Audience Profiling and Rituals
28 January 2025
A new approach to audience profiling
The Gate Edinburgh’s Audience Profile development can get you under the skin of your customers, so you can become the perfect solution to their problems. How we do it can take many forms. And one powerful way of framing it, that The Gate has recently developed, is to look at the power of rituals in your consumer’s lives. In fact, our parent company MSQ and WARC have gone and written a research paper on it.
Rituals have a remarkable power to shape our moods, identities and choices – including what we buy and the brands we choose.
Habits are automation. Rituals are animation
The paper unpacks how rituals are distinct from habits – they’re about emotional transformation rather than just efficiency. While habits are about automation, rituals are about animation and amplification, involving specific sequences that help shift from one emotional state to another.
And, pragmatically, as we examine the role of rituals in our lives we can spot potential opportunities that brands can unlock to observe, facilitate and participate in those rituals.
As brands battle to connect more deeply with consumers, rituals not only provide opportunities to enrich our understanding of consumer behaviours but also give a new window to frame and understand customers better and gain better access into customers’ lives.
Here’s a simple example from Jeep
The Jeep Wave; Chrysler has made the most of this tradition, which began during World War II, among Jeep owners who acknowledge each other on the road with a friendly nod or wave. The Jeep Wave is now featured in official licensed merchandised as part of the automaker’s loyalty program to award discounts and other perks to participating Jeep owners.
Background to the research
As media fragments and brands battle for consumer attention, the struggle for marketers to find meaningful access into consumers’ lives intensifies. But while media and marketing change; we as humans remain basically the same as we have been for millions of years, and so there might be a way to approach this entire issue differently, based on human behaviours.
Combining data from a survey of 4,000 consumers, in-depth expert interviews and Freemavens’ (another MSQ agency) extensive social media and Google Search insights analysis, we wanted to unlock the What, How and crucially, the Why of rituals.
Be part of a moment of calm
The true hallmark of rituals are the emotional benefits and personal meaning they carry. Our data showed that people feel calm in the presence of a ritual. We see possibilities for brands to tap into and enhance experiences at both an individualised and collective level.
Emotion = effectiveness2
Brands grow in emotional value to consumers if they become part of their rituals. Here marketing meets meaning.
For brands, rituals offer a unique insight. As consumers explore rituals they resonate with, they generate vast amounts of search and social data. Analysing this data reveals the emotional drivers behind these rituals.
Research shows that brands who take the time to actively observe customer behaviour, and then go on to help enhance those rituals (when customers give them permission), tend to win.
The next steps for marketers
1. Frame the Opportunity
Rituals play an important role in our everyday lives – and the ones that count most last for a long time.
2. Identify individual and collective possibilities
Rituals are a tool that we use to support our own individual needs and to connect with others.
3. Understand the macro influence on human motivations
Economic and cultural forces, social media influence and generational attitude shifts all impact ritual behaviours.
4. Observe, facilitate, participate
There are many ways to tap into rituals. The golden rule is that consumers create their own rituals and decide when and how to incorporate brands, not the other way around. But here’s the good news:
of consumers are very or somewhat open to adopting new rituals
incorporate brands into rituals at least some of the time
feel more positively toward brands that become part of their rituals
Next step:
Study and understand what ritual behaviours might exist currently amongst your customers and how your brand(s) could facilitate and support them. There may be opportunities to create a ritual but proceed with caution: always make it relevant and authentic, never forced.
Read the full piece in the paper
Learn more about our Audience Profiling work in our case study