A ritual for your product increases satisfaction and spending | Hacker News Reader

A ritual for your product increases satisfaction and spending

ariyh.substack.com

92 pointstdmckinlay70 comments

While the existing rituals in the article are kind of fun and optional, what he proposes amounts to mandatory waste of time.

If a game had me fiddle with the brightness every time i started it, I'd refund it. If a company started meetings with mandatory meditation, I'd worry they're religious fanatics and look for a new job. The company example may actually be illegal in some jurisdictions?

Meanwhile, you can break the oreos and dip them in milk or just gulp a bunch at the same time if you're really hungry. There's a difference there.

Nespresso are masters of this; I think for a while they actually had a marketing campaign built around "the ritual of Nespresso."

Can you just whack a capsule into the machine and press the button? Sure. But why not take a few extra seconds to preheat your cup, clean the tray, top up the water...

It's all the feeling of crafting an exquisite cup of artisan coffee for yourself with none of the work or acquired skill.

Nespresso didn't really invent the concept of coffee (or tea) rituals though ;) Tea tastes amazing after following a Japanese tea ceremony or Chinese tea ritual. Coffee tastes amazing after going through the ritual of weighing the beans, grinding them, wetting the filter, pouring the water...

Kind of surprising the article didn't mention these rituals as they feel like almost the canonical examples of rituals that increase the enjoyment of consuming a "product" (I suppose one difference is that they also have a real difference on the quality of the product consumed).

> Nespresso didn't really invent the concept of coffee (or tea) rituals though

Obviously not, but they did successfully weaponize the essence of those rituals as marketing artillery. There's probably not much overlap between "people who buy Nespresso machines" and "people who really care about great coffee," but they're able to make the first group feel like they're in that club.

Currently I do not own one but IMHO the coffee from nespresso is pretty good.

I guess it depends on how much one can care about coffee – probably a lot!– but I am not so sure about the overlap. Apparently it is good enough for michelin star restaurants to use. https://www.nespresso.com/kr/en/michelin-dining-week

Getting Nespresso into Michelin-starred restaurants is one of the most masterful pieces of product marketing ever, and I would love to know how they achieved it. Nobody who ever tasted really good coffee would think Nespresso compares... But many chefs have never tasted really good coffee. (I guess that does sound like the "no true Scotsman" fallacy though ;))

Making a ritual opt-in is fine, I guess. Making it compulsory would make me looking for another (competing) option pretty quickly.

Yeah those examples were confusing when directly above it says mandatory rituals were not tested and might even backfire.

This is quite disturbing. It is an example of marketing as a form of social conditioning, where our brains our conditioned to perform repetitive actions until they become unconscious. While this can be useful for some things (e.g. touch typing), when it is designed to sell you some kind of shitty cookie, phone, or whatever other focus-group-designed consumer product, it is disturbing to me. It's training people to consume as a replacement for spiritual or other introspective, healthy rituals in order to make private companies profits. It just seems so soulless to me, to ritualize consumerism and monetary transactions in this way.

Can't we just make useful things instead of creating new branches of pseudoscience in order to sell more shit that people don't need? Imagine all of the brainpower that has gone into developing rituals for this stuff. In the future, I can imagine this kind of marketing morphing into a sort of consumer religion, where these rituals begin to take on a spiritual element.

As market logic permeates more and more aspects of our lives (i.e. social media as the marketization of human interaction), expect to see this type of disturbing phenomenon more and more.

Also, marketing is social conditioning. It’s psychological warfare applied in a capitalist system. It’s very origins are in state propaganda.

I catch myself sometimes trying to call out "Hey, Google" if I need something (not just information), even if I'm not in the room it's installed in. It's honestly disturbing, and I feel brainwashed. They have encoded their brand name in my conditioning, and that's the part that makes me extra salty about this.

I think they have misread the paper slightly:

Rituals should be systematic, repetitive movements natural to the context and product. Not random gestures.

In the paper, the rituals associated with the carrots were '...behaviors such as using their knuckles to rap on the desk, taking deep breaths, and closing their eyes for a moment...'. n.b. none of those were natural to the context and 'product'.

The 'not random gestures' part is actually referring to where participants in the study performed similar gestures, but did different ones for each carrot that they tasted.

So I think they seem to be drawing the wrong conclusions from this study.

Yes, I wonder if part of this is that doing anything (or possibly, doing nothing at all) just builds anticipation. Part of the results were that a longer delay after the ritual resulted in a better experience.

I wonder if the control group accounted for the same amount of time spent with the group doing the ritual.

Unboxing comes to mind. It seems manufacturers are putting an astounding amount of effort into making the ritual of opening the packaging for your new gadget a long series of satisfying unfolds, slides and surprises.

Very good point, and I think that also creates a really good peak at the end of your buying experience that you will remember for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule

the lol surprise dolls are literally made for this. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/parenting/lol-surprise-do...

When I think of products with rituals I think of Mexican alcohol. Corona with lime in the bottle, and tequila where you lick salt and suck on a lemon wedge.

Kinda reminds me of smoking weed in the 90's. It involved buying a bong/pipe that show's off your identity; the grinding and rolling, where you argue about technique and style; the pre-stone food shopping; the selection of the film/concert/activity. So much extra, unnecessary stuff to do before actually getting stoned.

Who says drug users don't work hard? ;-)

To a lesser extent, Smirnoff Ice was able to copy this with the ice your friends viral marketing campaign.

Also Captain Morgan's with the captain's pose as you drink it.

The ‘lesser extent’ must be in exponential. I’ve never heard of either of those things, and am a regular casual drinker - however the ritual around Corona is almost half the drinking experience. I can’t think of another brand that has quite so firmly implanted its ‘ritual’ into alcoholic beverages.

In college I think I saw more people drink ICE ironically after getting iced than by personal preference.

I agree, although the salt, lemon and mouthwash is really necessary to drink what it sold as tequila. High quality tequila should be drunk in small sips.

Spot on, that's a really good one!

brands like Blue Moon (Coors) roll this into their marketing. Order a Blue Moon at a bar and they'll stuff an orange slice onto the bottle or glass. But it's just marketing.

the lime actually does make the corona taste better though (assuming you squeeze the lime juice into the beer), and likely why the ritual does abet sales in that case.

Although an artificial ritual would seem obnoxious in apps, the routine of going to the dashboard of each app is a ritual. Email, intranet, Slack, sales figures, support requests, it all has the added comfort of feeling the work will be incoming from these apps, and therefore moving from proactive mode to passively waiting.

That's true, I also wonder if it ties up with some parts of app gamification

Orangina is probably the first product that springs to my mind with this, "shake the bottle, wake the drink". Jaeger-bombs is one such rendition in the UK amongst late-teens/20-somethings.

Although, maybe crepes suzette (and similar flambé at the table dishes) are an earlier version, where ordering a particular dish caused the waiter to come to the table and prepare it for you, https://youtu.be/Xu9xq0Rj-KU?t=82.

Rituals around food preparation / consumption abound throughout human history and society (prayer before meal, Japanese tea ceremony, breaking bread, etc). It makes me wonder whether the rituals described in the article in some sense mimic the experience of rituals deeply embedded in human society / psyche.

Tea ceremony presumably isn't about selling specifically (I don't know it's origins, but I'm guessing they're not 'sell tea').

The crepes thing is interesting to me -- would love to hear of earlier examples, or those from other cultures than UK -- as it turns cheap mass-produced (in house but pre-service) meal items into the highest priced item on the menu. I checked one of the YouTube examples and saw all other puddings (desserts) for £9 but crêpes suzette were £15. Sure it uses 5 minutes of a waiters time (min wage in UK ~60p for 5 minutes) but that's still an excellent markup, especially if a table of 4 have the crêpes and you prepare them together.

I know that this doesn't fit in with some of the rituals mentioned. But for a lot of them a common thread is that you feel you have done something yourself to make the product/experience better. I think this gives a little bit of the same mindset of (as mentioned in the article) cooking your own food makes it taste better. Or building your own furniture, even it it is really bad.

I've thought of some things with "complications" that end up connecting you with them.

1) Linux. some assembly required.

2) ikea. (see #1)

3) pistachios. I love those salt and pepper pistachios. unshelling them slows down your eating and somehow I think they taste better. Shelled pistachios - you can shove a handful in your mouth and be satisfied immediately (like just about any snack nut) - not as good.

As kids in elementary school, each day before we accessed the education system, we pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands...

That's just systematic brain washing. Others do acknowledge their Queen/King or other leader.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. More polietly you could call it indoctrination or just expression of pride. Whatever it's a process to normalise acknowledgement of the superiority and authority of your country or leadership.

I dont know that it has any impact on the positive reception of the subsequent education.

Yeah, like my manual strain relieving ritual for every lightning connector for my Apple mobile products, using heat gun and 3/8” shrink tubing. It causes me to love those products.

You have just changed my life for the better. Thanks!

So far, it’s working.

Yes! like checking noscript on a blank page and then spending my time elsewhere. I love doing that.

This is such crap, frankly. It's looking at a paper and genuinely not understanding why something works.

I'm 100% - probably higher - that if you make me do some random shit to use your product, I will not do it and will actively become a detractor.

The papers show that satisfaction increases if you delay eating. That's because of anticipating a dopamine reward.

I do not get a dopamine reward when I want to change my kube yaml. I do not get a reward viewing CI statuses. I do not get a reward opening slack. I actively dislike it.

Also, let's just look at one line of this blog post:

> Very few companies have successfully built a ritual around their products. It’s unclear how many have tried.

The title is also bullshit. As the post says, there's no proof it increases satisfaction and certainly not spending - AKA LTV, which is what you should drive. We should use our own critical thinking here and, if we try, at least try with ample caution.

And also, we should definitely distinguish between habit forming and ritual. A ritual is a process we are expected to run through. Things that we are forced to do, even if we don't want to do it. Habit forming may be gamification, rewards, etc. for normal activities we would be inclined to do anyway. If we force people to do things they don't want, it won't end well.

Noting that marketing doesn't work on you just means a different form of marketing works on you even stronger.

Maybe honesty and integrity, yeah.

>You’re a gaming app: each time players open the app, they need to move their screen brightness up and down until it reaches the perfect point.

I remember GTA V on the PS4 constantly asking me to adjust screen gamma when relaunching the game. Annoying as hell.

And if you can pair the ritual with chemical or psychological addiction, you've got an intergenerational cash cow!

A lot F2P games have this. Things like mobile legends and pubg all have timed and daily rewards for signing and other tasks. Stuff like upgrading stats 1 time a day, playing a match of each type, spending virtual money on the store each day, playing their roulette games, spending actual money.

All of that ends up becoming a daily ritual that keeps you logging into the game whether or not you intend to play it...then well once you're there, you might as well just play a quick match, the game's open anyway.

The rituals are also something to overcome as a competitor.

If a user base has a specific ritual that creates a caste of users in a business app, and those high caste users are central to the functioning of the business process, they will be the mules that prevent organizations from migrating their process regardless of how cumbersome the old app experience is. Their caste membership is risked, and therefore they are loathe to risk losing status.

Solutions created in Access come to mind.

There isn't a single technical example of this in practice. All implemented examples are in other fields. The suggestion in technical areas (adjusting gamma in a game) just makes me laugh.

This feels like an attempt to reinvent the product loop, which is a real thing, but a far better framework with better examples.

The closest example I can think of is the lyft fist bump (which is gone now I believe)

> The Jeep Wave: when you drive a Jeep, you are required to wave to other Jeep drivers.

I wonder if there is an exhaustive list of all similar behaviors. I’ve seen this sort of culture before around other vehicles.

I wish there was too, but I couldn't find one.

I was surprised about how many videos there are on Youtube explaining the Jeep Wave!

This feels like ad fluff commissioned by a "spiritual consultant" company[1][2][3][4]. Something to get hype up about this new "innovation".

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/business/remote-work-spir...

[2] https://sacred.design

[3] https://www.ritualdesignlab.org

[4] https://www.ritualist.life

The simplistic text and the 2 random graphs in the middle made me think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk ...

Apparently each iProduct packaging requires a few seconds to get the top off, building up anticipation (e.g. https://youtu.be/v5P_EGqzW2Y?t=46 )

I was curious about the "why it matters" .. but it seemed like the section be better called "rituals matter" .. as it had no sense of explaining why rituals have the stated impact.

Korean BBQ restaurants and Sushi restaurants do this very well.

Over the years I've increasingly come to hate products and gurus who look to artificially rope in more usage & "spending" through such fundas.

iClearly this is why I love vim, I have a ritual of needing to press i, I, a, A or o, O before typing what I need to type

People use rituals to feel a connection to god, solidarity with their community, or to think about the ways that significant actions may shape their life and the lives of others around them.

What if a bunch of consultants got together than tried to re-purpose that for capitalism to get people to spend more money? Wouldn't that be fantastic? Christ loved money changers in temples. lmao

EDIT: Holy crap, this is like the loan sharks saying well, they kicked us out of the temple. Why don't we build a small golden idol inside of the multi-national bank that people could pray to while we fleece them?

I suspect this is why Americans seem to always want to spread some sauce or dip on foods. It's part of the ritual.

Sounds good. From now on I'll demand a sacrifice before I considering elevating an issue's priority.

Ooh - actually this is making sense. “Swipe to unlock” on older phones seems to be along these lines

I think a lot of games already do this. Minigames that are glorified button presses for example. The fortnite pinata lootbox as a notable example. But lockpicking minigames in skyrim could be seen as the same. Even quicktime events to an extent.

We all know how this will play out...

Growth Hackers Inc. will find this result and now every website you visit will ask you to perform some obnoxious ritual (perhaps 30 seconds of mindfulness meditation while all of the ads load) before asking you to sign up for their newsletter (decline text: "no thanks, I don't want to be smarter") at which point you can finally read instructions on how to air fry your leftover tacos.

And of course somewhere on this site, there will be a proclamation of love for the viewer. ("You are looking GOOD today! This website LOVES you!")

Finally a good use of the accelerometer API in web, to ensure you did put your phone down for Obnoxious Ritual. Oh and you forgot the ritual of “accepting all” E.U. cookies.

Honestly? I can't wait to see this be abused. I know, it means a big ol' wave of annoying is heading our way, but I'm curious to see who gets it right. Of course, now that we've been primed, readers are more aware, but there is an element of this that I find fascinating.

I really enjoy the ritual of cooking up my heroin in a spoon, watching it bubble and then seeing the tasty liquid sucked up into the hypodermic; then searching for a vein that hasn't already collapsed and inserting the needle. Drawing back the plunger and seeing blood -- ensuring that I've hit the vein properly, then squeezing the plunger until I've completed my hit...

Ahhh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QAXDMOVamI

I saw that scene and it reminded me of coffee drinkers with their $40 per pound beans, hand grinders, and Chemexes. Junkies like their rituals.

I once pointed out to a guy that coffee is like religion. There's a lot of ritual around brewing and prep. There are many sects drinking different brews etc... he looked at me and said "and then there are the false prophets that try to get you to drink tea."

Yep.

>I saw that scene and it reminded me of coffee drinkers with their $40 per pound beans, hand grinders, and Chemexes. Junkies like their rituals.

I don't know the youtube video you linked, nor will I watch it (I avoid Google as much as possible).

That said, I grind my $6.99/lb French Roast twice (once with a burr grinder and once with a blade grinder) to ensure that it's ground fine enough for my taste.

Is that a ritual? Not really. It's more to make sure that my coffee is of a taste and consistency I prefer.

In fact, I'd prefer not to have to do all of that and sometimes will use the Bunn commercial coffee grinder[0] at my supermarket, which will grind to the level I want consistently. I'd buy one, but they cost ~$1,000.00.

Is my activity a ritual or is it just making sure I get what I want?

[0] https://www.ebay.com/p/1100681870?iid=193368088995

Edit: Fixed spacing.

Yes? I think the author is over-selling "ritual" within a product with "secondary habit".

Yours would be "I drink coffee" with a habit of "grind beans extra fine". Now that you have these preferences, you enjoy coffee more.

That said: 40$ per pound coffee is expensive, but buying a 1000$ coffee maker, and searching for a deal on one so you can afford it is no less absurd to us Tea drinkers. Now: May I interest you in some Somovar tea? https://onceinabluemoose.com/index.php?main_page=product_inf... ;)

>That said: 40$ per pound coffee is expensive, but buying a 1000$ coffee maker, and searching for a deal on one so you can afford it is no less absurd to us Tea drinkers.

Just to clarify. I pay $6.99/lb for coffee, and I didn't even seriously consider purchasing a $1000 coffee grinder (not maker).

Doing so would absolutely be absurd. I'm going to assume that either I wasn't clear in my comment or you aren't a native English speaker. Either way, apologies for any confusion.

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