Interview: Brands as Belief Systems with José Luis Piñeiro: How Events Become Rituals That Shape Culture

Convene Podcast Transcript Convene Interview, ep. 25 *Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies Magdalina Atanassova: This is the Convene Podcast. Today we’re exploring why brands are becoming belief systems — and why events are no longer just moments, but modern rituals that shape culture, belonging, and behavior. My guest is José Luis Piñeiro, cultural strategist, philosopher, and Design Executive Officer at HD* Human Design Doing. With more than 35 years designing experiences across Europe and Latin America, José works at the intersection of design, ethics, and organizational culture — helping organizations understand how meaning is built through lived, shared experiences. Fresh from the Convening LATAM stage, we talk about events as behavioral architecture, what culture risks losing in an AI‑shaped workplace, and why the future of events belongs not to bigger screens, but to deeper human connection. We start now. Hi, Jose, and welcome to the Convenient Podcast. José Luis Piñeiro: Thank you so much, Maggie. I'm very happy to be here. Magdalina Atanassova: Well, thank you. And you just wrapped a keynote at Convening Latam. So tell us what stood out for you at the event. José Luis Piñeiro: It was great. The energy of LATAM people is great. I'm from Spain, living in Mexico for the last 30 years. It's a pleasure to join both worlds, the European and the Latin American one. I feel great and the people are so warm and I have spent a very, very nice time there. Magdalina Atanassova: That's wonderful to hear. And what stood out to me was the title of your keynote. It was very bold. You brands are modern religion, events are their rituals. So what experiences led you to that framing? José Luis Piñeiro: Ivy League brands are replacing institutions that once gave people some meaning, like religions, political parties, even family structures. And people are no longer only buying products, they are buying identity, belonging, emotional safety, and shared narratives. And I think the events have become the rituals where those beliefs are experienced physically. The idea of observing something very simple. People no longer gather only around faith or ideology. They gather around experiences, communities, aesthetics, and emotional narratives. I love the philosopher Bien Chul Han, and he says modern society lost rituals. He said we replace contemplation with performance, silence with stimulation, community with connectivity. But human beings, I think, still need transcendence. So culture, that's my work, creates substitutes. Think about the Apple launches, the Burning man, the Taylor Swift concerts, wellness festivals, immersive corporate events. I think they are not only events anymore. There are spaces for collective meaning, and I think that a ritual is where emotion becomes memory and memory becomes culture. Magdalina Atanassova: I really love it. And I think you explained really, really beautifully. José Luis Piñeiro: Oh, thank you. Magdalina Atanassova: I wonder, did you actually observe some rituals at Convenient Latam while you were there? José Luis Piñeiro: I think it's more than a meeting, it's a community. I was surprised about the connection about people that's for me it's very important. It's not a transactional keynote, but also to connect with PCMA community. It was great, a great surprise for me. Magdalina Atanassova: It's a special feeling and special bond that we all share. You have it In a workplace shaped by AI and constant change, what part of culture is most at risk right now? José Luis Piñeiro: I think that the most enduring thing today is depth. With artificial intelligence we have hyper productivity, permanent stimulation, algorithmic distraction, emotional exhaustion, loneliness despite connectivity, I think we are connected all the time, but rarely truly together. Thinking about generation, the new generations. I think any present generation becomes better when it is capable to honoring the past and imagining the future positively. Gen Z is not only certain for entertainment, but they are searching for coherence, emotional truth, spirituality and belonging. Think about the sound, healing experiences, astrology, ambient spirituality, emotional wellness, immersive music experience, aesthetic identity communities In Quito, I saw the last album from Rosalia Looks and this album and this concert is very interesting because they are not people not consume the album only as music. They are experiencing almost an emotional atmospheres. I think the future of culture is not informational, it's emotional and symbolic. Magdalina Atanassova: For event planners listening, please, how should they think about events? Not as moments, but as culture infrastructure, something that shapes behavior over time. José Luis Piñeiro: Most companies still think events are communication tools, but events are actually behavioral architecture. Events shape what people celebrate, what people repeat, what people remember, who belongs, what is emotionally rewarded. At my company HD, we developed something called the Table of Cultural Elements inspired by the periodic table in chemistry. The idea is very simple. Culture is not abstract. Culture is built from specific elements that interact with each other. We create this table because we believe culture works like chemistry. It's built through interconnected systems, leadership, stories, rituals, recognition, communication, ethics, spaces, onboarding and more. Events are powerful because they activate many of these elements at the same time. That's why rituals are not soft activities. They are infrastructure for human behavior. Magdalina Atanassova: And I have to say for our listeners, you show the actual table, I'll be happy to include the link in the show notes so they can have a look as well. José Luis Piñeiro: The Table helps organizations understand that culture is designed through repeated experience. Every meeting teaches leadership, teaches values, teaches identity, teaches belonging. Magdalina Atanassova: That's really wonderful and very creative. I have to say. You touched on stories. So how do stories turn into shared beliefs inside organizations? And what role do life experiences play that digital content can't replicate? José Luis Piñeiro: Stories become beliefs when they are embodied. We have plenty of digital contents. The digital content informs, scales, distributes, but life experience synchronize human energy Breathing together the music, eye contact, collective applause. Silence. The most powerful tool in a live narrative is silence. The quality of an event depends on the quality of the conversations. The quality of the conversations depends on presence and mindful attention. Attention like yours creates listening. And the secret of listening is love. Physical presence creates neuro. Emotional synchronization. A live stream can transmit information, but only a live ritual can create collective energy. Belonging is not downladed, it is experienced. Magdalina Atanassova: You know, saying that I went into a specific event in my head where the whole audience was asked to sing together with performers on stage. And it was such a powerful experience because we shared it, we did it together. Like you said, the breathing synchronizes the whole emotion of the music got really transferred in such a more deeper level than it. You know, you can play it on your phone and listen at home, but it's not the same when you sing alone. José Luis Piñeiro: And after Pandemic, we think people need to be more connected due to the remote work. So I think it's very important for the future to well, design these rituals and these events for people connection. Magdalina Atanassova: You're absolutely right. Can you walk us through a real example where a ritual or event format measurably shifted? Engagement, alignment and behavior. Behavior. José Luis Piñeiro: Well, I have so much 35 years designing events. I'll choose one that was especially meaningful for me because it reflects a new direction of cultural transformation. Traditionally, culture change happened top down. Senior leadership or management committee defines the purpose, mission, vision, values, manifesto, credo principles. But in this case, a large consumer company asked me to work with 60 Gen Z influencers, men and women around 50 years old, to help transform the company's culture around agility. The three cultural aspirations were more agile, more more bold, and more connected. The idea was not to create a subculture with these influencers, but to use this tribe as a catalyst for transformation. Instead of relying on the traditional corporate approach of competency models, mastery levels and observable behaviors, we designed a 24. Our continuous indoor glamping jam. Magdalina Atanassova: Wow. José Luis Piñeiro: Out of that experience emerged a completely different communication strategy. Instead of taking only about the driving forces of culture, we started talking about the restraint forces. Three symbolic monsters emerge for the process. For becoming more agile. The pyromaniac shadow. For becoming more bold. The balloon popping boss. For becoming more connected. The talent pruning bus. The goal of this event was not to attack the traditional culture, but to make visible not only the positive forces pushing change forward, but also the negative forces holding it back. Today, this narrative of the monster exists across the company's Offices, plants and distribution centers. And the entire idea was inspired by Kurt Lewin's force field analysis model. That means when you want to transform any reality, you cannot focus only in the positive driving forces, but also need to identify and dismantle the negative forces that resist change. Magdalina Atanassova: So if brands function like belief systems, that's powerful but also potentially risky. Right? Where's the line you think between meaningful rituals and manipulation? And how should leaders and event teams protect that line? José Luis Piñeiro: That's a difficult one. I think the line is intention, Manipulation, split emotion, sometimes creates dependency, hides truth, extract energy from people from teams instead. The meaningful ritual I think creates dignity, is designed to reinforce agency, as I said, builds connection. And the most important thing in the culture point of view aligns values and actions. Simon Weyl believe attention without domination is an ethical act. A ritual becomes dangerous when it stops serving human flourishing like said Martin Seligman from Positive Psychology and starts serving contra. The ethical question I think is not can we influence emotion? I think the ethical question is why are we influencing it? Magdalina Atanassova: That's a good spin and I think an important note to highlight for event planners. Right. How should event teams measure success if the goal is culture and not just attendance or nps? José Luis Piñeiro: Well, we are a firm that applies positive psychology in every experience and every event we design. That's why our main indicator is the happiness of people at work. It's very simple and ambitious. We use an app called Happy Force which allows us pulls daily levels of happiness and engagement. We use it before the event, during the event and after the event. In addition to that, with Happy Force and this polls, we monitor whether the behaviors we are trying to encourage are naturally being repeated. We observe whether the narrative and the language are being adapted, whether trust and collaboration are increasing. Also whether psychological safety get six and whether people voluntarily participate in certain pain points or ideas for improvement. That's our most valuable KPI. Ultimately, our goal is very simple. To help people a little happier in their work. Not only in the event Magdalina Atanassova: do you manage to track this long term so that you see that the event actually the ideas shared at the event, they stick and they're carried forward. José Luis Piñeiro: We begin to pull daily three months before the event. Magdalina Atanassova: Oh, wow. José Luis Piñeiro: Yeah. So we put the event like a special moment. We understand the reaction of an event of change or strategic events or team building that we need to monitor. This pulls at least three months later. And if the client admitted a year to pulse the happiness and engagement for us is very important and also as a teaching us of sharing the pain points and their Dreams. Magdalina Atanassova: You do that at a company level. Do you think event planners can grab that idea and apply it to an event of, you know, a few hundred or a few thousand people where people are over surveyed. They not just they. They don't want necessarily engage with the event content or the event in general every day. So how can they do that as well? José Luis Piñeiro: It's very simple because just only make two questions. How happy are you? And one of the question of all variables of our survey. But when you have so many people statistically you ask for all the variables of the culture and engagement. So you have to spend just 30 seconds. It's not so much but it's very, very valuable information for us also to evaluate the event in a systemic point of view. Not only the objectives of the event, but also to make the narrative, the culture alive before and after. Magdalina Atanassova: I will switch gears a little bit. You mentioned already you're coming from Spain, but you've lived in Latin America for quite a bit and you're very well familiar with with the region. So what do you think makes the region especially ripe when it comes to rituals, belonging and community? José Luis Piñeiro: Well, for me Latam is the best place to live and to grow. It's incredible. I think Latam still understands something that many regions are losing is the collective humanity, the importance of the family, the music, celebrations, the collective energy. I think in Latin America people still know how to gather emotionally. It's real. We sometimes lack systems, but we have so familiar doesn't only create events. I think it creates emotional ecosystems to embrace the culture teams the human connection Magdalina Atanassova: to a person that lives in Europe. Definitely when you say Latin America, music, dance and celebration come forward as images of the region. José Luis Piñeiro: And there is so many traditions, pre Hispanic traditions, rituals that I have to to to redesign to imagine positively the future. Positive image of the future generates a positive mindset. I think we have to work with the positive narratives and the storytelling about Slatan to connect with emotions in our conversations and put it in actions. And I learned with Bert Hellinger in family constellations. He told me Jose first order and then love. Systems and love can play together. Magdalina Atanassova: Well said. I think for event planners also an important message where systems are important at the forefront. And speaking about that for someone planning an upcoming event, what's one simple framework or exercise to redesign it as a ritual that builds culture? José Luis Piñeiro: I will share how I work. I believe every event is actually a ritual operating between two forces. Business. Business and humanity. Reason and emotion. Systems and love. This model maps experiences across four business, person, reason and Emotions. Most organizations design events only from the business and rational perspective. KPIs, logistics, presentations, objectives, productivity. But I think human beings do not remember information. They remember emotion, meaning and transformation. So our model asks a different question. What kind of human ritual are we designing? When you combine the two variables, business and person, with reason and emotion, six event archetypes emerge, each with its own emotional tone and narrative. The first one is the strategic events where the dominant narrative is about winning the war, aligning people, making decisions, competing, surviving, moving forward together. On the opposite side. It's very important to understand the opposites to generate creative tension. We have the team building experiences where what we are really searching is this. Creating trust from each other, emotional safety and stronger human connections. There are change events when the purpose is growth, both for the business and for individual. This experience help people transitions to adapt to this change and evolve. And the opposite. We have other kinds of events that are more culturally oriented where what we seek is to dream, to imagine, to transcendent everyday work and reconnect with meaning and purpose of the company or the team. On other axis we find commercial events whose narratives about winning, winning against competitors, entering new markets, launching products, generating momentum and ambition. And finally, the sixth in the other extreme are the celebration events where the purpose is simply to play, to enjoy and to honor the joy of work, of the work well done. That's why each of these archetypes activate different emotions, behaviors and different forms on belonging. The future of events for me would not belong to those who create bigger screens, but those who create deeper human connection. Magdalina Atanassova: Very well said, Jose. Was there anything we didn't mention, but we definitely should before we wrap up, José Luis Piñeiro: I begin my career being economist at this time I am philosopher and I told about Bien Tul Han. But I would like to remember now again Simone Weil. She said attention is the purest form of generosity. Rituals create collective attention and I think attention today is the most scared resource in the world. Most meetings transfer information, bad rituals transfer meaning. Magdalina Atanassova: I think that's the perfect rep to our conversation. Thank you so much José Luis Piñeiro: and see you next time in Latam. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.