Full Episode #1: Rituals in Commercial Culture

We could just go for it.

Yeah, let's just go for it. Let's just take some risk right now. So welcome to Pass the Mic podcast with Jonathan Cook, who will lead our conversation on the topic of rituals in commercial setting. My name is Virginie Glaenzer, I'm your host with a million questions. Let me start by thanking all of you for joining our discussion and for sharing your point of view and experience with us today. It's not what you get, it's what you become. This has become my motto in the last few years. And so in addition to sharing, the purpose of this podcast is to help us expand our understanding of the world I hope that through our questionings, and perhaps by revisiting some of our own beliefs, we'll open up our perspectives to new ideas and new ways of thinking. Before Jonathan starts the conversation by answering a couple of questions, I'd like to do a tour de table and have each of you tell us your first name and why you're interested in this topic. Please try to keep it brief. Brief, to about a minute. So let's start with Martina.

Good choice. Hi everyone, my name is Martina Albertova and I have kind of like a very non-traditional background since I'm interested in all sorts of things. But I'm partly an academic, partly a practitioner, with like a research, planning, marketing, communication, strategic innovation, consulting background. And about 2 years ago, I started my own consultancy called Meaning Global, which really focuses directly on this topic that we're going to talk about today, which is all about the power of rituals and the sort of symbolic dimension of brands and marketing and businesses and how businesses need to create meaning in order to deliver some kind of tangible value. And make their brands sort of, the behaviors around them ritualized in culture. And yeah, so that's pretty much the reason why I'm interested in rituals from the point of view of culture and the symbolic dimension of our thinking and behavior and how by translating our behavior through habits into rituals, we are actually making meaning and culture. So that's my own point of view.

Thank you. Next, Matt G.

Hello, my name is Matthew Grant, and I work at an agency up here in Cambridge, Massachusetts called Scratch. I'm interested in this topic, I guess, in part, and maybe a little bit against the grain here, we'll see how the conversation goes, because I'm interested in particularly how with the rise of rationalism, the Enlightenment era, which ushered in industrial capitalism, this whole setup that we have now, where we have a kind of, through scientific rationality, disenchantment of the world, and then kind of as Marx talked about it, re-enchantment of the world through commodities. In fact, in Capital, he talks about the commodities as these kind of disembodied phantasms taking over everything. So I'm curious both in how we recreate kind of pre-industrial ritual spaces or sacred spaces or something like that within a wholly commercial environment, and how even to it, Martina said, marketers and others even tap into this kind of human inclination towards kind of magical and the sacred to kind of not manipulate it, but at least harness it to their own ends. And then also I'm curious in, to the degree that there are sacred or ritual spaces that resist commercialization and kind of happen outside of it. My vision here was something like St. Francis or St. Francis, Pope Francis, not a saint yet, doing like an Easter service, but what if his robes and stuff were covered with logos like a NASCAR driver? People would find that horrifying. But why? Like, why do we still hold on to this notion of there should be some spaces that are free from any kind of commercial incursion? So that's why I'm here.

Great. Hilton.

I'm probably going to speak less eloquently and academically than than the two people who spoke before me. My interest in this topic is quite simple. I, like Martina, come from a marketing background that evolved into organizational culture and change management. And, you know, the perception of organizational culture is often lost behind the reality that a culture really is how an organization makes decisions. And does that in a consistent and coaching fashion. And often the reality is that requires a degree of ritualization. How do we innovate? How do we think? How do we create space for debates and discussion? And how do we celebrate and recognize when we've hit success or run into a hurdle? So all organizations have a culture. All organizations have rituals of behavior. Some of those that advance and accelerate the organization, and some that sadly are a hurdle and an impediment to success. So through that very simple lens, I look at rituals like how you are greeted on a Southwest Airlines flight. That is a ritualized corporate behavior. How the people at 3M and Pixar actually create small teams and are able to drive some of the biggest innovations in those organizations and sectors. That's ritualized behavior that requires purposeful leadership and it requires a strong and steady commitment to doing that. So that's why I'm intrigued by this topic because I think rituals are a way for organizations to get better and stronger and to accelerate, not impede their progress.

Great, thank you very much. How about Matt H.?

Hi, I'm, uh, Matt Hames, other Matt. Um, I work at a company that's 100% remote. It's called 3 Enrollment Marketing and we do— I'm, um, I'm an associate VP of digital strategy. We do higher education enrollment in the United States predominantly. Um, I am a marketer as well and still a marketer, so I'm interested in rituals and how they pertain to marketing and corporate marketing. I'm very interested. I'm also an English major, so I'm very interested in the definition of the word ritual because I think we'd all define it a little bit differently. And so I'm mostly interested in right now the marketing rituals. Why do we do what we do when a company talks to itself or to an external marketplace? Why do they do what they do? A lot of that is just because we've always done it, especially in the world of higher ed marketing, which just typically said, look, we have leaves on a building, you should come here. And so I'm interested in how rituals can involve thinking, um, to, to not just use rituals to, in marketing, but to, to understand that a thing is a ritual and say, maybe we should stop doing it.

Great. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much. So Jonathan, I'm just going to let you begin the conversation. And I think we talked about starting with a couple of questions on setting the context. So the first one would be, what are rituals in business? So defining what you truly mean. And then why is lacking ritual a threat to businesses? And how can they overcome it? And then we'll see where that takes us.

Thank you. And I'm really glad to see you all engaging in such important questions when it comes to ritual. A ritual is one of those things that invites questions because it's a closed-off space that isn't open to everybody. And by being not open to everybody, it becomes more special to those who participate. So I'm a researcher and consultant, and I specialize in exploring what you might call the unquantifiable aspects of commercial culture. These things like beliefs, emotions, mythologies, symbolism, and ritual, kind of the subjective experience of it all. The things that no ruler can ever reach. And so the way that I look at ritual is through an anthropological lens. And you're absolutely right, Matt, that ritual is a word that can mean many things. So for psychologists and in the practice of medicine, for example, a ritual is regarded as an unnecessary or repetitive behavior. It can be pathological. And for other people, ritual is a mere habit. It's something that you do without understanding what you do. But from the point of view where I'm coming from, it is intricately connected to meaning, and it's doing that through through giving us a place where we know that we stand, where we know who we are and who we stand with. It's about establishing communities. As was mentioned in terms of organizational culture, Hilton, it's absolutely essential. And that's why Matt, our first Matt, he brought up a really important point. Is ritual a thing of the past? I don't think that it is because we can have an industrial revolution and we can have a digital revolution and all of that until we are uploaded onto a mainframe somewhere. And I don't believe that that's going to happen because we're much more complex than the technologists give us credit for. We will remain human and ritual is part of humanity. In fact, it predates our humanity. So biologists will take note of animal rituals. For example, when you have two wild animals, maybe who haven't seen each other before, let's say two tigers out in the jungle encountering each other, and they want to mate. They don't just go right at it because they're both interested. They go through a process, and it's an important process of identity transformation. Which is what ritual is really all about. Because they have to change from the sort of tiger who is a loner and gets into fights with other tigers when they meet in the forest to, you know, one who is maybe willing to mate. There's a process that they go through. And there are all kinds of animals that do this. Even insects with as tiny little nervous systems as they have engage in ritualized behavior. It becomes different when it's human, because we really get into a much more complex culture than what animals are capable of. But that essential piece of identity transformation and interacting with others to make sure that we know how our identities relate, that's at the core of it. So I define ritual as a symbolic behavior. That enables the transformation of identity, which results in the change of behavior. And change of behavior is really what it's all about in business. You know, we can communicate all we like, and it's very pretty and eloquent, but if it doesn't result in behavioral change, it really doesn't accomplish much of anything that's useful for business, either in marketing or in organizational kinds of behaviors. So, yes, Virginie.

What, why do you think that lacking, that businesses were lacking rituals or in threat, have some threats?

Okay, great. I'm happy to talk about that. I think the secret is that businesses are not lacking rituals. I think that rituals are going on all the time in business. But we don't know how to recognize them. And then we don't know how to work with them. And this has happened for a couple of reasons. We'll start with the Protestant Reformation, and then we'll go on with the Enlightenment, which then brings us to the Industrial Revolution. You know, in Protestantism, which is where a lot of business culture comes from, ritual is a big no-no. It's what the Catholics did, what the Romans did. And it's ornate, it's sinful, it's too much, it's wasteful. And it also interferes with our sincere experience. And then for the Enlightenment, ritual is just rationally unnecessary, which is true if you think about it. I mean, why should anyone have to get married, for example, go through a marriage ritual? They love each other. Why can't they just love each other a lot for the rest of their lives? Well, you know, the answer is that people are not rational beings completely. And in fact, a lot of what we experience as our rational thought is a veneer that our brains use to justify behaviors that are motivated by really mysterious kinds of things, like feelings that we don't even necessarily want to have, that make us dangerous in a big complex society. So ritual is a community event as well as an individual event, helping to bring those things into accord. When individuals are going off in their own direction and becoming dangerous, they help to define a community and help to give that person a new place in the community, hopefully a place that fits. And without any value judgment, rituals can be abusive or non-abusive. They can be enriching for us as well as destructive. But the main thing is rituals are the thing that organize our behavior. It's not convenience. It's not price. It's ritualized kinds of behaviors, different sets. Walt Whitman said, "I contain multitudes," and that's the idea. You know, I'm Jonathan Cook, but I'm not really just the guy who's talking to you here today. I'm also a father of 3 children, and I can guarantee you I talk to them in a very different way than I'm speaking with you now. And as Mr. Rogers, our American great children's TV host, demonstrated, every day you need to take off your business clothes when you get home and put on your, your home clothes so that you can be the person you are at home. That's what ritual does for us. In business, when we don't purposefully design these rituals, what ends up happening is that our employees, our consumers end up improvising rituals and they're partially designed and they aren't necessarily designed to be in accord with the company's goals, with, um, you know, the official company culture. So you have a lot of things happening that can be destructive. And certainly can be confusing. You know, and we all know lots of stories about businesses that talk about being one thing and they end up being quite something different on the inside. Ritual management is a way to make sure that everybody is really on board, knows who they are and what it is that they're supposed to be doing. And then with consumers as well, rituals help us to get beyond branding, which is, you know, How some people talk about branding as just a logo or just an ad campaign. That's not what a brand is. A brand is like what happens to— okay, I'll put this brutally— what happens to livestock. You've been branded. You're part of this herd now. When you're actually part of a ritual tradition, you are a member of an actual community of people, like Harley-Davidson riders used to be here. In the United States, or Jeep drivers, they'll flash their headlights at each other. Or it used to be Apple. That's been lost quite a bit. But, you know, in, in the early days of their comeback, to have an Apple laptop was a sign that you were a certain kind of person in business. So when we engage in rituals that are well-designed in business, we can actually, um, you know, we can bring people on board for a higher purpose. And to me, that's what it's all about.

So anyone agree with you on businesses are not lacking rituals, but they're not recognizing them, which opens the door to customers improvising and potentially having disruptive behavior, or at least not on brand? Anyone agree or disagree?

Comment?

Well, so Jonathan, I— Thank you for that, those opening comments. There's a lot obviously to unpack in that. The thing that struck a deep chord with me, I think, was the notion of purposeful versus accidental. And certainly for the multitude of folks on this call that come from a marketing background, I would suggest that we wake up purposefully looking to create something that will resonate with whichever audience we're going after. And that is a deliberate act. No brand is ever created accidentally, and if it is, it's certainly not sustained accidentally. It's sustained deliberately and purposefully. I think your point about rituals within an organization, those equally have to be designed with purpose, with a very clear outcome. I think we get into rituals like the Monday morning status call, for no other reason than it's Monday morning and we've had a status call in every company we've ever worked at. Very few organizations will step back from that ritualized behavior and say, does it serve us? How does it serve us? Who should participate? What is the outcome? I think rituals can often be lazy acts of repetitive behavior versus purposeful ones. But often, certainly in large organizations where it's difficult to cat herd, it can be very easy for us to fall into that laziness that says— that questions, why are we doing this action? What is the express outcome of this action? And who should participate or who should not be allowed to participate in this action? That's often a degree of introspection that very few organizations have the time for. Have the capability for. And certainly in, in today's startup mentality, where speed is considered the ultimate aphrodisiac for every company, people will see that introspection as actually something that holds an organization back versus one that actually frees them to do the behaviors that matter. So all of that pontification from me aside, The notion of purposeful, deliberate, and perhaps occasionally debated and reaffirmed is probably the biggest part that I take from the introductory remarks that you made.

Yeah, I agree with that. I want to jump off on the Monday morning status meeting because I think it's a really interesting point. I, as I said in my intro, I work I work at a company that's 100% remote. So we decided to have a Monday morning status meeting that is just video tours of our space. So it's purposeful. It's not a Monday morning status meeting for the purpose of we've always done this. It was quasi, we've always done this. Like everyone's used to the concept of a Monday morning status meeting, but every Monday morning, somebody is assigned to give a tour of either their home office or their home city state. Or like area. So the purpose of it is to get to know each other because we don't have the rituals of chatting about the last night's sporting event over coffee at the coffee shop or at the, at the, at the office coffee. We lack those interoffice rituals. So we have to try to create them in our, in our virtual workspaces. You know, like this is, we don't have as many meetings obviously because we're, we don't have meeting rooms, which is great. But the flip side of that is that there can be an isolation feeling if you're working from home constantly and you don't engage with people outside of your cat. So that was the purpose of those Monday morning meetings.

So I love this idea of purposefulness when it's about team building and company culture. But here's a question for you guys about more ethic as a marketer. When you start consciously creating rituals in an attempt to change someone's behavior regarding your product, the way they, you know, shop, are we manipulating them, or is ritual just a natural process that are just comfortable and predictable for society to follow?

Can I just suggest maybe that they're both things, and naturally so. I mean, to manipulate things with our hands and to move them about and make things happen, that is, I think, for human beings, a natural act. And the question is, I think, ethically, whether you're doing so in such a way that enables people to have choice in terms of the kind of work that they're doing. The kinds of commercial experiences that they're having, and choices that uplift them and give them more options, or whether you're bringing them into an addictive trap, which is certainly something that virtual can do. It can bring us into the identity of being a virtual prisoner.

What do you mean by that? What's a virtual prisoner?

Well, you know, every time I have— I'm on— every time I'm on an airplane and the plane lands, these days, what's the first thing that happens as soon as it touches the ground?

Everyone turns on their phone.

Yeah.

Yeah. Or you get on an elevator, it's the same thing. Everybody's doing this. And are they doing something absolutely vital? You know, I mean, sometimes yes, but I think most of the time no. They're engaged in this kind of habit that has up to a certain point a great deal of utility, and actually helps them. But after a certain point, it cuts them off and it imprisons them in this virtual space, which is often, I think, like a ritual space, a liminal threshold, but one where we don't know the way out.

What do you think, Martina? You're really focused on meaning. So do you see an ethical issue in marketers creating meanings in rituals in an attempt to change people's behaviors? And actually, here's another question for the greater good. Can we, can a brand create a ritual to change human behaviors for the greater good? Like making people eco-friendly.

As Jonathan was speaking, I just started silently wondering what else I can add because he's saying exactly everything that I wanted to say. Because our perspectives are so incredibly aligned, and especially as we did this podcast together last year, This Human Business, so it became really merged. So let me think if I can say something else. Yeah, I also do see this duality between manipulation or persuasion or the ability to sell or, you know, put our best face on is sort of a very natural thing to do. You even see it in nature. It's a part of the mating process. It's like a very natural thing for human beings to do. But also equally, there's a good and bad side of the ritual. So, and I would actually ascribe it more to consciousness. So if we are consciously aware of the rituals that we partake in, and I would see a ritual as a sort of a custom behavior that has some kind of symbolic value for us or personal significance. So if we derive value from it, then it's conscious behavior that we partake in to make ourselves feel better, to give ourselves a sense of identity, or to belong in a larger group of people, then by all means, I would see a ritual as a good thing. If it's something that we do mindlessly on autopilot, unconsciously, almost as a part of just functioning day to day in the culture. But we don't really ask ourselves the question, why are we actually doing this? Does it have a positive benefit for ourselves, for identity, for our behavior? Where are we going? Then I would see it more as a negative thing. And then you also mentioned something about what was the second question?

For the greater good, changing people's behavior. Through rituals for the greater good. Should brand have this kind of purposeful mission?

Can I make an addition to what Martina is saying?

Go ahead, of course.

Sure, yeah.

I mean, at the end of the day, our clients ask us to create strong brands, and strong brands really are ones that accelerates the ability for individuals to make sense of the world. Go into any retail outfit in North America or in the West and try to pick out toilet paper or peanut butter. The ability of brands to cut through that, to ensure that decisions are made quickly and effectively and efficiently, is a critical part of how strong brands survive. They become elements of unconscious choice. Now it's easy for us to pick apart categories that have an unethical component. Vaping, cigarettes, you could argue coffee, coffee consumption, soft drinking, carbonated drinks. We all know those are terrible. We also know ethically, should we ever advertise quick service restaurants? If we want to clog the arteries of our countrymen, then sure, we should make it easy for people to say, go to KFC or Burger King or McDonald's. So, you know, I think it's difficult to make sweeping generalizations around an ethical point, because there are categories that we do want people to make effective and efficient choices. If I didn't have a brand that had created a strong brand image in my head, I would stand in front of the toilet roll section at my convenience store for 6 hours agonizing over which plush toilet paper to have. I don't have the luxury of doing that, and I appreciate brands that have made it quick for me to make those decisions. So, I don't want to lose sight of the— there's an ethical component without a doubt, but there is also a speed and effectiveness of decision-making that strong brands are intended to create. They help us navigate a complex world and make decisions quickly and effectively. And I think if we do it properly, that is of benefit to the world. If we do it in furtherance of some of these debatable categories, then yes, then we have an ethical dilemma. And each of us individually have to choose whether we want to participate in making that brand strong, or choose to walk away from those people as clients, or even as people I would consume their products. So again, I just want to make sure we don't lose the multitude of benefits around creating strong brands and how they can be effective in decision-making.

So that's a great segue to retail in various industries. And I'd love to have your perspective on the future of rituals in retail and in public transportation. Let me give you an example. So let's talk about retail. If, and maybe I'm completely missing the point here, so that's why we're here. Up to the mid-'50s, the rituals in retail was that it was a one-step process. You came to the cashier or the counter, got your product, and that's it, one. In the mid-'50s, with the opening of supermarket, from one step it became two. You had to take your cart, choose the product, and then go to the cashier to pay. With Apple retail stores, I see 3 steps. So like a curve that is increasing the number of rituals, processes, or steps. You have to book your meeting, then you check in at the entry of the store, then you're being told to wait on in a different space and someone will come to show you the product and to buy. And now with Amazon store, we're going down the opposite direction. There's no more— the ritual is that it's just a one-step. It's not even a two-step. You come in, pick your product, get out. So my question is, do you see also in terms of evolution in retail, this curve that goes from 2, 3 to 4 up to 1? Or is it just not the way it works? Question number 1. And question number 2, what does that mean in terms of humanity. If we're removing all the touchpoints in a process like in Amazon retail, what are the consequences? What does it mean for us as a society and as people? So, go ahead.

I'm just gonna jump in and I know Hilted, you had— I mean, I'm academic by training. Though I too am a marketer here. But because of this, I start to struggle with definitions. And even talking about— Virginie, talking about checking out as a ritual doesn't make any sense to me in terms of the word ritual. And I'm very pragmatic in this regard. Ludwig Wittgenstein said the meaning of a word is its use in the language. And we're starting to now— you're using the word ritual in a certain way that for me goes against how ritual is normally used to talk about buying like just two things. So something I would consider ritual, doing the rosary, and you know, that feels like ritual. And one of the— I liked the idea of— here's why I think the definitions are important. As you said, Jonathan, a ritual is symbolic behavior, and I think that's very important. It's usually symbolic behavior that's actually situated usually in what you also mentioned, liminal moments. So rituals are often symbolic behavior that are used at certain points in processes in human society. You may have big rituals like a baptism or wedding or something like that. But you might have just more common rituals like an invocation. You know, we always have at the beginning of a school year or you build a new building, you'll have a ritual invocation. It goes back to, you know, let the gods bless this place or whatever. We have rituals, of course, for invoking demons and that sort of thing or doing human sacrifice or whatever you want to do. There's ritual cleansings, right? You do— it's like even like right at Passover, you get like the last bit of of the leavened bread out of the house to cleanse it for the past. So I think it's really important for us if we're going to talk about ritual, for it to be meaningful to me anyway, that we separate rituals as this symbolic behavior that is actually different from habits or just things we do. Like when the peasants out in the field, doing hay isn't a ritual. Sowing the fields, that's not a ritual. That's a process behavior they follow. When they then take their grain and give it to the priest or something like that as a thank you, as a gift or something for what's happening in the church, that then can become a ritualized thing. So I think it's important to make these distinctions. And that's why I wanted to bring it back to this purposefulness, because I think Hilton, as you were saying, and I mean, and Jonathan and Martin as well. What happens is we have a lot of habitual behaviors that happen in organizations and they are, they just happen because it happens. And it's like, I was, you know, again, the classic Monday morning meeting, um, just cause you do it. Now I think even with a Monday, those, but even a Monday morning meeting isn't a ritual in my mind unless there is a ritual element. Okay, people, we're all here. We're going to have a moment to say, nice to see you all again. This is what we're going to accomplish. There might be a way that you could ritualize it, but it's not a ritual in and of itself. But I think when we start thinking about things as terms of rituals, it does force us to think about, is this behavior— what is the symbolic? I mean, this is where my own academic training starts to kick in. Starts to do me in. You can start looking at everything as a ritual. You could look at all human behavior as symbolic behavior in some way. Like, it was funny, I had a weird thing on Twitter with this guy. I typed out, oh, is human communication possible? Asking for a friend. I was making just a dumb Twitter joke. But then this guy came back and he said, oh, it's just a less efficient version of lice-picking behavior among other primates. Mainly, it's less efficient because it involves more affiliation signaling. So obviously, these people I hang out with are really fun to be with at parties. But what I think— so what I mean is, though, there is a high symbolic element to almost every behavior that humans do. That doesn't make them rituals per se, but it's something they have in common. With ritual.

So what you're saying is that for you, ritual has a strong religious connotation.

Well, I think not just for me. I think the way we use the word ritual is in this very clear sense. Now, and then I like to— Jonathan had mentioned, well, you think of OCD people or something like that. They have ritual. Well, before I go in the house, I have to touch the door, and I touch my key. And it's ritualized behavior. Of course we pathologize it and say that's silly or whatever. It might have a real intense meaning for that person. I just wanted to make the distinction between rituals, like in the retail space of one, buying, going online, there's nothing ritualistic about that to my mind. Doing a video of yourself unboxing something and opening it up and pulling it out for an audience out there, that starts to smack of ritual. To me because it's a symbolic— this is a symbolic community-building, identity-forming behavior that's actually separate from whatever my process steps. I have to go—

and that's what we're talking about, absolutely, is that if we look at the definition, a ritual is a formalized mode of behavior in which the members of a group or community regularly engage. So we're not looking at the religion aspect of it, we're looking— and that's why it's so interesting when you take this word that is usually applied to worshiping, you take it in a different context and it opens up so many other doors.

So actually, this is another circumstance in which I think these things that appear to be opposed are actually united. And it's, it's one of these things that, you know, Protestantism, but Christianity in general, really like to take the concept of ritual and narrow it down to have some social control and say, you got to come to the church to do your brain thing.

Presents out there.

But actually, you know, before that, there were plenty of things going on out in the field. And so the thing is, if we look back at the origins of commerce, they go back to ancient Greece and ancient Greek religion. And I propose that commerce and business is a part of that. Is actually a religious activity, which is one reason that Jesus was so upset about it and threw over the money changers in the temple. Those little coins that people exchange in stores have been little talismans of power. I mean, they don't really, you know, a little bit of copper, a little bit of nickel, even if it's silver or gold, that's not where the real power of money is. It's a symbol. And it's an incarnation of your sacrifice of time, of work, your devotion to your job, and all of those things that you've done to earn that little bit. Now, you know, Virginie, what's happening to those kinds of interactions in terms of evolution, it's important for us to remember that evolution doesn't go in a single line from one thing to another, it branches. I think in some ways we're getting richer ritualized kinds of interactions in checkout, but many of them are getting exceptionally thin. And that's kind of mirroring a thinning of our social connections as well. So I guess I do, Matthew, I think that when we go into a store, if you think about it, a store is a crazy place because it's a place where you're allowed to take things. That belong to other people and make them yours. It's a nutty, magical, crazy activity. And it's, so it's a place where within these walls, there are different rules. And that's a major part of ritual is having alternate rules and also ritualized rule breaking. Going in there and grabbing the bread off the shelf and then giving someone a bit of metal for it, totally rule breaking. You wouldn't go into someone's house and do that. Is conceptualized as a ritualized space where we get to do wild things. And when we're trying on clothes, we get to try on wild identities as well.

But Jonathan, if I may, that part of the reason that rituals work is there is a broadly understood set of behaviors, set of whether it's tokens or symbols that have some mental currency and some mental definition that we all abide by. I recognize that legal tender with a dead president's image on it is actually worth $100 or a dollar, and how I can exchange that for bread and coffee and whatever other poor habits I have. But I would suggest the benefit of rituals— and I bring it back only into the realm that, that I'm particularly keen on, which is organizational culture— is— the codification, definition, and dissemination of what those symbols mean. Because it allows people to either explicitly or passively buy into it. I will buy into actively participating in Matt's Monday morning status call, or I'll mail it in. I choose to do that. But my ability to do that, or more importantly, an organization's ability to catalyze that in a purposeful and direct fashion, I believe is because fundamentally the people in that organization understand the reason for that act or the reason for that behavior. Again, you look at all the countless articles written about the Zappos environment, how zany and nutty it is. Those behaviors would be not condoned in 10,000 other organizations, but they are understood, they are disseminated, the meaning behind them are understood at the time you interview, the time you brought on, the time that you onboarded. Those things, because they're understood, people can participate freely. It's when they're not understood and they lack meaning, when they're done without purpose, where people go, what the hell am I doing at Monday morning at 9 o'clock? The last thing I want to do is a freaking status call, no matter how great Matt's house is or the city that he's—

it's great though.

I know, I'm sure it's world-class, mate. But it's when, when there is a gap between the definition of that ritual, and the people participating in it, to understand its purpose and why it's important, that's when it falls apart. That's when it becomes a task and a toll, not a ritual I want to explicitly partake in. And I think therein is the rub for organizations who have poorly managed rituals, because most participants are like, what the hell am I doing here? Why the hell are we bothering with this? That's when it falls apart.

That's great. As we come— sorry about that— as we come to the end of the hour, I'm checking the time and there's so much more that we could talk, but I'd like to end this discussion the way we begin, with a tour de table. And one of the premises of this podcast is that there's too much talking and not enough doing. So let's pass the Right? Let's pass the mic and tell us what you've heard today that will inspire you maybe to start doing something different, differently than the way you did prior to this conversation. And I'll start to give you time to think by sharing my own takeaways from this conversation. I was really intrigued by this notion of purposefulness leadership. And as I'm building my own digital marketing agency, I didn't think of what are the various rituals that I would like to create purposefully, very difficult word to pronounce, with my team. I was also, so that's number one. Number two is I was intrigued by the idea that rituals and brand, or brand or creating rituals or a set of habits to help to simplify the purchasing process and speed up the decision-making. And in that sense, if it helps people, I think that's a positive thing. And I want to think more on with various clients that I'm actually working with. And then the last one that I— that opens a new door was this comment that Jonathan had about thinner relationship, that when we talked about ritual processes, that there might be more steps, more complexity in the way we go about our days, but each has a thinner relationship. And I'm wondering if that's an opportunity for brands to actually make those thinner contacts deeper and thicker. And I don't know what it means. I would have to think more, but that's my takeaway. So anyone wants to share some of their ideas or revisiting of some of that, but Lisa, could you jump in?

I can jump in. I'm really intrigued by the concept of purpose, especially when it comes to marketing, and of course when it comes to the company that we're currently at. Like, why are we doing the things that we're doing internally? There are 19 million meetings every day in America. We certainly don't need another one. We need to have a meeting that has purpose. And how do you bring purpose to somebody and say, this is what you're going to do inside this meeting. This is what you're going to do inside this company, giving everybody kind of purpose. And then on the flip side of that is in marketing terms, uh, technology is changing so much about the way that we interact with people. You were talking just before about the in-store experience. You walk into a store, which is a magical place. You do, you hand gold coin to somebody and they hand you bread, but online it's the same as, you know, playing a video game. So it lacks that real purpose. And so understanding how marketing works online is I think also understanding how people engage online, because it's not ritualized. You can't shop with your friend online. And you don't browse online at a store. You go to an online store to buy the bread, but you don't walk down the aisle and say, "Oh, this kind of bread looks really interesting." You don't have those kind of moments. And that's true of anything that we market online. Understanding how that technology, how technology can then bring in those ritual moments and bring people together, I think that's gonna be a really important thing. Thing for all of us to learn as we move forward.

Agreed.

I appreciate the reminder to question why we do this behavior. I think we passively fall into repeatable behaviors, and occasionally just taking a moment to go, "What the hell am I doing this for?" Is it moving the peanut forward? I think it's something I know I don't do often enough. So I— that was a great reminder to just take a moment to pause and go, is this accelerating or impeding our progress? So thank you. Thank you for that stark reminder on a Tuesday afternoon.

That's a great, great point. Anyone else wants to share their views?

I've got a couple things. I mean, I'll keep thinking about this on and on now, but just a couple points. Jonathan, when you said commerce is religious, as a religious activity, I wanted think about that a lot more. This idea of— I want to almost flip it around, like what you were saying, Hilton, of the idea we fall in. I mean, organizations happen all the time. We fall in passively, as you said, fall into behaviors that we don't even think about. Now, what's interesting, if we go back to when we think about rituals, as soon as you start questioning a ritual, like a religious ritual, it starts to lose its meaning, which is kind of something that's to think about. But I was thinking about it too, when I— what we were talking about before, the symbolic behavior, I keep thinking about that. And it's like, once you introduce the notion of symbolic behavior, then all human behavior starts to feel symbolic. So I think the other way I want to ask that question is not so much— I mean, it's a different way of phrasing the why am I doing something? Like, what is the symbolic behavior? What am I trying to show or say with this? You know, like, I think this meeting's stupid, but I show up. Why? Well, I want to show I'm a team player. This is, you know, this is how we signal to each other that we're working hard or something like— there's another— if you start looking at your behaviors as symbolic when we don't even think of them that way, it suddenly gives you a frame to wonder, what am I trying to say with sending an email? Like, I think about this, sending an email at 10 at night. If I'm doing that, is it because I'm showing off with that? I'm a hard-ass. I work so hard. Or whatever, or maybe I would do work all day and then I said something at 10 at night just to make it seem like I was working. I mean, so that, so I'm thinking about this purpose, but more in terms of what if, what am I saying without even being aware of it by doing this and that? And if I wanted to say something different within a particular context, how would I need to act differently?

That's good. I love it.

Jonathan?

Yes? Any— or before you give us, since you started, before you give us the last few words, Martina, any thought, any comment, anything?

I was really fascinated by how— so we came into this discussion and the word ritual was, to me at least, it felt like this very tight-knit sort of thing that is just a couple of things that fall into that. And as we started unpacking it, it sort of feels like it lives almost everywhere. As Matt said, every behavior can be seen as symbolic behavior. And to me, I'm starting to think about this notion that either there are brand rituals which is pretty much the kind of behaviors that brands and brand managers deem as relevant to their brand and therefore want to harness the kind of ritualistic behavior around them. Or those are things that have some kind of embedded meaning. Or it could be any kind of random behaviors that are becoming more ritualized. And they are not very much organic. And they are not meaningless. And just by the mindless repetition, we are actually creating meaning around them. And those are, I think, exactly the kind of behaviors that we need to revisit and ask ourselves, why do we do that? Just because something is habitual doesn't mean that it has to be habitual in a way that has become ritualized. Doesn't mean that it's ritualistic or that it has some kind of inherent value to us. So that distinction mentally, that's at least to me, I will be thinking about it a lot after this call. That to me is like the most valuable insight that I was able to get today.

So thank you for that.

So Martina, you're suggesting countless selfies is not a behavior that we should be propagating.

I just want to check because I think I've taken about 50 of those. Unless you are the owner of Instagram, I— I would say no, but yeah, so there's actually this interesting— I wouldn't really call it a study, just that like insights from an article that I read that if you're really struggling to get in shape and really struggling with the motivation to just start running, actually selfies are a great external motivation for you to start running, this idea that I can signal to others and myself that I'm really committed and doing this just by the way that I am posting it on the internet and how I look and how I feel. I can say, 7K, woohoo, I'm great. And like, in reality, I can just like run 300 meters and just get really exhausted. But like the fact that you can present that kind of behavior in a way that makes you feel and look good, that in itself is inherently valuable. So we are all, you know, different and mad and like we ascribe symbolism and meaning to all sorts of different things. So it's incredibly diverse rituals.

Thank you. Jonathan, the last few words?

Yeah, so, you know, even that question with Instagram, is it good or bad, I think points the direction of where we're going with ritual, which is that it's a powerful way to structure purpose and meaning. But it's also kind of in crisis, as we find so many things in our societies, including in business, in crisis. I mean, right now, business isn't quite sure whether it's headed up or down. And I think the— Answer is probably that it's doing both in a whole bunch of different ways. And so we need to make sense of these things. And Matt Hames, his whole experience of being at home and needing to connect and to feel part of a company of people he never sees except on a little screen, that seems to get to the essence of it all. But we do create meaning, as Martina says, in practically everything that we encounter. You know, if you put a couple of dots and a swirly kind of line on a wall, it becomes a face. That's what we humans do. We make random things into something that means something. And so, in that spirit, I want to point you all toward what may be either a source of despair or hope. Online, Matt, I don't know if you can get a model for meetings out of this, but there's a new game out that I've learned about through my children, of course, because that's how we learn most important. And its title is actually Untitled Goose Game. And it is a game in which you are a goose going into a village and just causing trouble, untying people's shoes, stealing things from them, you know, and this is actually It can be looked at as a sign of the destruction of all sense in our society, in our culture, but it can also be looked at as a way to play the role of a trickster, which is a ritual role. And to do that online— online spaces are these places where we can get lost, but also places where we have the ability to do things like become a mischievous goose. That otherwise would not make any sense. And I think that these spaces are the greatest ritual realms that have ever been created. And yet they feel completely out of our control, both as individuals and as businesses. And I sincerely feel that that is the task that we all face. Figuring out how to ritualize the online space is a way to keep our lives human. You know, so that we're putting it in a box when we need to, but also a way to get to a higher level of transcendence, which is only available online. Very well.

Well, thank you so much to all for spending an hour with, uh, with me and with Jonathan. And, uh, thank you again for your time.

Well, thank you.

It was awesome.

Thank you. That was great.