'Brands Are Blind To the Opportunity Around Rituals' - Fergus Dyer-Smith

A fundamental ambition for any brand – consumer or B2B – is to become a necessary habit in people’s lives: a service woven into routine, that is relied on and ultimately becomes essential to success. Discovering how to develop and embed a brand into human needs is a marketing endeavour and no small task.

Over recent months, MSQ has explored the behavioural foundations of those habits, studying consumers across the UK, US, India and China. The results were first revealed in a white paper that has now been adapted into a documentary, ‘Ritualized’, offering a deep dive into how rituals shape human experience – and how brands can use those insights to create more effective marketing.

Powered by MSQ’s AI tools, MSQ Assist and the MSQ Growth Engine, the documentary shows how ritual thinking can be translated into practical strategy, from theory to targeting to real-world campaigns and results.

Here, Fergus Dyer-Smith, MSQ’s global chief product officer, shares key learnings from the research – and why marketers have historically struggled to capitalise on this behavioural opportunity.

Creative Salon: If a CMO acted on just one thing from the Ritualized report in the next six months, what should they do - and what should they stop doing immediately?

Fergus Dyer-Smith: Do immediately: Start mapping your consumers' existing rituals within your category. Don't create new rituals - identify the ones already happening. Our research shows 72 per cent of consumers already incorporate brands into their rituals, but most brands are blind to these opportunities because they're looking for the wrong signals.

Stop immediately: Stop trying to force your brand into moments that feel convenient for you. The biggest mistake we see is brands inserting themselves into high-visibility moments rather than emotionally significant ones. Rituals aren't about reach - they're about meaning. A quiet morning coffee ritual has more transformative power than a viral social moment.

The key insight from our 4,000-consumer study is that rituals are driven by personal meaning, even when they appear practical. Start there.

How can brands tell the difference between a true ritual and a habit, and why does getting that wrong lead to ineffective marketing?

A habit is automatic - you brush your teeth without thinking. A ritual is intentional - you light a candle, arrange your workspace, or follow a specific sequence because it transforms how you feel.

The critical difference is emotional transformation. Rituals are "a succession of intentionally performed behaviors in a fixed order, designed to induce emotional transformation." Habits just get things done.

Getting this wrong leads to functional marketing that misses the emotional core. If you treat a ritual like a habit, you optimise for efficiency when you should be optimising for meaning. For example, we see brands focus on making morning routines "faster" when consumers actually want them to be more mindful and transformative.

You outline 'observe, facilitate, participate'. Where do brands most commonly skip steps and what damage does that cause?

Most brands skip straight to 'participate' - they see a behaviour and immediately try to insert their brand. This is like showing up uninvited to someone's personal ceremony.

• The most common skip: Brands observe a ritual (like Sunday meal prep) and immediately create content about "Sunday prep with our product" without understanding what that ritual actually provides emotionally (such as control, care for family, weekly reset).

• The damage: You become an uninvited guest. Our research shows consumers are 39 per cent more positive toward brands that are genuinely part of their rituals, but forcing entry creates the opposite effect.

• Facilitate first: Before participating, ask how you can make their existing ritual better. Maybe it's not about featuring in their Sunday prep - maybe it's about providing the tools that make their ritual more meaningful or reducing the factors that disrupt it.

The consumer must remain in charge. When brands try to dictate rituals, they break the very thing that makes rituals powerful.

What are the clearest warning signs that a brand is forcing itself into a ritual rather than earning permission?

Red flags:

• You're changing the ritual: If your presence requires people to alter their established sequence, you're forcing entry.

• You're making it about you: Rituals are about the person's transformation, not brand awareness. If your messaging focuses on brand benefits rather than personal meaning, you're an intruder.

• You're rushing the timeline: Rituals develop over time. If you're expecting immediate adoption or trying to create a ritual through a single campaign, you're forcing it.

• You're targeting the wrong moments: Forcing entry often means targeting high-visibility moments rather than emotionally significant ones. A brand that crashes a wedding hashtag is forcing; one that helps with the quiet preparation ritual is earning permission.

• Consumers resist or ignore: The clearest sign is consumer behaviour. Genuine ritual integration feels natural and welcomed. Forced integration creates resistance, even if it's not vocalised.

What evidence should brands look for that they've successfully become part of a ritual beyond awareness or usage metrics?

Behavioural evidence:

• Sequence dependency: People incorporate your brand into a specific order of actions

• Emotional attachment to timing: Disrupting availability creates genuine distress, not just inconvenience

• Personalisation: Consumers adapt your product to fit their specific ritual needs

Language signals:

• Ownership language: "My morning coffee ritual" vs. "I drink coffee"

• Emotional descriptors: Words like "grounding," "centring," "preparing" rather than functional descriptions

• Resistance to substitution: "It's not the same with another brand"

Engagement patterns:

• Consistent timing: Usage patterns that align with personal rhythms, not promotional pushes

• Contextual clustering: Your brand appears alongside other ritual elements (candles, music, specific locations)

• Advocacy that focuses on feeling: Recommendations that emphasize emotional benefits over functional ones

• The gold standard: When consumers defend your place in their ritual against suggestions to change or optimise it.

Looking ahead five years, what will distinguish brands that have genuinely embraced rituals from those that treated this as another trend?

In five years, the difference will be obvious.

Brands that genuinely embraced rituals won’t be talking about them anymore. They’ll simply be there. Quietly embedded in people’s lives, playing a meaningful role in moments that matter. Not as a badge, or a campaign idea, or a shiny “ritual strategy” slide — but as something people would genuinely miss if it disappeared.

That’s because real rituals aren’t marketing tactics. They’re emotional infrastructure.

Our research shows that rituals exist to create emotional transformation: helping people feel calmer, more in control, more themselves, more connected. Brands that understand this will have learned to be useful in deeply human ways — facilitating moments of commencement, calming, maintenance, identity or celebration without demanding attention in return. They’ll feel less like messaging, and more like trusted tools or companions.

Crucially, these brands will also have evolved with people. Rituals aren’t static. Lives change, identities shift, pressures intensify. The brands that endure will be the ones that adapt their role within rituals rather than rigidly defending consistency for its own sake.

By contrast, brands that treated rituals as a trend will still be on the outside looking in. They’ll be the ones aestheticising rituals rather than understanding them — copying the symbols, language or visual cues without grasping the emotional job the ritual is doing. They’ll still be announcing their presence, still measuring success in reach and impressions, still mistaking frequency for meaning. And perhaps most tellingly, they’ll still be trying to get invited into people’s lives.

The ultimate distinction isn’t subtle. In five years, genuine ritual brands will feel so naturally integrated that removing them would feel like disrupting something deeply personal. Trend-followers will still be knocking on the door, asking for attention in moments that were never really theirs.

Because rituals aren’t an opportunity brands can “own”. They’re a human need brands can choose to serve — humbly, intelligently, and with emotional respect.

These insights will be explored in depth at an exclusive London screening of ‘Ritualized: The Documentary’ on 12 February 2026, at LinkedIn HQ. The event combines documentary insights with live demonstrations of how MSQ's AI-powered tools translate ritual understanding into effective campaigns.