Brand a ritual

A brand that has a ritual associated with it is considered to have reached the pinnacle of brand positioning. It indicates consumers are engaged, loyal and emotionally attached to your brand. It means your brand is so meaningful to people that they are willing to do something slightly out of the norm for it, sort of- like they are in love with your brand.
Although you may think rituals are the natural reaction or show of affection loyalists have for your brand and can only evolve naturally, the truth is a brand can be the creator of its own brand rituals. I will show you different techniques to artificially create brand rituals, which myself and others have successfully implemented.
Before you try to create a ritual, here’s a handy checklist to keep in mind:
1. Simple : It needs to be something really simple. The more complex it is, the less likely it will become accepted.
2. Relevant : Although this is not a rule, rituals will work better if they directly relate to and are symbiotic of the features or benefits of the brand.
3. Meaningful : Customers are more likely to buy into a ritual if enhances their overall customer experience with your brand.
4. Fun : Customers should enjoy the ritual.
5. Consistent : Once the ritual is developed, the marketer must ensure that there is consistency in its promotion.
There are three types of brand rituals. We will label them “Must do” “Want to do” and “Can do”.
1. A “Must do” brand ritual is designed as part of the interaction a consumer has with the brand. If they want to use your brand, they must do the ritual, otherwise they cannot use your product or service. Examples of this include:
    A. Starting a Porsche with your left hand- Porsche designs all their vehicles with the ignition key on the left side instead of the right. Because this action is exclusive to Porsche, it is clearly a brand ritual. Legend has it that “This placement dates back to the early days of Le Mans racing when drivers were required to make a running start, hop into their cars, start them and begin the race. The placement of the ignition enabled the driver to start the car with his left hand and put it in gear with his right.”
    B. Iphone- sliding, flicking and pinching your fingers over their screen. Was this a ritual? Absolutely, when it first came out, no other phone required its users to make those strange set of hand motions. Now that others have imitated it, it lost some of its ritualistic qualities. Eventually it may become the only way to use a cell phone, but at the outset, it surely was a ritual owned by Apple. Apple, by the way is excellent at creating “must do” rituals. As a rule, any new product that they come out with has that maverick quality in that it is needs to be used in a way that is completely different from its competitors. Think about the wheel on the iPod, for example.
    C. Wearing a tag on your jacket zipper while skiing (and leaving it on for a month afterwards as a souvenir).
2. “Want to” brand rituals are rituals that someone would most likely want to engage in when interacting with the brand. No one is forcing them to do it but there are clear rewards to the customer for doing so. It is the better way to experience the brand. Examples include:
    a. Mobil Speedpass- a little wand you hang on your keychain and wave at the gas meter in order to pay. It’s fun and convenient. Although you don t have to use it, you probably want to use it.
    b. A café gives out Travelers mugs with their logo along with coffee club punch cards. The coffee club works as follows: Fill up your mug nine times with coffee and you get the tenth cup free. Every day people line up with these mugs to get their coffee. Of course, there’s the option to use paper cups but the promotion only works when you use the official company branded travelers mug- and that’s what makes using the official mug an ever deeper ritual.
    c. A fitness center offers T shirts with their logo on it for patrons to wear during their workout. Although you can get your own T shirt all sweated up, you most likely prefer to change into one of theirs before you start working out and toss it into one of the hampers in the locker room when you are done.
3. “Can do” brand rituals are rituals that “somehow” evolved around the brand and take on a life of their own. It is just the hip thing to do when engaged with the brand. There aren’t necessarily any benefits to doing the ritual and the ritual can probably be performed on other brands as well although it wouldn’t feel authentic. Examples include:
    a. Eating Sushi with Chopsticks
    b. Pouring Gatorade on the winning coach's head
    c. breaking the Kit Kat wafers
    d. squeezing a lime into a bottle of Corona beer
While “can do” brand rituals appear to evolve on their own, they are usually transmitted to the general public through the good graces of Madison Ave advertising and publicity agencies.
Rituals create a unique brand experience, which provides us with a reason, consciously or unconsciously, to want to revisit the brand experience. It imparts something personal, giving us a closer connection to the brand. The ritual also involves the customer with the brand. Acting in a unique way for a brand helps create affinity towards it. It creates a habit, which encourages loyalty. Brand rituals are also “sticky”, they help the customer remember the brand and the brand becomes iconic.