Navigating reality has become an almost constant shock to the system, and people are growing more invested in constructing a permanent refuge through world-building and community connections.

Essential Escapism

We’re witnessing the ‘wellnessification’ of absolutely everything. Beyond boosting their physical health with fitness and nutrition, people are looking for a path to being well in all aspects of their lives.

Being+

People are redefining status for themselves using a broad range of factors beyond solely economic ones. This new iteration of status is often based around increasingly niche and local signifiers, and status is becoming a mode of belonging and connection with like-minded people.

Insider Status

 asked its readership, “Does your kid need a ‘bed party’?”, referring to the growing practice of celebrating college acceptance with a surprise bedroom overhaul, typically themed in university colours and filled with campus merch. 

The New York Times

 is a visual spectacle, designed as much for the feed as for the incoming student. What might once have been a private family milestone is now staged, aestheticised and shared, showing how rituals are no longer only inherited, religious or calendar-bound. Increasingly, they are being created around moments of emotional transition, social display and identity-making.

Ritual-led consumption has been around for a long time. Oreo established its ‘twist, lick, dunk’ ritual back in 1923 after observing how people naturally chose to eat the biscuit. 

Rimping Supermarket

 But while branded rituals are not new, the conditions that shape them have changed. Today’s rituals can crystallise quickly around different emotional needs, from the comfort of repetition to the desire for belonging, luck, status or levity. Some brands are imaginatively tapping into this need for ritualised comfort: 

 returns annually to satisfy the appetites of a captive audience, recognising a desire for participatory engagement.

For brands and marketers, rituals hold immense power because they formalise the connection between product, place and emotion. They can shift brands from conscious consideration into reflexive use, purchase and loyalty. Indeed, 72% of people who engage in rituals incorporate a specific brand into that ritual. 

 What feels especially important today is the speed at which new rituals are created and adopted, from mundane daily habits to bizarre platform-native superstitions. 

, for instance, has become a visual symbol of manifesting good fortune in a surprising new ritual sweeping Chinese social media, showcasing how everyday objects, signs and symbols are being imbued with new emotional meaning.

As people respond to a hyper-connected environment that feels increasingly volatile and uncertain, behaviour change is becoming rampant and multi-directional. Some are 

, imposing systems of structured frugality to maintain security, while others are 

, splurging on treats and moments of levity. In both cases, rituals offer people a way to make uncertainty feel patterned, repeatable and emotionally manageable. Canvas8 spoke to Cele Otnes, professor emerita at the University of Illinois and coauthor of 

, to understand how rituals take shape, crystallise and become meaningful for brands through cocreation, flexibility and emotional relevance.

I started studying rituals in the late 80s through gift-giving, which was then a brand new topic in consumer behaviour. Since then, the field has exploded in academia as it has in the commercial sphere. In the last decade or so, I’ve moved from micro and meso-level rituals to marketplace rituals; how marketers leverage rituals to achieve important goals such as enhancing consumer stickiness and creating value-added offerings.

Dennis Rook wrote a great article called 

The Ritual Dimension of Consumer Behavior

, and we still use the tenets of his definition. Rituals are performative, symbolic, repeated and meaningful behaviours that people engage in to enhance some aspect of their life. Lately, there’s been a recognition of the emotionality of ritual and the potential of rituals to contribute to the emotional level of an experience.

When we started studying this as a field, we focused on holidays, special occasions and weddings. Weddings are the great granddaddy of them all. What’s fascinating is the branching out of rituals into the secular, non-calendrical space.

One example that’s just emerged, which 

 talked about, is this thing called the ‘bed ritual’. When a student gets into university, there’s now a ritual where you surprise your to-attend-college child by decorating their bedroom at home with all things related to the college. Then, of course, you put it on social media. Aesthetically, you have this room in the colours of the university, filled with bedding, sweatshirts, glassware, stuffed animals and all that stuff, which costs a lot of money. There was an instant critique of this because of how it fosters the exclusivity of private schools, but I think it’s a great example of a secular ritual.

The other place where I’ve seen ritual explode in a secular, non-calendrical way is in the sporting arena. At the University of Illinois, we made it to the basketball semi-finals and saw these fascinating pop-up rituals fostered by the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics. Everybody showed up in their sports apparel, with speakers, players, coaches and a band. I think it’s something marketers could be more aware of – the pop-up ritual.

I think you can break this question into internal and external factors. We have some very interesting cultural changes. Some categories where rituals were front and centre are being nudged out because of external factors. Relatedly, you have people’s own levels of anxiety – their need for community, their need for status and, internally, the adherence to tradition.

I think this whole conversation about emotion and uncertainty, at least for recent generations, started with COVID-19. During the COVID-19 period, there were all these articles about people, because they were isolated, creating their own rituals to cope. I recently saw a study which said that, in the US, more people are now smoking pot recreationally on a daily basis than drinking. Liquor brands were always highly dependent on rituals because of the celebration aspect, so some categories where rituals were front and centre are being nudged out because of external factors. I certainly think there’s a category of rituals that could be called therapeutic rituals. A lot of times, consumers are responsible for their own creation of therapeutic rituals because they know what they need to cope with.

The world right now is so fraught with despair that you see people creating their own rituals, the need for tranquillity. One example is 

. My husband and I started doing this during COVID-19, and it became a ritual for us. HelloFresh are very good at package messaging around health, as well as little add-ons like gifts and free products.

What are the building blocks of a ritual?

Rook came up with four pillars of ritual: ritual artifacts, which are the items and objects used in the ritual; ritual performance roles, which are how people interact in the ritual; ritual scripts, which are the rules of how you do stuff; and the ritual audience, the people who see the ritual.

The ritual audience might not have a huge role to play beyond the passive observer. In the context of lavish weddings, the ritual audience would be the wedding guests. Of course, now, the ritual audience could be millions of people thanks to social media.

I did a paper on ritual language, which looked at the actual components of language you use in the ritual. It’s different from scripts because scripts are rules. Then the sixth ingredient, which I think is fascinating, is atmospherics – how the ritual is created from the sensory perspective, from the ambience and aesthetic elements.

”, and it talks about the atmospherics created in soccer stadiums and how the people who run the teams understand how to create ritual elements throughout the games to build excitement and what they call ritual effervescence, which means you allow the emotions to come forward and to be shared in a community.

I feel that some classic brands use rituals more effectively. I don’t see brands necessarily using rituals consistently in their strategy as much as they could, or should. The classic brand that did this better than anybody is De Beers.

Before De Beers, there was no diamond engagement ring, but De Beers decided, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we could get all these women to wear diamond engagement rings?” One part was the slogan ‘A diamond is forever’. They had a whole campaign about church weddings, showing incredible churches like Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, as well as proposal imagery that embedded the ring in a high-aesthetic, high-class world. What they were doing was embedding this engagement ring ritual into a lifeworld of rituals.

I think the people who do it well are those that create narratives where the ritual is centred. You see it in service experiences, too. British Airways has done a wonderful job of creating safety announcements that make you pay attention, using iconic British references. This is interesting because it’s a ritual most people tune out of, but British Airways tries to ritualise as much as they can, even in economy.

I think it’s super important to understand the difference between embedded rituals and optional rituals. Embedded rituals are rituals that the consumer cannot get away from. The classic example is walking through the department store and getting sprayed with perfume, and that can lead to resentment and annoyance because the consumer has no agency. Embedded rituals are rituals that marketers insert into the experience that they feel are non-negotiable. I think those are friction points.

Optional rituals are rituals where you allow the consumer to have agency as to whether they will participate or not. There was a car brand in the US called Saturn, and they had this car delivery ritual. When you went to the showroom to pick up your car, the entire staff would surround the car in this little staging area and do a little cheer.

I later interviewed the manager who had sold me my Saturn, and he said a lot of repeat customers loved the car, but the second time they bought the car they would say, “Please don’t make me do that.” I think how a ritual goes over greatly depends on the personality of the consumer, which goes back to cocreation and flexibility.

What role do sensory cues and access play in ritual formation?

I don’t think brands do a very good job of that, and it’s hard because you’re often mediated. If you’re doing something on television or on social media, you don’t have every sensory cue available to you.

Where I see it working is in services. The ritual of afternoon tea is very interesting, and it exists now mainly as an experience for tourists. You want everything to be pretty and nice – the steam off the tea and the flavours.

Another example is the American Girl brand. When you go to the American Girl store, it’s a feast for the senses. You can buy matching outfits with your doll and have tea in the cafe, and you can get your doll’s hair done. They really understand intergenerational rituals. For the middle classes, this has become as important as a trip to Disney. On social media, unpacking videos are also a way to ritualise consumption outside of physical retail.

I think some rituals democratise consumption experiences, too. Social roles can be intimidating, and one of the things marketers can do is play a role in ritual education. At the College of Business, where I work, we have etiquette dinners where we train undergraduates on how to perform social roles in academic settings. These enhance the cultural capital of a person, and they give them confidence.

Brands make the mistake of thinking that the rituals they create are going to matter to consumers. That's the most common mistake. I don't think marketers think enough about cocreating rituals. I think they think about creating rituals and sort of impinging rituals on consumers, but consumers want their own private spheres where they can create their own rituals, but they also are willing to partner with marketers if marketers are willing to let them create a ritual that's more authentic to them. For marketers, the trick is to manage the tension between the authentic and the commercial in rituals, because if they are perceived as insincere and serve the brand and not the consumer, they're not going to work.

One brand I think does rituals really well is Trinny London. I think it's interesting as well because so much of it happens on social media. I think Trinny does a really good job of creating these moments online where the community can gather together. She does regular video series, one of which is called 

 Trinny and one of her assistants wear the same clothes, but they style them in different ways, and they use different make-up and dress the outfits for different occasions. You can watch these videos any time in the Trinny London channel, and the audience are so engaged, and it’s a real community. I think that what people need to remember is, in this world that we live in, “how can rituals bring our customers joy?”

Another issue is how do we bring rituals into the conversation about branding from the very beginning of that marketing document, thinking about how we are going to embed this brand into people's lives. I think you need a ritual audit to look at artefacts, performance roles, scripts, audience, language, atmospherics and think which one of these can we address and how are we going to? Brands need to bring consumers in to advise them, use grounded information that penetrates consumers' lives and captures actual authentic and emotionally resonant experiences.

 posts with the hashtag #nighttimeritual on Instagram as of May 2026

 of people in the world engage in rituals daily, and 

 have had these rituals for more than five years

 of US sports fans have a pre-game ritual they do each time their team competes

For marketers, the trick is to manage the tension between the authentic and the commercial in rituals

The world right now is so fraught with despair that you see people creating their own rituals, fulfilling the need for tranquillity

Brands need to bring people in to advise them and use grounded information that penetrates their lives and captures actual, authentic experiences

Cele Otnes is professor emerita of marketing in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. She has been publishing on consumption and marketplace rituals for over three decades. She is coauthor of 

Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding

Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture

 Rituals, Consumption and Marketing: A Research Companion

. She has consulted for Hallmark, ABC News and Flamingo Research. She has been quoted in 

 and many print and social-media outlets.

Global

Shopping

Communications

Home and Relationships

Amid global volatility, people are turning everyday behaviours into rituals, finding new meaning in moments and objects. As behaviours crystallise around an emotional need, brands become ritual touchstones. Marketing professor Cele Otnes unpacks how brands can authentically play into rituals.

Analysis

Sophie Harris

Cele Otnes

Related Macro Behaviours

Essential Escapism

Being+

Insider Status