Labels of Love

I was chatting with a friend the other day when she turned to me and said “you know I almost always see you with a Second Cup coffee in your hand, never Starbucks or Tim Hortons, why is that?” I stopped to think about it and realized I unconsciously had chosen to be loyal to Second Cup and since coffee makes up for a majority of my diet, it seemed as though my relationship with Second Cup was more than just a convenient coffee shop on my way to class. When she proceeded to ask if I would consider changing over to Starbucks as it was her brand of choice, I quickly replied “absolutely not” and retorted the same question to her about trading over to Second Cup and her answer was identical to mine. So what makes us choose which brands or chains we become loyal to?



 A good Advertisement lures its audience into consuming the product or brand as a whole and if a brand manages to make a type of cult following. When a consumer becomes accustomed to a certain brand it becomes hard to stray away from it.

This can also be seen with religion, one becomes consumed in their beliefs that no one can convince them otherwise. What makes being preached too by a priest different from being told to buy the new Apple product? Faith and products are things that make us feel complete as human beings; it makes us feel like we’re part of something. Having comfort in knowing we’re holding a Blackberry in our hands or wearing the new Prada pumps to Church on Sunday, it helps gives us confidence and ultimately makes us happy.

As much as we would like to believe that we aren’t a society that likes to be bought, we really are. We want to be persuaded to buy the new products, to follow a higher power to be part of a community. Blogging about this right now and knowing people will read it demonstrates how big the blogging phenomenon or ‘cult” has gotten. Why did I choose to use Blogger? Why didn’t I find a lesser known, different outlet instead of following the trend?

With keeping in mind Twitchell’s article and our class discussion, I don’t think I’ll be getting any opposing views to this post as it seems that people actually have an unconscious need to be labelled.

Xo,
Y