Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [38]
If you guessed C, you’d be right. And in fact, this simple, not-even-thirty-year-old ritual invented on a whim by a bartender during a slow night is generally credited with helping Corona overtake Heineken in the U.S. market.
Now let’s switch scenes, to some dimly lit Irish joint with a name like Donnelly’s or McClanahan’s. Shamrocks everywhere, a counterful of old guys, a bartender who’s heard every story twice. We take seats at the bar and order. Two Guinnesses, please. First the bartender pours the glass three-quarters full. Then we wait (and wait) until the foamy head settles. Finally, once just the right amount of time has elapsed, the bartender tops it off. This all takes a couple of minutes, but neither of us minds the wait—fact is, the ritual of the slow pour is part of the pleasure of drinking a Guinness in the first place. But here’s what I’ll bet you didn’t know: this ritual didn’t come about by accident. In the time-choked culture of the early 1990s, Guinness was facing big losses in pubs across the British Isles. Why? Customers didn’t want to wait ten minutes for the head of their beer to settle. So the company decided to turn this annoyance into a virtue. They rolled out advertising campaigns like, “Good things come to those who wait,” and “It takes 119.53 seconds to pour the perfect pint,” and even aired commercials showing the “right” way to pour a Guinness. Soon, a ritual was born. And thanks to the company’s clever advertising, the artful pour became part of the drinking experience. “We just don’t want anyone putting liquid in a glass,” Guinness brewmeister Fergal Murray was once quoted as saying.1
In all my years helping companies develop and strengthen their brands, there’s one thing I’ve seen time and time again: rituals help us form emotional connections with brands and products. They make the things we buy memorable. But before I explain why, it’s worth taking a look at the extent to which ritual and superstition govern our lives.
RITUALS AND SUPERSTITIONS are defined as not entirely rational actions and the belief that one can somehow manipulate the future by engaging in certain behaviors, in spite of the fact there’s no discernible causal relationship between that behavior and its outcome.
But if such beliefs are so irrational, why do most of us act in superstitious ways every day, without even thinking about it?
As we all know, it’s a stressful world out there. Natural disasters. Wars. Hunger. Torture. Global warming. These are just a few of the issues that bombard us every time we turn on the TV, crack open a newspaper, or go onto the Web. Let’s face it: our world is changing at an astonishingly rapid rate. Technology is advancing at speeds we never could have imagined, seismic shifts in global economic power are happening overnight—hell, we’re even walking faster than we used to (a 2007 analysis of pedestrians in thirty-four cities around the world showed that the average pedestrian clips along at almost 3.5 mph—roughly 10 percent faster than they did a decade ago). In my native Denmark, men and women even talk 20 percent faster than they did ten years ago.2
Such rapid change has brought with it more uncertainty. The more unpredictable the world becomes, the more we grope for a sense of control over our lives. And the more anxiety and uncertainty we feel, the more we adopt superstitious behavior and rituals to help shepherd us through. “The sense of having special powers buoys people in threatening situations, and helps soothe everyday fears and ward off mental distress,” writes New York Times reporter Benedict Carey.3
Superstition and ritual have been scientifically linked to humans’ need for control in a turbulent world. As Dr. Bruce Hood, professor