I am a brand loyal type of gal. There are definitely certain brands that I prefer and remain loyal to, whether or not they are the best product/service out there. I believe this stems from my loyal nature in general. I’m certainly very loyal to my friends, my schools, even the places I’ve lived. I do what I can to be on their side and defend them against differing opinions. The same goes for products I use – it seems that part of why I learn so much about them is so I can explain them to the ignorant or the skeptics. And when my beloved brands are in trouble, I’m fretting along with them, hoping they’ll survive and giving them as much business as I can manage (like today at the Mongolian Grill place, where I even left a tip).
I have pretty strong convictions about the Asian food I eat. In fact,I can think of exactly what brand of soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, shrimp crackers, fish sticks, and saqima I always go for. I’m a little less picky with my American brands (food or not) and there tend to be one or two major ones of each category that I like. I’ve stuck to mostly one store for clothes, one bank for checking and two for savings, two brands for computers, one for shampoo, one for toothpaste… you get the idea.
Yikes, not that type of branding!
I’m fascinated by branding and what motivates me stick with the brands that I end up choosing. Once I go for one, it’s really hard for me to switch to something else. It’s kind of like when I go to a restaurant and choose an item on the menu, the next time I go I’m likely to order the same thing, no matter how hard I try to force myself to get a different dish. Much of it is because I have expectations the next time I go and no other dish satisfies what I was craving quite like that original one. And that’s exactly why I wanted to eat at that particular restaurant in the first place: because I was in the mood for that dish I had there. So similarly I wonder if perhaps I stick with my brands because I expect something very particular from them and I know that I won’t be disappointed. Though other brands might be better in other areas, those aren’t the areas I value as much.
Yes, now that seems like a reasonable explanation. But how do they get me in the first place? I know there’s a certain aesthetic appeal, as well as practicality/functionality. Sometimes a logo can really make or break it for me. That first impression tells me a lot:
Is the company innovative and advancing?
Is the company fresh, hip, and cool or too stodgy?
Did they put enough effort into the logo for me to trust that they’d put enough effort into their product/service too?
Does the branding reflect what their company is about or are there mixed messages?
And so images that are too boring, not eye-catching, or memorable are often thrown out pretty quickly. Names and color schemes have a similar effect, but don’t affect me quite as strongly. The ones I’m drawn to are also judged based on usefulness and ease of use to determine the ultimate choice. Oftentimes it’s quite a hard decision, especially when it comes to technology. With all the new ones coming out, it’s hard to choose which company to go with. At least in the other arenas, things don’t move quite at that breakneck speed and I’ve settled pretty comfortably into a brand I love.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to which ones can grab my attention, then give me a good enough experience to not want to try somewhere else.
Let’s take sharing pictures, for example. There’s Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and many more that focus more on printing photos. Facebook is useful because you can tag your friends and use the existing social network to share your photos. Flickr is good to share your stuff with the world and make your pictures show up on image searches. Picasa has a fun face recognition algorithm that allows you to have people pre-tagged whenever you upload new pictures. Those people are also linked to your Google contacts, so if you already use one of the other Google services (Gmail, Voice, Wave), you can use existing contacts to tag, much like Facebook. So when you want to share pictures, where do you go?!
Finally, Baseloop caters to both events for your friends and more public events. What I like best about them is they allow you to suggest things to do and they show you a public calendar of events going on in your area. That way, if you’ve wanted to do something but could never seem to find the people to do it with, you can put it out there for all your friends (and even random people) to see. Much easier than e-mailing or messaging all my friends just to see if they’re interested in a particular activity. You can also quickly see what things there might be to do on a Saturday night when you’re bored and want to go have some fun. But of course, few people are on it now, so when I invite friends, they’d need to set up an account. So which of these is best for event-planning?
