When Guinness drinkers talk about “Splitting the G,” they mean taking the perfect first sip so the foam line lands precisely through the letter G on the pint glass. Ask an Irish bartender and they’ll tell you the original target was the gap between the harp and the Guinness logo, before social media simplified the ritual into something easier to share.
Either way, the result is the same: Guinness turned drinking a pint into something people actively participate in.
That small act has become a cultural phenomenon. Posts tagged #SplitTheG have generated tens of millions of views across TikTok and Instagram, helping introduce a 265-year-old stout to a new generation of drinkers. Guinness sales grew 14% in 2024, followed by another 13% in 2025, while the parent company Diageo says it has gained 3.8 million new Guinness drinkers since 2019. The New York Times even dubbed Guinness a “Gen Z darling.”
The pint didn’t change, but the behavior around it did.
The brands people remember aren’t necessarily the ones with the loudest campaigns, but the ones that create small behaviors customers repeat until they become habits. Hospitality offers some of the clearest examples.
At the New York restaurant Coqodaq, guests begin by washing their hands at an elaborate sink before sitting down to eat fried chicken. It’s a theatrical moment that people film and tell friends about. The ritual has become part of the restaurant’s identity, adding to the allure that pushed it onto New York’s “toughest reservations” list.
This kind of thing isn’t entirely new. Corona—the world’s most valuable beer brand, valued at $9.7 billion—turned adding a lime wedge into a instantly recognizable ritual. Spotify’s Wrapped, a highly anticipated once-a-year ritual, hit 200 million engaged users within 24 hours of its most recent release, a 19% jump year over year, and generated roughly 500 million shares across social platforms.
And yet, rituals are often seen as nice-to-have flourishes rather than business assets. For some brands, they can be hard to quantify. But Spotify and Corona and others demonstrate the opposite. Add the lime. Share your Wrapped. Split the G. These companies didn’t simply sell products; they created repeatable behaviors that customers willingly perform again and again.
So how do you get it right?
Find the idea that’s already yours
Rituals have to emerge naturally from who you are. The quickest way to fail is to bolt on an Instagram moment that has no relationship to your brand. Start with local culture, your brand story, and what your customers already love doing. Don’t invent a ritual from scratch. Uncover something that’s already yours.
Take the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans, which rolls out a cart of beignets every day—arguably some of the best in the city—and they’re gone in seconds. People queue up for them. It works precisely because it’s specific to that city and that culture. It couldn’t be copy-pasted into a different market and land the same way.
Sometimes you have to prototype smaller ideas, watch how customers respond and allow a ritual to emerge organically. Either approach is better than forcing something simply because another brand made it work.
Own a moment
Every day contains emotional moments: morning coffee, sunset drinks, sitting down for dinner, returning to your room at night. The most successful rituals attach themselves to moments people are already primed to enjoy.
That’s one reason the Aperol Spritz has become so successful. Aperol didn’t just market a drink. It wanted to own a moment: the aperitivo hour. Early evening, golden light, outdoor terraces and meeting friends after work with an orange-hued drink in front of them. Campari Group reported 23.1% organic sales growth for Aperol in 2023, while noting that the brand now accounts for 24% of the company’s total sales. Rather than creating a new occasion, Aperol elevated one that already existed.
At the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam, guests select a signature scent at check-in that awaits them in their room, while each evening’s turndown includes a locally crafted gift and a story from the hotel’s past. A routine part of any stay becomes something guests look forward to. It’s the kind of thoughtful ritual that has become synonymous with the Waldorf Astoria experience as the luxury brand expands globally, spanning 39 hotels across 18 countries with more on the way.
Invest in the emotion, not just the transaction
Branding isn’t what you say; it’s what you do. That’s why rituals create such powerful emotional bonds. I still remember the restaurant that let kids make their own soft serve. Now I have kids, and we go to a pizza place where they sit at the counter and get handed dough to shape their own pie. They’ll remember that for decades.
I love it when a client invests in emotion first, because that bond is usually the real reason people come back, and it pays a content dividend too. When people post themselves splitting the G, it’s organic, but it puts Guinness in front of an audience no paid campaign could reach at that price.
The hard part will be the consistency: Rituals work only if they’re reliable. Doing something every day, and doing it well, is far harder than staging a one-off campaign. That’s why the best rituals are often surprisingly simple. They’re designed to be repeated until customers expect them.
The brands that create lasting loyalty aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest campaigns. They’re the ones that consistently give people something worth repeating.
Because every repeated behavior becomes a memory. And every memory becomes another reason to come back.
