Why are we concerned with habits?
As any event is essentially trying to influence someones behaviour, and as habits determine 95% of what we do, the more we can influence habits, the more we can influence people to sign up, show up, and do something – again, and again.
Why are rituals so useful?
With events, we are offering shared experiences, to do something together. A shared interest which ideally becomes a shared passion. Both events as a whole, and, the moments in them, are essentially shared rituals. And when these rituals become automatic, our attempts to get people to show up and share their experiences again and again is pretty much done!
Four Laws of Behaviour Change
We’ve revealed the four-steps in the behavioural journey we go on every time we perform a habit, so we can now look how we might apply some proven rules to create new rituals.
THE HABIT / RITUAL LOOP
We spoke last week of how a habit, or ritual follows a 4 step sequence, and at each step, we can help our fans and participants to go through this cycle. To help this process, the world’s leading habit expert James Clear has created a simple set of rules, and I think we can adopt the same steps to create new rituals.
The Cue – make it obvious
The Craving – make it attractive
The Response – make it easy
The Reward – make it satisfying
The Cue – making it obvious
We are immersed in cue’s everyday. Experts say we receive around 35,000 each day. So the cues we put out to our audience to act as catalyst to participate in events, or, in activities when we are at them, need to be very obvious.
We take our cues from moments in life, and we interpret them very quickly, most often automatically and without even thinking. So we need to be very clear, explicit even in the cues you put out there.
And the cues within our event experiences can get lost in the noise and activity. So, identifying key moments that matter, moments that will impact, and focusing our energy and resources into these is wise.
Milestones such as calendar dates, the start and finish of our events are key cues. And on event day, in the key moments, your staff, the entertainment, music, announcements and the look and feel of our venues all provides the cues for a desired behaviour.
2. The Craving – make it attractive
Cravings are the motivation driving everything we do. Without some level of motivation or desire—without craving a change—we have no reason to act.
So, we need to understand what our audiences see as attractive.
Create a craving. Your audience want to do something, feel something, belong and connect with others, a sense of progress and aspiration. So, give them what they need, not what you want them to do.
3. The Response – make it easy
The response of your audience determines whether you are having the influence you need – or not. Whether they will show up to your event or stay away, or whether they will participate in the experience the way you hope they will. Their response depends on how motivated they are, and how easy you make it.
This is all linked to the Channel of Aspiration concept, which basically states that you must offer both the CUE and the CRAVING – and the support – to achieve the desired RESPONSE.
4. The Reward – make it satisfy So ultimately your event, and, each meaningful touch point must deliver a reward. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward. We can use rewards to influence people, to come to our event, and what they do when they are there.
If we get this loop right, and offer a rewarding experience, they will want to do it more. And this, provides our valuable ritual loop. Like the annual ‘must attend’ event, we will do it again and again.
The Experience Design Playbook
So how can we work through this? Creating new rituals requires you to ask, and answer, these questions – for a new event, or for a ritual to occur in an event:
How can we make it obvious?
How can we make it attractive?
How can we make it easy?
How can we make it satisfying?
As James Clear says, ‘It would be irresponsible for me to claim that these four laws are an exhaustive framework for changing any human behaviour, but I think they’re close’.
I also think the secret to creating new rituals is to understand and apply these fundamental laws.
If you need some help with that, just let me know.