenomemon, at least initially, is to create insiders and outsiders among those who know and do not know the ritual. Learning the tequila shot ritual – salt, shot, lemon – is a freshman year right of passage for most people. Oreo splitting is another, which we hand down to our kids.

In a way we're seeing this mutate to go beyond the ritual to the 'Temple.' Witness the Apple Store, which Microsoft announced last week it intends to emulate. BMW just spent several hundred million dollars on a German-based museum and overseas delivery headquarters, where new drivers can pick there cars up in person.

In addition, routine behavior is typically subconscious behavior, whereas ritualized behavior is conscious and has a higher degree of involvement by the consumer. Ritualized behavior also sends a more intense signal to others, and stimulates a more conscious response (Wassup! Wassup!).

For example, Jeff's tea routine will likely not have an affect on others, since their is no collective or shared meaning built into the the routine (this is where the brand comes in, to energize the ritualized behavior). Also, since it's not a ritual with meaning attached, Jeff can easily change his tea routine to better suit his desires. Not so with rituals, which are much more resistant to change. They have been purposefully standardized and introduced into specific social occasions to exert a powerful influence on collective behavior (pour Gatorade on the winning coach's head, shake and pop champagne bottles, etc.).

But is the lime/Corona phenomenon really a ritual?

What I mean is that I can drink Tetley Tea cold with milk and sugar. That habit can catch on to the point where others think "wow, iced tea with milk and sugar, that's great." But that ritual isn't going to help define the brand for two reasons.

First, it's a quirky little ritual that I made up to mess with the heads of waitstaff everywhere.

Second, Tetley's product doesn't lend itself well to consumption or use that allows a simple, memorable ritual. There are too many other ways to take your tea.

Lime in Corona, genius companion to the beer that makes the brand memorable. If there were an ad with just a lime and the beach, you could still tag it with Corona at the end and never show a bottle. But memory isn't a ritual either.

Which then makes me think, are you really talking about rituals or accessories? A lime goes with a Corona. A styrofoam cup goes with a Dunkin Donuts large iced coffee. One helps you recognize the brand and both are admittedly rituals.

But I'm more inclined to think that the practice of defraying condensation hand with the use of a second cup on your iced coffee is more ritual-like than adding lime to a Corona.

While creating this comment I found myself hard-pressed to come up with another ritual for a major brand. Is that because there aren't any? Is it because we're all individuals who enjoy our products in our own way?

Not sure. But this absence of other examples leads me to feel even more strongly that the lime in Corona is like the Haynes printed tag, the Snapple cap messages, the Tivo 'boop, boop, boop' sound and the Domino's odd octagonal pizza box.

These are just traits that contribute to the brand and may reinforce our feelings for the product and brand, but they don't start, finish or even compel us to shepherd a ritual to other prospective consumers.

After further review, the tie of a brand accessory to a habit that's necessary to fully enjoy a brand is as thin as the lime sliver that goes in your drink.