RITUALS | Marketing

RITUALS...

INTRODUCTION

Rituals Cosmetic is the fastest growing beauty brand in Europe. With a goal to create a distinctive brand experience, and stores that are transformed into a relaxing environment that allows the customers to slow down, Raymond Cloosterman founded Rituals in a basement in Amsterdam in 2000. The philosophy of the brand is to transform everyday routines into meaningful moments, which comes from a belief of enjoying the small pleasures in life by slowing down.

BRAND EXPERIENCE

The brand has certainly been able to achieve the goal of creating a brand experience that differs from everything else. In a world where everything happens at a high speed, and people have short attention spans, Rituals have developed a slow shopping attitude which encourages its customers to relax, take their time and enjoy being pampered. When a customer enters the shop they are greeted with a relaxing vibe and dark interior. Each customer is also offered a cup of tea, a hand massage and samples that further personalises the brand experience and leaves a strong impression. By giving all their customers additional attention, something more than what they are used to, the customers develop a bond with the brand already after just entering the shop once.

What has made Rituals so successful is that it has tapped into a market of affordable luxury, which is done by combining high quality products, beautiful packaging, a good price point, and a strong brand story. It is this together with a strong passion for the brand that leads them to success. They’re philosophy is written on the walls and reflected in everything they do; their products, customer experience and employees. The details says it all; how you get served a cup of tea as soon as you enter the shop, how they hand over the bag to you in the Asian-style with two hands around the bag. In essence they are selling you a beautifully packaged experience.

Consumers today, have a higher awareness of the production itself, and more and more people seek products with natural ingredients, that are produced in an ethical and sustainable way. Rituals checks all of these boxes; the products range from body and facial care, scented candles, perfumes, makeup and tea. These products are organic, not animal tested, and made out of renewable ingredients/material that are environmental friendly and good for your skin. Rituals also collaborate with the charity Tiny Miracles, that works to offer a better life for underprivileged children in Mumbai. For consumers that seek brands that takes social responsibility. Rituals is very appealing in the way that they focus on protecting the environment and help those in need.

ONLINE
However, in today’s digital world, having just a physical brand experience is not enough, it has to be offered online as well. The question however, is how to make this experience as personal as the one given offline. This becomes a challenge, especially when the brand is focused around creating a feeling.

One important step to add the «Rituals feeling», was to include visual stimuli through images and videos. With a focus on making people slow down and create meaningful moments, the images and videos are focused on explaining why this philosophy is important, as well as presenting the products and demonstrating how to use them. In other words, it is more about selling a story than selling the products. A challenge for Rituals when it comes to marketing is that their marketing strategy cannot be too aggressive, because then it breaks with the slow down philosophy.

Rituals have worked on making their online shopping as simple and straightforward as possible. Yet, by adding an option to have the products gift wrapped as well as giving customers the possibility to write a personal message for free, or send a personalized video gift card, rituals manages to customise the online shopping experience and offer their customers something extra.

ORIGINALITY

APP

Rituals has created a brand very much in line with the current beauty trends; combing beauty with wellbeing, in a sort of holistic way. Consumers today are much more aware of connections between inner harmony and the positive effects of outer beauty, and Rituals has developed an app to promote their philosophy, that highlights this holistic trend. The app is split into two parts; The first part allows its users to browse and buy products, whilst the other part is called calm down where users are offered free short yoga videos and three different mediations they can incorporate into their daily lives. Through this, Rituals manages to become a very present brand in people’s lives, and by offering valuable content, for free, to its users builds trust and increases likeabilty.

VIRTUAL TREASURE HUNT

In 2016, Rituals introduced a creative virtual treasure hunt. Rituals created 18 different instagram accounts that would lead users around the different rooms of a house. By following the main Rituals UK account, the users would be presented with an image of a key, which was tagged with another account. Clicking through the new account then took the user to a house made up of 9 images. Each image showed a different room and contained other tagged accounts presenting different products. The more accounts the user clicked through, the more the user would be able to examine the product in detail, as well as purchase them through an URL. Rituals stated that the idea was to submerge the consumer into the Rituals lifestyle.

RITUALS WORLDWIDE

Cloosterman had a goal of making his brand a global brand, and therefore decided to take advantage of the opportunities available in travel retail. Rituals therefore opened standalone airport shops, which allows the company to spread brand awareness internationally, in an effective way, as well as let people from all over the world experience their philosophy through de-stressing with a bit of pampering. Rituals can also be found in 25 000 hotel rooms all over the world, helping the brand develop a stronger presence, as well as it helps connect the brand to luxury and relaxation.

In 2016, during the biggest gift buying and gift giving period, Rituals decided to create an experience for London commuters. At King’s Cross Station, Rituals installed a festive soundtrack and started handing out free samples of their products to make the journey more pleasurable. The goal was to introduce Rituals philosophy of slowing down to high paced London. Posters were also put up in the tunnels introducing the Tradition of Giving; «only by giving do we receive more than we already have. Because when we give from the heart, the joy of giving becomes its own reward». Choosing a central London Station for such a promotion also allowed rituals to reach not only Londoners, but also tourists visiting, and therefore further create an international brand awareness.

Rituals have also promoted their products through being featured in a gift bag at numerous award shows, such as the Golden Globes and Accessories Council Excellence Awards. The awards are particularly effective for raising brand experience because they are able to reach key influencers in the entertainment industry.

CHALLENGES

Rituals have however faced some marketing challenges. In 2018 they got accused for cultural appropriation when using white models in several different cultural and traditional Asian dress settings. Several people called out the brand and argued that they were taking advantage of a culture that does not belong to them in order to promote products. On social media, Rituals was heavily critiqued for using Asian traditions, philosophies etc to sell products and at the same time not finding Asian models worth working with. Rituals responded by explaining that their intention are never to insult the traditions that they very much respect. That their goal is to inspire customers to create more meaningful rituals. However, Rituals have not given further comments on the subject cultural appropriation.

Rituals also faced a major SEO challenge. With stores in over 30 markets, each of these markets had its own website which lead to the English website having 22 duplicates alone! This caused a huge amount of duplicate content, so what happened was that people from for example Germany, would end up on the German version of the Belgium site where they would not be able to check-out. To make it worse, if they switched to the correct German site, the content of their shopping cart would become empty. This therefore lead to an exhausting customer experience. Rituals therefore went to a company called Dept for help, and after solving this problem, revenue increased with 186%!

Despite these challenges Rituals is doing very well, and are continuing to open new shops every single week. The Rituals brand represents more than just the products, it represents a certain lifestyle situated around mindfulness that has become increasingly trendy in today’s society.

5 LESSONS FROM RITUALS

Make a good first impression.
Sell a beautiful packaged experience.
Personlise the experience.
Connect the brand with emotional needs.
Become a part of people’s daily lives.