To The Brands We Love

One of the main reasons I want to pursue a career in Consumer Marketing is that I am very intrigued by what draws us to one brand over another. It's usually beyond the quality of the product. For me it's always emotional or evokes some sort of memory.

Peanut Butter for example. Peanut Butter is pretty much Peanut Butter. I know I know some are all natural, some are sweeter than others, but for the most part PB is PB. If you were to order one in a restaurant (I don't know why you would, but if you did) you probably wouldn't ask, "Excuse me, sir. What kind of Peanut Butter do you use? Ohh Skippy? Nevermind I'll have a salad". Although knowing my friends maybe you would haha. I'm just going to get to the point....

There are certain things that have very little differences across brands. So why do we favor one brand over the other? Back to the PB, I buy what we had as kids. My dad worked at Proctor & Gamble so our PB of choice was Jiff. I remember my mom would draw a heart in the PB whenever she'd make a sandwich. So to this day I will still only buy Jiff.

In fact I can do this same sort of emotional reasoning for almost every brand name that I am loyal to. I will spare you the enormous list...your welcome. But I will tell you what prompted today's blog. It was the song "T-Shirt" by Shontelle.

The song is about a girl missing a boy and she gets all dressed up to go out but she misses him so much she stays home and curls up in a Hanes T. Could have been any cotton T, but it wasn't it was a Hanes T, because Hanes is known for comfort and it reminds her of the lost love. See I am not making it up we all do this!! Right? I know you do :)

So listen to the song on YouTube, and next time you are buying one brand over another try to figure out why.

Oh and if you want curl up with something Hanes you can go to http://www.rebel-one.com/shontelle_hanes/index3.html to buy a Shontelle Hanes Tee.

So to the brands we love! Cheers!

To New Chapters

On March 13th of 2009, two new chapters opened in my life simultaneously.  You know how you can wake up one morning and think your day is going to go one way, then at the drop of a hat something happens and you know your life will never be the same.  Now imagine that happening TWICE in ONE day!!  

The title of the first chapter is MOH.  

At 9 am I opened an email from my best friend Tiffany titled "Greetings from Germany".  I didn't even have to open the email, I just knew, I could feel it.  Twins often speak of being able to feel one another even when they are far apart.  This is how Tiff and have been since we met freshman year of college.  Words have always been unnecessary, when it comes to us, we just know.  So, as I clicked open I literally stopped breathing.  I saw a picture of a beautiful castle and the tears started to pour down my cheeks, I hurriedly scrolled to the bottom of the email where I saw it, "Christian got down on one knee and completed the fairy tale".   She was Engaged!  We had dreamed of this since we shared a dorm room at UC (more on that later) and the day had finally come!  I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.  Suddenly I knew I was going to be busy over the next year! Little did I know there was more in store!

The title of the second chapter is MBA.

Still smiling from Tiff's big news, I get another email.  This one wipes the smile off my face.  It's a note saying, "Head's up...Today is the big day".  My heart stopped and I suddenly had butterflies in my stomach.  See, over the past year I had worked my tail applying for grad school, and now in seven little words I knew that the next two years of my life would be determined by an email that was on its way.  So I took a deep breath, prepared myself for the worst, and refreshed my inbox every thirty seconds for the next three hours.  It was now March 13th about 3:30pm and I couldn't get any work done, which is usual for a Friday, but with the day I had had who could blame me.  Since March Madness had begun almost the whole office decided to cut work early and go have a beer.  Then all of the sudden this wave came over me, I felt like I couldn't breathe. It had arrived I knew it!   So I went to my email (thank god for my iPhone) and saw it "Kelley MBA Application Status".  I opened it, closed my eyes, took a deep breath; then out of the tiniest squint read...."Congratulations! It is my pleasure to offer you admission to the Kelley School of Business MBA Program at Indiana University for the 2009 fall semester."  My eyes opened wide as I read the rest.  Suddenly I knew I was going to be busy over the next two years!

If you haven't realized yet this all happened on Friday the 13th.  Not the sort of emotions you correlate with that date.  Maybe the day is lucky, maybe it was simply a coincidence, either way it deserves a toast. 

Here is to New Chapters! Cheers!