What are your favorite brands and why?

I am a creature of habit. If I buy it, I want it to work for me in the way I need it to. As such, when I choose a company to give my money to, it’s because I like the product or service, and not the company’s brand.

Case in point: there’s a well-known online pet supply company whose brand relays that they care. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, because if that’s the story, what’s a customer to think when they consistently get poor service? That they care, but not about me? Or is caring a feeling and not an action?

Anyway, I have enough problems in my life, so I moved on. I now buy my cat food from Amazon and I buy litter and Churu in the local Tractor Supply store. And that should have been that, except I recently got this from that company.

And I gotta tell you, I was confused. Sure, it made me feel good. Then I remembered poorly-packed boxes and leaking chemicals and decided that warm fuzzies weren’t going to woo me back. But thanks for the portrait! And BTW, some people who are still your customers were confused why you sent a former customer such a gift and not a current one.

Then there are grocers who market themselves as having fresh products, clean stores, and a pleasant experience, but who get their tighty whities snagged in the crack of their ass when I notice their brand perception doesn’t match reality. So do they truly want to offer those things to customers, or do they only want us to believe that about them and wish I’d keep my damn mouth shut?

The brands that chap my ass the most are the ones that are politically powerful to the detriment of the people. Take the defense industry, which is huge around here. These corporations make their money from military defense contracts, which means they make money by creating ways to kill people. Theirs is money derived from taxes we pay, cuz everyone knows corporations get hella tax breaks. They also make a lot of political donations. OpenSecrets notes that in 2022 the industry donated $50 million to candidates and committees, and while more went to Republicans than Democrats, Democrats got over $21 million from them.

It’s the financial sector that donates the most to politicians, and mostly to Republicans. There’s a reason why these people make a lot of money – because those donations led to laws written in their favor. They also make some under-the-table, personal donations, like real estate developer Harlan Crow, who spends a lot of money to make Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas happy. Imagine what this country could be like if none of these companies and the people they make rich were allowed to funnel money into our government and its representatives in any way, shape, or form.

At the end of the day, branding is what makes you feel good, and while a brand can suffer if the product or service isn’t up to par, a beloved brand will make you wonder if the complainers are legit or just whiners. Take McDonald’s. They were sued by Stella Liebeck after suffering severe burns from a cup of coffee served at a temp of 180 – 190 degrees fahrenheit, per corporate policy. She was far from the only person who was injured, but the one you remember because of the hatchet job MickeyD’s PR folks did on her.

What you may not know is Ms. Liebeck offered to settle for $20,000, which would have covered her medical bills. McDonald’s refused, offering her a mere $800, so they went to court and a jury awarded her $2.9 million, though a judge reduced it to less than half a million. To this day a lot of you are unsure about the whole thing and choose to go with the brand instead of the truth, because it fits the narrative you’ve been force-fed much of your life. McDonald’s knew all along their coffee temps were unsafe but felt the cost of paying for injuries was worth it. And now what they and other companies do is lobby for laws that limit their liability in the court system.

So dare to look past the brand, which is nothing but emotional overload, and look to what the company is actually doing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Miss Biddy just showed up after being AWOL for two days, so I’m going to cry and give her Churu, which is a brand I love, but only because my cats do. If my cats didn’t like it, I wouldn’t buy it.