Next-gen consumer products are powered by rituals

Hello modern builders!

I hope you’ve been well.

Excited to share the second edition of my newsletter with you.

This time we will dive into the fascinating world of rituals. In today's fast-paced world, it often feels like we've lost the art of ritual, and this has profound implications for our sense of meaning and connection - offline and increasingly online.

This is why this topic is so important to me. My goal is to make it relevant to you - whether you're building a community, a brand, a product, or just want to incorporate rituals into your life.

In this article we’ll cover

• The benefits of rituals for individuals & communities

• The difference between rituals, routines & habits

• Rituals in the wild (social apps, CPG, community-based rituals)

• The 5 steps to design a ritual

Let’s dive in!

Next-gen products will be powered by rituals

I am not a big tennis fan, but my husband is. It makes him happy when I show interest in what he loves. So I thought I’d watch a tennis match with him.

This - in turn- would lead me down the rabbit hole of rituals.

It all started with Rafael Nadals’ pre-game ritual (consisting of a sequence of 16 steps):

Why on earth would he do all that?

According to the tennis legend:

Going down the rabbit hole reinforced a thesis I’ve had for some time:

The benefits of rituals

Rituals have been shown to reduxe stress and anxiety by giving people a sense of stability, enhance focus and mindfulness and boost confidence and performance.

But there is even more than that: They make activities more meaningful, as they attach a symbolic purpose to them.

Individual and collective rituals

Rituals can be individual (Nadal’s pre-game rituals, a makeup procedure, a journaling ritual) or collective, i.e. based on shared experiences.

These collective rituals - when connected to a community purpose - have been shown to strengthen group cohesion, and increase community member identity & belonging.

Prime examples are religious, sacred rituals - ranging from mass, prayers, rites of passage such as baptism, confirmation, marriage ceremonies and funerals.

But there are many secular examples of rituals on every level of relationships - family and friends, workplace, other communities, especially in sports.

What is a ritual (vs a routine and a habit)?

In its everyday life use, it’s very common that people use ‘rituals’ interchangeably with ‘routines’ and even ‘habits’.

Let's get clear on the terms.

• Habits are those automatic actions triggered by certain cues. This might be the urge to check our phone for email or messages as soon as we get a notification. Social media is built on habits.

• Routines are the regular patterns we follow. They typically require more energy than habits. Routines like going running every morning, going to the gym, and meditating all require conscious practice.

• Rituals are more profound. They involve symbolic actions and emotional significance, elevating them beyond simple habits or routines. You can turn any routine into a ritual - by attaching significance to them.

Below graphic is a great representation of the differences between the three.

source: Nesslabs

Rituals today

Rituals can be found in different forms, they can be product-based or community-based.

Product-based rituals

Social apps

For some context: Today’s social media platforms makes us form habits. They are designed to keep us hooked, making it hard to put our phones down. Their strategy: Maximize time spent on their platforms to maximize revenue.

At the same time, these moments on social media feel less social, less meaningful, more on autopilot. It’s focusing too much on quantity of time spent instead of quality of time spent.

Rituals have the power to give back some sense of meaning - not just in our offline, but in our online interactions.

Examples include:

• BeReal, and app that let’s you share an authentic selfie with friends once a day

• HQ Trivia, and app that let people participate in the same trivia game once a day, at the same time. It blew up with over 2 million live user at its peak.

• Opera's Shake and Win, letting people shake their phone once per day to see their lottery results

• Wordle, a game that lets you guess a 5 letter word

I believe we will see more of these. For more on this check out this amazing article on habits vs rituals in the context of social.

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

CPG is full of rituals.

For context: It has never been easier to create a brand. Products are being commoditized. Just go to Tiktok and you will see all viral products being replicated within a few days. Tiktok Shopping will only reinforce this trend.

What will count disproportionally is the brand experience. What people feel when using your products, what meaning they attach to it. This is how you make a product feel special. Rituals contribute to that.

Here are some ritualized CPG examples:

• Oreo: ‘Twist, lick, dunk’, i.e., separating your Oreo and dunking it in milk

• Guinness beer: Waiting for 100 seconds before drinking

• Kitkat: Breaking a KitKat into halves and eating it on a break

• Pringles: Popping the cap of the Pringles tube

• Stella Artois: Following the 9-step pouring ritual

• Corona: Putting lime on the beer

• Starbucks: Writing the customer's first name on the cup - and providing a “Third Place” by respecting the existing rituals people have

• Apple: Unboxing a new iphone (while not CPG, still a great example of a ritual)

In the context of brands, rituals have been shown to increase emotional connection to products and the brand (called “brand attachment”), lead to higher brand loyalty and engagement. Brand rituals have even been shown to make food taste more flavorful. 

Add to this some gamification and you get a nice use case for web3 loyalty 👀 More on this in another issue.

Community-based rituals

Rituals can start with community, instead of starting with a product.

Talk to any community professional, the first thing they’ll tell you is to incorporate a ritual into your community. Communities today are full of Motivation Mondays and Reflection Fridays. While not overly creative, members tend to return to the community more often because of these rituals.

But it’s not just that: Communities and products are increasingly converging.

Community-first products are being built to increase member identity and belonging, especially in B2C communities. Think (sports) merch, stickers, (digital) collectibles. People are showing them off to self-signal and to signal to others.

How does this connect to rituals you might ask?

Remember the benefits of rituals? Increased member identity and belonging. Sounds familiar, right?

This means: Ritualizing these products will further enhance their impact.

Think merch to be worn at specific occasions, at community events, or significant milestones, or CPG to be consumed in a specific way. Think NFL. Wearing the jersey of your favorite team every Sunday.

But these ritualized products can also be digital. Some interesting examples that demonstrate this:

• 2:16 club, and their Mindfulness minute, which is a daily SMS prompt

• Mochi World, a ritualized goal-setting game for communities powered by tokens (one of my favorite web3 examples)

• Project 50 by SOM Studio, a 50 day challenge with specific prompts

• Daily Manifest by Vizualize Value, a daily journaling prompt

To sum up: Next gen ritualized products will emerge out of communities, following this playbook:

1. Attract audience through content

2. Build community of die-hard fans

3. Build product to reinforce member identity & belonging

4. Create rituals around products to further reinforce member identity & belonging

How to design a ritual (for your community/ brand/ product/ yourself)?

Crafting effective rituals requires some thought.

You can start by thinking about 4 (+1) things: trigger moment, intention, flow, emotional reward and a prop (which is optional).

Intention

This is the clear purpose or goal of the ritual, what you aim to achieve or celebrate.

Ask yourself: What are the values, goals, beliefs, aspirations related to the ritual? What is the story that you want to instantiate in real life?

Can be based on the type of ritual:

• embody specific values or lifestyle

• strengthen community member bonds

• mark milestones within a community (onboarding, new role, achievement, graduation)

Trigger moment

This is the specific event or circumstance that initiates the ritual.

Ask yourself: When will this ritual take place (time, space, people or milestone)? How can you integrate it into an existing ritual?

This can be a specific:

• time of week/day or occasion (e.g., mindfulness moment or during a workout)

• action, e.g., when someone says GM, asks a question/for help, when someone consumes your product, listens to your music

• milestone, e.g., when a new member joins the community

You can start by writing a list of moments in your community that have potential to be “ritualized”. For products, think about how you can combine it with an existing ritual that your community is following.

Ritual flow

This is the sequence of actions or steps that make up the ritual, creating a structured experience.

Ask yourself: What is the sequence of the ritual?

This can be:

• a specific way to consume a product (makeup, or snacks such as our beloved Oreo cookies)

• a specific way an experience takes place, e.g. Mindful Minute before Community Call

  1. Start with a short script (”Close your eyes…”)

  2. Then stay silent for about one minute

  3. End minute with a specific sound

Emotional reward

This is the desired emotional or psychological outcome of the ritual, often a positive feeling.

Ask yourself: How are people that participate in the ritual validated?

This can be as simple as a

• the consumption of the product (as a CPG brands)

• a thank you (digitally or in person)

• a specific emoji to attach more meaning to the ritual

Props (Optional)

This is an object or symbol used within the ritual to enhance its significance or meaning.

Ask yourself: What objects can you use to support the ritual?

You can use them as part of the triggering the ritual, the ritual flow or as an emotional reward at the end of the ritual.

Here are some examples:

• badges or tokens of appreciation

• collaborative artifacts

• logo

• product to be consumed (lemon for the Corona beer)

Some additional guidance

While you can design rituals top-down, rituals also emerge bottom up, especially in the context of community. Make sure to leave your community room to put their stamp on the ritual. Also, sometimes rituals will come up naturally, encourage the ones that align with your community values.

Don’t overdo it. For your community, focus on 1-2 rituals per week at the max. This means that you have to remove an established ritual if you come up with something new. In case you want to ritualize a product, stick to one ritual. Less is more.

Rrituals are an effective way to make our online (and offline) world more meaningful - for individuals and communities. To increase our sense of meaning and connection and to move away from a quantity driven way to experience the internet.

Whether building a community or product (or both) think about ways to incorporate rituals. This is how you can stand out from the crowd - by attaching meaning to actions.

Let me know what you think, and feel free to share some individual and collective rituals that you have come across. Just reply to this email. I read all mails personally.

Thanks for reading this edition!

How we can work together

Many of you have asked me how we can work together.

I am focused on 2 things at the moment:

• Community design & strategy development

• Consulting around community & brand building

My scope of work ranges from setting the foundations of your community/brand, crafting a compelling narrative around you brand to identifying why your community is dead and what you can do about it. And much more.

If you are interested in working together, just reply to this email or send me a message here.

Enjoy your rest of the week!

Anna