Branding rituals

The discussion was not about politics or religion but rather the origins of the lemon ritual associated with Corona beer - the one where you drink the beer through a lime placed in the neck of the bottle.

The many explanations of this ritual were impressive. They ranged from an old Mexican tradition to the lemon being used to filter out all the bacteria. The debate was still raging when I left an hour later, but it sparked my curiosity, and left me with a distinct desire to understand more broadly the power of ritual.

We all partake in rituals of one sort or another. We go through great lengths to drag in the annual Christmas tree despite the fact that it will drip its needles all over the living room. We place our well-wrapped packages at its foot, gather around it to open the presents on Christmas day. It's hard to measure the emotional attachment to this ritual, but it would be fair to say that Christmas simply would not be Christmas if the tree was deemed to messy and banished.

Then there's New Year's Eve celebrations. The champagne corks pop and everyone joins hands to sing 'Auld Lange Syne'. We blow out candles on birthday cakes and place wedding bands on our ring fingers… the list of rituals we engage in permeates our lives. Without them there would be a palpable gap - an emptiness.

Given the fact that ritual plays such a powerful role in our lives, it's interesting to note that most brands have bypassed this phenomenon. Corona beer is one of the few brands that is associated with a ritual, and this ritual is understood by all those who enjoy it. Have brand builders been too rational in their approach? Perhaps. Almost every Guinness drinker agrees that a Guinness beer does not taste right unless it's been poured correctly. In fact there are more than 500 websites created by fans that instruct on the correct procedures to follow when pouring a Guinness.

The ultimate global ritual occurs every four years, wherever the Olympic Games are being held. The lighting of the Olympic flame is an emotional experience, and the reputation of the host country is rests on the success - or failure - of the opening and closing ceremonies.

Carefully orchestrated brand rituals are familiar to fans and are entrenched components of the product. If you take away the ritual, you remove a large chunk of the brand equity, too. Yet outside of the alcohol category, almost no rituals associated with brands are to be found.

The future of brand building will need to address this discrepancy. In my latest book BRAND sense I suggest taking inspiration from the world of religion, and by adapting religious components, brand builders will be able to foster a strong sense of belonging. If you were able to remove the many rituals associated with various religions you would substantially diminish their strength and effectiveness.

People are quite clear about their religious allegiances. They know what they are and part of that definition is knowing what they're not. They have a clear 'enemy'. The well-known Coke-Pepsi rivalry follows this model. Similarly you're a Mac user or you stick to Microsoft PC.

Another religious aspect that can be adopted by brands is creating mystery. Recently our media was saturated with the centuries-old ritual of selecting the next Pope. Television cameras glued to the Vatican sky waiting for that moment when the white smoke would emerge from the chimney.

Coke has managed to maintain an aura of mystery of its formula which is supposedly locked away in a safe in Atlanta. KFC has 11 secret spices. Secret enough that any new chef employed by KFC has to sign a confidentiality document. They face serious penalties for revealing recipe secrets. To what extent this is iron clad is debatable, but it certainly adds to the aura of mystery.

So is it true that a slice of lemon in a Corona is part of a ritual by Mexicans to clean the bottle to keep healthy? Or is it a ritual developed over time to add to the taste? In fact the truth dates back to a not so distant 1981 when a Californian bartender had a bet with a colleague over the power of ritual. The test was to see how easy it would be to persuade patrons at the bar about an old Mexican tradition of slipping a piece of lemon down the neck of the bottle before drinking it.

Needless to say who won.