Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [43]
Food rituals, too, can be found everywhere: from how we always break the wishbone after a Thanksgiving dinner to how we like to eat our Oreo cookie. When it comes to Oreos, there are two distinct rituals. Some people like to pry open the cookie, lick off the white frosting in between, then eat the two wafers. Others like to keep the sandwich cookie intact, and dunk the whole thing in a glass of cold milk. Knowing how many people enjoy the ritual of eating Oreos with milk, Nabisco, which manufactures Oreos, recently partnered up with the producers of the popular “Got Milk?” campaign. “Oreo is not just a cookie, it’s a ritual,” confirms Mike Faherty, senior category business director for Oreo. “Dunking Oreo cookies in milk is part of the American fabric.”13
An Irish brand of cider known as Magners has recently exploded in popularity in the United Kingdom. Why? The company didn’t tweak its recipe. It didn’t hire a celebrity spokesperson. It didn’t roll out some wacky new line extension, say, a Magners candy bar. So what’s the secret to its sudden success? Years ago, the majority of pubs in the Irish county of Tipperary lacked fridges, so consumers took it upon themselves to cool down Magners by pouring it over ice. From then on, bartenders served Magners from a large bottle into a pint glass, using lots of ice. Turns out that making the cider colder cut its sweetness and improved its taste. From then on, bartenders served Magners from a large bottle into a pint glass, using lots of ice, and a ritual was born. This not only improved the taste of the cider, but also went so far as to redefine what consumers thought of when they thought about the brand. In time, the ritual became so linked to the cider that people began to refer to the brand as “Magners on Ice.”14
Other edible brands have made rituals out of their sheer seasonal availability. Take Mallomars, a chocolate biscuit coated in a layer of dark chocolate that tends to melt in hot weather. To avoid Mallomar-meltdown, Nabisco halts production every year from April to September. But as soon as the weather begins to cool down, Mallomar addicts begin awaiting Mallomars’ reappearance on supermarket shelves the way some nature lovers await the swallows of Capistrano. “News of the wonders of refrigerator and climate control has apparently not reached Nabisco’s New Jersey headquarters,” one article concludes dryly, suggesting that the company has artificially manufactured this ritual by limiting the cookies availability.15 And as with Oreos, there are several sanctioned methods to eat a Mallomar—by biting off the marshmallow part and saving the graham cracker for last, reversing the entire process, or eating the thing whole.
Even some restaurants have rituals you probably haven’t even considered. At Subway sandwich franchises, sandwiches are constructed in the same order each time, so customers know precisely how to instruct the person behind the counter to make their sandwich. Cold Stone Creamery, the popular ice cream chain, has an interesting ritual—its servers treat customers to a song and dance along with their ice cream. And speaking of food rituals, do you eat your Big Mac with two hands instead of one? Do you eat your French fries before your burger, or after, or in alternating bites? (and didn’t their smell inspire you to order them in the first place?) And, like me, do you not even think about these rituals when you’re doing them?
Sometimes, however, brands can have trouble moving beyond rituals. Take the ritual of drinking Bacardi with Coke with a slice of lime (otherwise known as a Cuba Libre), a combination that came about in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, when American soldiers were stationed in Cuba. The country was then the headquarters for