Brand Identity-Crisis

I was standing in the shower this morning, looking at my bottle of shampoo and remembering the story of how I came to use that particular brand. And it struck me that I have certain brands of all kinds of items that I like and use all of the time. I also wondered what it would take for me to switch from brand x to brand y.

I've also noticed that once I start using a certain brand of product that I keep using that brand for many years. Here are a couple of stories about my brand identity crisis.

In 1992, I was a senior in college and doing my internship with the US Luge Association in Lake Placid, NY. While I was there, I had several different roommates at the Olympic Training Center. During one particular week, we had some folks from the Norwegian Luge team training with the hopefuls for the American team, who were in training for the 1992 Albertville Olympics in France. My roommate that week was one of their coaches. One day not long after he and his team had left, I was in the shower in my room and realized that I was out of my brand of shampoo. When I looked down to the base of the tub I noticed that his shampoo bottle was still there, which happened to be Pert Plus. So, being tight on money (as all interns usually are) and in need of shampoo at that very moment, I decided to use what had been left behind. And I've been using that brand of shampoo ever since.

How about brand-name footwear? When I was a kid of about 12 or so, I guess, I started wearing Nike high-top sneakers. Only last year did I buy a pair of sneakers not made by Nike. And I only broke tradition because I needed a cheap pair of sneakers to wear in the cleanroom at work. Actually, the pair of Nike's I had for outside use were wearing out. The sneakers I had originally bought for cleanroom work were Nikes. So I decided to buy a cheap pair of sneakers and convert my cleanroom sneakers to my everyday sneakers. Outside of work, I still wear exclusively Nike sneakers.

I don't like mint or minty stuff. Makes me gag. Well, when I was a kid, I started using regular Colgate toothpaste. It, to me, was the least offensive minty toothpaste I could find. To this day I can't use anything else. Boy, if Palmolive ever stopped making this toothpaste, I'd be in trouble.

I can't say when the transition happened but once upon a time, I used a foam pillow at night. Then at some point I began to use goose down feather pillows. Now I can't sleep on a foam pillow and I bring my pillows with me whenever I travel. My ex used to tease me becasue of this, so one Christmas I bought her two king size ones and told her that once she started with the feather pillows she wouldn't be able ot go back either. Maybe she doesn't carry it to the extreme as I do, but she's hooked.

Maybe I ought to get some endorsement deals from some of these companies....

There's also the "you get what you pay for" or "which is better" brand name vs. generic battle. Never was this more apparent to me than when I was married. You see, growing up, my parents always filled the medicine cabinet with only name brand drugs. Bayer Aspirin, Tylenol, Aleve, Robitussin, Dristan and Nyquil to name a few. These are also more expensive than their generic substitutes. My ex-wife is a nurse, and she quickly informed me that generic drugs were just as good as the brand names with about 1/3 of the price. I challenged her to prove it, which she easily and quite convincingly did.

"Just look at the active ingredients in each and tell me what you see?" she would say as she handed me a bottle of Aleve and the generic equivalent naproxin sodium. Right down the line I was amazed. Lo and behold, they were exactly the same!! Now I hardly ever buy a brand name drug, unless there is no generic substitute available. Why should I give the drug companies more of my hard earned money for the privelege of using a product with their name on it whe I can get something equally as good for less?

But the psychological battle remains. Just the other day, in fact, my mom said to me that she had had a headache and that she took some of my naproxen sodium and told me that it didn't work at all. She then took some Aleve, she said, and her headache went away. I told her that it was all in her head and that the generic works just as well. Yet my mom, whom I love dearly, is as stubborn as a mule when it comes to these things and prefers those brand names. (No wonder where I get my stubbornness from...)

Brand loyalty goes beyond products too. Take sports for example: I've been a Red Sox fan since 1975, partly because I've lived in the Boston are for most of my life and partly because they played in the World Series that year and the Red Sox had become my dad's favorite team (he grew up in Philadelphia) and thus became my favorite team too. I never really followed American football until 1985. That was the year that the New England Patriots first made it to the Super Bowl. And though the Chicago Bears opened a case of whoop-ass on my team that day, I've been a Patriots fan ever since.

Then there are times when we use a brand of a product for a while, then stop for a period of time and start back up again some time later. In a way, you could equate religion as a brand. I grew up in a protestant Christian home, so naturally that's what I became (used). I went to The Salvation Army, a church of the Wesleyan "brand". Then for a while, as an adult, I didn't go to church at all and stopped using that "brand", though I still had some in my closet. Then when I started going back to church regularly, I went to a Baptist church, still protestant and Christian but of the Calvinistic "brand". My parents still tease me about being a Baptist instead of going to the Salvation Army. Don't worry - I tease right back. But it's all in good fun, though.


So, I'll end by asking you what are some of the brand name products that you use frequently and why do you use them? I'll bet you have some odd little stories, too.
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Birthday wishes to my oldest sister C, who turns 42 today.