Ten years ago BBDO identified five Rituals, five series’ of actions that helped consumers to transition pleasurably between the states of mind we needed at various points in the day. A lot has changed since then, so we thought it was time to look at Rituals ten years on.

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SMART
Rituals, 10 years on

2. G E T C O N S U M E R S M A R T
Rituals, 10 years on
Once upon a time, the first thing you did when you opened your eyes was kiss your
partner, check your children, boil the kettle, put the radio on; then maybe it would be the
turn of the computer or the TV. Today, we wake up and check our phones, our emails, our
social media, the news.
Ten years ago the iPhone launched. From this point, connectivity has only multiplied;
speeding up our pace of life, increasing our expectations, and driving us to become more
demanding. At the same time, connectivity puts more pressure on us than ever before, as
the expectations from the people we are connected to and from ourselves have grown in
line with technology.
RITUALS 2007
Ten years ago BBDO completed one of its largest pieces of research ever, in which we
identified five series’ of actions that helped consumers to transition between the states of
mind we needed at various points in the day. Most people started their day Preparing for
Battle, and ended their day by Locking Up. But these were more than just merely actions,
or even series’ of actions; they were symbolic, they were emotional – they were Rituals.
Preparing for Battle helped us to transform from feeling cocooned to being ready to take
on the day; while Locking Up took us from feeling relaxed to feeling reassured. Arguably
we need rituals more than ever today, over the past ten years we have been through a
series of crises that have had and continue to have a serious psychological impact. Rituals
provide comfort, reassurance, a sense of control.
But today, many of these important transitions, these definitive parts of our day, seem to
be becoming increasingly transitory. Our smartphones connect us at all times to a world
that is much bigger than the one we can see at any moment, this is enormously
distracting. How many of us would agree that we would like to spend more time with our
families in the mornings as we Prepare for Battle? Yet how many of us would also agree
that we spend far too long on our phones during that same period of time? Technology
creates tensions often working against what we need psychologically at that moment in
time.
THE LOSS OF ENDPOINTS
Technology also means that our days have lost the definitive structure that they had 10
years ago. In 2007, we went to work, and we came home to spend time with our loved

3. G E T C O N S U M E R S M A R T
Rituals, 10 years on
ones. Today, we all access our work email on the go and our personal life at work. The two
have become a jumble that is hard to separate.
In 2007, the Internet was stationary, primarily accessible on computers, aside from the
select few businessmen with a BlackBerry. Today, we all carry the Internet with us.
In 2007, books and magazines were physical objects that had a beginning, a middle and
an end. We waited a week between episodes of our favourite TV shows. Today, we expect
a never-ending scroll of content, TV shows that we can binge-watch into a blur, social
media feeds that keep updating for as long as our thumbs can keep scrolling.
This loss of endpoints means that we can do all things at all times. We have had to
become used to quick transitions between our different personas – we never know when
we check our phone whether it will be something personal that catches our eye or
something for work.
RITUALS 2017
So what is the role for Rituals in 2017? Does this state of constant transitioning mean that
Rituals are redundant? Far from it. Watch this space.

4. G E T C O N S U M E R S M A R T
Rituals, 10 years on
If you are interested in learning more about the subject of this article, please contact
Sarah Emmerson, Insights Planner, emmersons@bbdoknows.com.
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