Brand Loyalty

Today at lunch the WWB gals and I were discussing the Super Bowl ads from last night.  While I usually watch the Super Bowl strictly for the ads--even if the local team is in the game--I feel like I missed a lot of them last night. I did catch a few and they were decent. But would they make me buy? The answer is a resounding NO!

Super Bowl ads are not made to switch a loyal customer from Company A into a loyal customer of Company B. It is production value. It is memorability. Will it be talked about at work on Monday?

It got us to thinking, what brands are you loyal to? It's as old as the Coke vs. Pepsi debate!

There are plenty of products that I am very loyal to! I have used the same face soap for the last 20 years! I don't use it everyday, but I still love it! I have grown in my product spectrum, but this one is always a staple.

My oldest son will only eat Reduced Fat Cheez It crackers. I've even tried saving the box and putting regular ones in it. Nope, he knows.  It has to be a certain brand of bread, peanut butter, etc. I swear he would starve before ingesting something that isn't one of his "brands."

My youngest son tells me things are wrong if a company changes their packaging. Giant Eagle recently changed their shredded cheese packaging and while making pizzas one night, he told me it was the wrong cheese. First lesson for my six year old in marketing--the product didn't change, just the packaging.

I can remember in college it was my turn to buy ketchup for the house--at this time I didn't eat ketchup much, if at all. Not originally being from western PA, I bought the store brand. When I brought said ketchup home, my roommates were appalled at my choice. How dare I buy something other than Heinz. "Really," I thought. "It matters?" Yes, yes it does! Fast foward 15 years and I can only buy Heinz. Everthing else just isn't, well Heinz.

We are like this with clothes, shoes, household items. While I may pick something up here or there, there are a few stores that I go to religiously when I'm in need or want of something new. Honestly, if I can't find it there, I usually just stop looking!

We all have products and services that we bow to in loyalty. I'm totally screwed if Sunshine stops making Cheez Its or Giant Eagle changes their packaging again!

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Has It Been Five Year's Already?

This past Friday, my hubby and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary and it was one of the best days that we’ve had together in a long time.  I really wanted to make the day special for him.  Not only because it was our five year wedding anniversary (which I feel like these days, that’s a real accomplishment) but because things have been a little crazy for us over the last month.  So this seemed like the perfect time to celebrate and I just wanted to celebrate us.
Here’s what we did…

First, my hubby woke up surrounded by five heart-shaped balloons and each balloon had one reason why I loved him attached to it.  He just laughed and smiled because he knows that I love balloons just  because I feel like you can’t help but laugh and smile when you see a balloon…right?  Next we exchanged gifts.  The gift he gave me was a really big deal.  He gave me my engagement ring back which has been at the jewelers for the last seven months trying to be fixed…don’t ask.  The important thing was that it was finished and back on my finger.  My gift to him was a two-parter.  I always like to give one “traditional” gift and for five years, the traditional gift is wood.  So I went out and found a log and cleaned it up.  I carved our initials in it with a heart around it just like you would in a tree.  I then dug out a hole in the top to place a votive candle in it that was used at our wedding.  It’s totally cheesy and corny but cheesy and corny is just who I am sometimes.  The second part of my gift was a little adventure.  We went to a new place that just opened called Copper Kettle Brewing Company.  It’s located in Greenfield on Greenfield Avenue and we actually got to brew our own beer.  It was such a neat experience and we had a blast.  It really taught us so much about the beer making process and for two people that love beer as much as we do…this couldn’t have been a more perfect thing for us to do.  We then get to go back in 14 days to bottle and label our beer so now we’re trying to come up with a clever name for our anniversary beer.  Following the brewery, we went out for a nice dinner and then to a local bar to hang out and have a few drinks.  We laughed and had great conversations.  I felt so lucky and for the first time in a long time…I just felt like a normal couple, doing normal couple things.  A lot of the time I just feel like our bar runs our life and that’s all we do and all we talk about.

So that was our anniversary day together.  It was fun, relaxing and perfect and if you are looking for a really fun thing to do, definitely check out Copper Kettle Brewing Company.  They don’t have a website yet but you can find them on Facebook or through their bar website which is Hough’s.  And if you have any ideas on what we could name our brew, leave it in the comments section!  Thanks for letting me share.

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