Business, Science

Brand Loyalty

97 Comments

Today’s post comes from marketing whiz Spin Williams, a wheeler-dealer who is always in residence at The Meeting That Never Ends.

The economy is picking up! It’s a world full of great opportunities for smart people who are willing to embrace risk and do deals. But it’s also important to know when to walk away.

Case in point:

I’m not at liberty to say who made the offer, but during a recent new business discussion at The Meeting That Never Ends we heard from a very well-known genes manufacturer who was shopping around the famous Y chromosome for a possible takeover.

x_and_y_chromosomes

Naturally, we considered it. The Y is a well known brand name in the chromosome industry, making up a significant portion of all the chromosomes out there. It comes in second only to the X chromosome, which is the runaway market leader. In fact, the X is so reliable and effective, it has a 100% market penetration. Some people love the X chromosome so much, they have two! But there is a foothold – around half the population has at least one X and a Y. It was a bit disappointing to us to learn that very few people have two Y chromosomes, and we noted that as a possible marketing goal, should we decide to do the deal.

Doing our due diligence, we discovered that the Y was for sale because its maker has come to the realization that the chromosome is almost worthless, having been shown through scientific studies to contribute very little to any sense of individual well-being or overall usefulness. Most organizations considering a takeover would have walked away at this point, but my experience has shown me that marketing is more powerful than science. As proof, I offer the fact the we still have a tobacco industry! The value of any particular thing is in the eye of the beholder, and there is solid survey information to indicate that most Y chromosome users love and defend it simply because they already have one, and not because of any inherent benefits it may bring to the table.

And there’s a sizable portion of the chromosome-consuming public that doesn’t understand the product and doesn’t know which brand it prefers.

So in spite of the Y chromosome being inferior, we felt certain we could develop a marketing plan that would boost brand loyalty and make the Y seem more fresh and hip than it does today. Whether we would get to a point where X-only consumers might actually feel some envy for those with a Y was hotly debated at the meeting, with one side expressing certainty that such envy was impractical and impossible, and the other group adamant that Y envy pretty much drives all decision making by X’s. It turns out one of the side effects of having a Y is an outsized enthusiasm for the supposed benefits of Y-ness that X’ers don’t generally seem to share.

Similarly, it was the Y-freindly crowd that was all Gung-ho for immediately pulling the trigger on this deal and sorting out the consequences later. The double-X’s in the room were feeling less impulsive, constantly asking ‘How do we monetize this?’, ‘Where’s the benefit?’ and other fun-stifling questions like that.

Because there was no getting around this fundamental conflict, we walked away from the deal. First, though, we made a surprise bid for the X chromosome, thinking a seller in the mood to divest one of His low-performing properties might take the bait on an unexpected left-field offer for the most popular genetic product in the world.

That was a non-starter, but we all had a good laugh over it.

What does it take to get you to switch brands?

97 thoughts on “Brand Loyalty”

    2. That sounds right to me too. I’m happy because Rolaids has apparently made a comeback. After their big recall, it looked certain that they would never recover. No one has carried Rolaids for a couple of years. But I see in the news and on TV that they are back. Woot!

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  2. As a geneticist I feel obligated to remind Spin that most experts agree that the Y is a chromosomal spin-off of a long ago X. Admittedly it is a poor copy. While the X carries a full complement of approximately 2000 genes including loci for muscular dystrophy, color perception, hemophilia, and male pattern baldness; the Y carries at most 50 genes. The Y is primarily responsible for organization of the testes (who wants disorganized testicles?), but does also have a loci for hairy earlobes. In the DNA world the Y chromosome is the equivalent of the watches and designer purses for sale on the streets of New York.
    Marketers would be wise to approach the Y as a unique, special chromosome. It exhibits more variation in size than any other chromosome. Now some would say that size doesn’t matter but Spin and colleagues could start by promoting the information that Japanese men have the biggest Y’s of all, but THAT is a story for another day!

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    1. and let us not neglect to notice the vast amount of power and influence holders of the Y brand have wielded over the course of human history. It may be tiny by comparison, but there is obviously some sort of high efficiency going on here.

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  3. I just heard of an interesting decision to change brands. A woman named Cathy had a disastrous marriage that ended in one of those nuclear explosions of bitterness. When she divorced the cad, this woman thought it would be odd to return to her maiden name for she was no longer that person. Cathy renamed herself Kat and she took a new last name to signify that she was starting her life as a new person who bore some resemblance to her former self but was very much a new woman. You gotta admire that spirit. Go, Kat, go!

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Changing brands is a behavior that depends a lot on the product: many generic brands of medications, of foods elicit faithlessness in me. I will go for the cheap prices. However, if we are going to talk chocolate or coffee–I want quality and I am unwilling to accept a cheap knock off. The same is true of a vehicle. Regarding a vehicle I might be driving over the frozen tundra to a funeral in Pipestone in January, I want top flight maintenance and a good brand without lemon-ish problems.

    Steve comments about “Name Brands” are interesting, too. I tried changing my name to my wasband’s name in the first marriage. I could not do it. First I went to court and hyphenated it, then upon divorcing him, changed it back to my dad’s brand where it has stayed for 30 years. Perhaps the problem wasn’t his brand but the husband-ish product himself was defective? However, I had no desire to change products completely like Steve’s acquaintance changed hers.

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  6. i tend to hunt around for the right product and then stay put until there is a reason to consider change. charmin ultra soft is a soft and economically logical product it is fluffier so you can use less sheets and therefore justify the higher price. well costco came out with their obvious knock off at 60% of the price and so i thought id give it a try. at the same time my wife went to the dollar store and picked up a couple of rolls of their product. i was very disappointed that the off bransd turned out to be so inferior to the charmin then i found out the poor product was the dollar store version. i will have to pay attention to see if the costco version is as good as charmin . after the beef jerky on a roll from the dollar store the costco stuff should feel good but i need to compare to the correct comparison.

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  7. when i smoked cigarettes i had a fierce loyalty to those cowboy killers. i have brands i will not do because of philosophical differences or past bad experience , chrysler and honda products come to mind. never again. wanna know what insurance companies to avoid , i have a few i can name for you.
    i have become a believer that most brand name stuff is the same as the cheaper version and i look to choose the best off brand with a loyalty to no one.
    levis 501 made it easy. they stayed exactly the same and as i became aware of the commercials that offered a skosh more room in the seat and thighs i began to understand the reason they make my version and one for all the other people who buy the wrong stuff.

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  8. I have very little brand loyalty; for me, it’s an assurance of a level of quality or it’s nothing. If I am in a position to judge the quality for myself, brand is not a factor. In cases where the quality is not immediately discernable, online shopping for instance, I am more inclined to use brand names as a crutch, but it only takes one or two disappointments for me to shun a brand forever. I had that experience with L. L. Bean.
    I think companies are, first of all, always looking for ways to maintain or increase their profit margin. Two ways to do that are to raise the price or to make the product more cheaply by cutting corners somewhere. I suspect that the marketing department generally pushes for the latter. But once a brand has indicated that it is willing to let their integrity slip, that brand is not to be trusted.

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      1. I could show you several iterations of what was ostensibly the same jacket, bought over a decade or more. Each successive version is just a little bit poorer in quality- cheaper materials substituted. If I had been given the choice of paying a little more for the same quality as the original, I would have done so, but Bean made that choice for me and lost my trust.

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  10. Good morning. Branding seems to be an invitation to make appearance more important than content. I suppose that there are situations where superior products gain supporters through branding. Perhaps some products need to be branded to gain acceptance. I think branding is an over sold concept. I would hope the quality of products would be the main criteria I would use for changing brands. Tricky promoters have no doubt been able to find ways to get me to switch to inferior brands from time to time.

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  11. The only brand to which I am loyal, other than an exception or two that do not come to mind, is whatever the store calls its generic line. which were in all likelihood made by the brand name. My wife, on the other hand, insists the brand products are better, and certain brands are the only option.I think in an item or two she may be right, such as Festal brand pumpkin pie filling, And it’s Coke, only Coke for her, the Coke addict. She has for 48 years refused to try any of my suggested taste tests, like on saltines because we often have her brand and the generic in the house, but she will not compare them.
    In one way her brand dedication costs us much money, but on these she is correct, and her doctors agree, but not the insurance companies.. For four of her drugs she cannot tolerate the generics or they do not work correctly, such as her thyroid. She has the best drug program we can buy but they will not pay the higher price.
    And my wife is fiercely loyal. Her grocery is THE store, even though next year it will be nearly impossible to get to it and then dangerous after that. (Do you want to hear about the latest round of Roundabouts being foisted upon us by the state of Minnesota?) But hardest of all to believe is that we–meaning she–are leaving the Target pharmacy. The one here has become a disaster. Not one druggist or tech is left from two years ago. They keep trying to run a very successful pharmacy with only one full-time pharmacist and last minute call-ins and rotating hit-men/women. For techs they often rotate in clerks from the electronics department, who look as lost as they are. Does this seem like Target? They keep messing up and their computer system is a mess. For Sandy with her current number of 23 prescriptions from 5 different doctors, this is a huge issue. So we are being loyal to one of the druggists who left Target and went to Cub, which is interesting because Cub is not THE grocery store for her.
    Part of this loyalty for her is old-person loyalty. Familiarity makes things easier for the fuzzy mind.

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    1. Interesting… I followed my pharmacist to Cub as well. He was at Salk Drug, which used to be just down the street from me. When it closed and he moved to Cub, I took my business there!

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  12. I’ve always found it curious that clothing brands that display their brand insignia prominently tend to be more expensive. Shouldn’t they be willing to subsidize all that free advertising? Personally, I disdain anything with an overt logo on it.

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      3. I enjoyed the bit in “Back to the Future” where Marty is wearing Calvin Klein jeans with a big “Calvin” label on a back pocket. Everyone in the film assumes it is his name, so they call him “Calvin.”

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        1. I think it was the underwear. I also liked the cafe owner asking if he fell off a ship because he was wearing a quilted vest.

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    3. When I was a teenager I liked to have jeans with a brand name on the back pocket – Levi’s preferred, but Wrangler or Lee were okay with me too. Beyond that, though, I’d rather not have a name on anything. Sometimes I cover them up. Especially hard to find is a women’s purse without some sort of designer logo on it.

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  13. I’m not particularly loyal either. There are just a few things that I choose by brand… like Prell shampoo …because I really like it and haven’t found another brand that smells as good or makes as many suds (yes, I know the suds don’t make your hair any cleaner, but I like them anyway). But if the generic has the same ingredients and is cheaper, voila, new customer. This is a hard lesson to teach to the Teenager.

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    1. I tend to be loyal to a brand if for no better reason than to simplify the act of shopping. If you debate which toothpaste to buy or which shampoo, a short trip to the grocery store can become an all-afternoon marathon.

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      1. You are absolutely correct, Steve. And when the product/brand is no longer there, or I’m at a different store that doesn’t carry “my” brand, then I can stand in that aisle for what seems like hours, bewildered by all the choices. Why do we need to have 318 choices in toothpaste, 49 choices in toilet paper, 420 choices in shampoo, and approximately 1,000 choices in cereal? It’s too much for this easily overwhelmed person.

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  14. “What does it take to get you to switch brands?
    A large amount of money, small-denomination bills, non-sequential serial numbers of course, in a brown paper bag, passed to me under the table, by a guy named Vito, who’s wearing a black shirt and white tie under a black suit, with dark hair slicked back, sunglasses, and a toothpick hanging from the corner of his mouth. 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

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    2. Funny.
      One year in the early 70’s a store in Duluth was offering an off brand of beer for a cheap price in multiple cases. I think it was something like $1.25 per case if you bought ten cases. Five guys (not those Five Guys) went there with two pickups and loaded up on beer for the summer. They called it “the diarrhea summer.”

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        1. What a coincidence! I just finished The Ones That Got Away yesterday on the plane! Now I understand a LOT more about the possum rug!

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  15. I have one prescription that my doctor specifies with the brand name even though there is a generic available. So far insurance has paid the full cost, even though it’s several hundred dollars a month. I had some bad spells of vertigo when I was on the generic version, possibly related, possibly not.

    I have been using Trader Joe’s organic pumpkin for pies.

    Most things I’m pretty willing to switch brands at the drop of a hat. There is a difference in certain things, but most, not.

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  16. The only brand I can think of that I’ve been loyal to is SAAB. Since that brand is no longer viable, it’s a good thing that I’m at the tail end of my car-buying years. I’m like Jim with regard to branding, don’t put a whole lot of stock in it. It is said that bad advertising is better than no advertising, but for me that’s definitely not true. There are things I will not buy simply because their ads are too stupid. The current TV ads for Eight O’Clock coffee is a case in point. Who would want to buy a product that is promoted as appealing to rude and obnoxious people?

    tim has a good point, in many cases brand-name merchandise is manufactured by the exact same manufacturer. Kitchen appliances, for example, are all made by a couple of manufacturers using interchangeable parts, but prices vary widely based on what brand name is on them. We discovered this the hard way after having bought an expensive Maytag refrigerator. A month or two later we found the exact same refrigerator with a less prestigious name on it for $200.00 less than what we had paid for ours. We also discovered when the compressor in that new refrigerator gave out after 23 months that we were extremely lucky. At the time we had purchased it, Maytag came with a two year warranty on the compressor, so it was covered under warranty. The repair man told us that had we purchased that very same refrigerator a year later, it would have come with only a one year warranty. Turns out the Maytag repairman is not sitting and twiddling his thumbs in some obscure location; he’s out there hustling to keep up with the repairs of the inferior products being foisted on unsuspecting customers.

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  17. I do make use of Consumer’s Report. If they give a brand a high rating I will probably make it to be one of my top choices. I fear that my interest in making use of Consumer’s Report brands me as a greedy consumer. Well, at least I am trying to be a well informed greedy consumer.

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  18. Why, one might ask, would anyone pay twice as much for a shirt with a little alligator on it than for a comparable shirt without? “Status symbol” isn’t really a complete answer. Such emblems are signifiers. Affluent people use them to announce themselves to other affluent people, hipsters use them to announce themselves to other hipsters and so on. Of course, it’s not foolproof; any fool can spend way too much to procure a signifier. What I find interesting is that there seems to be another, subtler level of signifiers. Have you ever noticed that the clothing on the economy end of the spectrum, even when the garments are otherwise comparable to the prestige brands– and both are manufactured in third world sweatshops– are usually constructed in fabrics that are considerably less harmonious colors and clumsier prints? Now, obviously it doesn’t cost any more to produce a fabric in an ugly color than in a pleasing one, so there must be a deliberate caste system for different price points. And somehow, that caste system is enforced so that no renegade garment manufacturer starts producing handsome clothing at bargain prices.

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    1. Walk through Walmart and look at the ugly clothing they sell, clearly intentionally. Speaking of /Walmart, I do think by and large, if you ignore brands, you get what you pay for.
      The prestige aspect of dress id a large issue in school with a level of sadness to it. When you consider what it costs to have a sports name of a celebrity name or the like on clothing and what percentage of clothing worn in to high schools display those images . . .

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    2. In that same vein, women’s clothes in larger sizes seem to be made in fabrics that would indicate to me that some manufacturers think heavy women must also be either blind or have bad taste. And don’t get me started on why in every department store I know of, bras for top heavy women invariably are hung on the lowest rung of the display stand.

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      1. That I was not aware of.
        Our local library puts the large print books on low shelves. I would assume poor eyesight often goes with elderly stiff folks.

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  19. I have to admit that sometimes I can an “anti-brand”. For example, we always used Crest when I was a kid because my uncle (who is a dentist) said we had to use Crest. The first time I bought my own toothpaste as an adult, I chose some smelly gel toothpaste that was as far from Crest as you could get. Still to this day, although I don’t think I ever buy the same brand of toothpaste twice in a row (whatever is on sale is what goes in the basket), I still have never purchased Crest.

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  20. In areas with gangs, such as Phoenix and San Diego, students cannot wear clothing with any brand, team, or any image of any sort on them because they represent gangs. Students can end up in gang violence without knowing they were wearing “colors.” Even Disney clothing represents gangs in places.

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    1. That’s also the case in several of the alternative schools here in the Twin Cities, Clyde. At the school where I worked, students weren’t allowed to wear bandanas, not on the head, or hanging from the belt or tucked into a pocket, as they were used to signal gang affiliation. Baseball caps were only allowed if worn with the bill facing forward, apparently the bill worn pointing in various other directions also had gang significance. Of course, gang members found plenty of other ways of communicating with each other using hand signals and who knows what else.

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  21. My MN grandkids are step two on a four-step chain of hand-me-downs and step two on a three-step chain. The first buyers buy high quality clothing, not often with logos and such on them. My daughter and another mother pay the first buyers some money for the hand-me-downs to help them buy the high-quality clothing. Since kids do not wear them that long and since the parents take good care of the clothing they last in good shape to be passed onto families who can stand to have some good clothing free. About the only clothing my grandkids end up with from the chain are a few things that say Two Harbors High School on them, which is fun for them in south central MN.

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    1. When my daughter was younger, she was often a recipient as number 2 or 3 (or sometimes 4) in the hand-me-down chain. None of the stuff had obvious logos, which was a great bonus, and all of it high quality enough that even after my little girl had beaten on the clothes for awhile, most of it was still in good enough shape to pass along again. We’d probably still be in that daisy-chain but she has since gotten to be the same size (or bigger) than her older cousin, who had been one source of clothes, and the other main source moved to a different state. I don’t know if it’s from that experience or something else, but Daughter continues to be rabidly anti-labels and logos on her clothes – to a point where finding her “just plain jeans without anything on them” is sometimes a chore. Ah well, at least I don’t have to spend big bucks to buy the “right” ones. 🙂

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  22. Like most of you, I am not brand loyal. I have my favorites (I’m an “Arm & Hammer” toothpaste kinda gal, VS), but I will stray from them easily if given a good reason to – price alone is not necessarily enough reason, but experience is. I read somewhere recently (can’t remember where now, it was in a fog of reading marketing-type articles about different generations and their shopping habits) that starting with about my generation, as a cohort we are a lot less brand loyal – where our grandparents bought the same make of car for decades, we will swap to whatever seems best at the time, based on as much on what we have heard (good or bad) from our peers as anything else, a trait I know I am guilty of. I also know I am guilty of being experience-loyal: a brand that offers a total experience is more likely to retain me than one that is simply a marketed brand (Apple would be the grand-daddy of that style of brand marketing, Caribou Coffee is in that same vein – it’s not so much about marketing the product itself as it is the experience of purchasing and using the product). What that means, though, is if an experience goes south, I will leave pretty quickly. I shop at Target because the experience, to me, is better than shopping at Wal-Mart (not because the house brand is better or worse, mind – but the overall shopping experience is less awful) – but I quit shopping at Macy’s because the experience got to be so painful compared to shopping at Dayton’s (I don’t need to overspend on clothes, spending an hour to find one workable piece for my wardrobe, if the customer service and selection is crap for those of us who aren’t their target audience). I will shop at Creative Kidstuff because it’s fun to shop there, not because their prices are good – if I wanted low prices I’d shop a national chain – but I’d rather shop where it’s fun, where the store is bright, and where I can hear kids laughing while I shop. I have shopped dismal independent stores that I will not go back to – I have shopped specific locations of places where location makes a difference (there are Target stores I will not shop, ever) – I have bought crap stuff from stores I generally like and fabulous things from stores I will never step foot into again. Give me a good experience, though, and I’m bound to come back.

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    1. Silly brand issue: when we were in Seattle we walked by the original Starbucks (although the original is apparently out on Vachon Island), but you could not get within 10 bodies of it because of all the Japanese tourists. Let’s see, I come all the way here to photograph a little hole-in-the-wall brand outlet.
      My wife buys almost all her clothes at CJ Banks because they have clothes she likes that fit her lupus/steroid-ravaged self, because she can get good buys if she shops right, because on her daily walk through the mall she goes right by it, but mostly because she has become deeply involved in the lives of many of the clerks.

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    2. I’ve often wondered about those folks (mostly men, I think) that feel their loyalty to their car brand so fiercely that they affix a decal of Calvin ( of Calvin and Hobbes) peeing on the competitive brand. Really? That’s the fount of your identity?

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    3. I like the phrase “experience-loyal”. I will admit to that. I had an outstanding experience at Bachman’s over 20 years ago and am still a committed customer. Of course, I’ve had other good experiences since then so it’s a lock these days!

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  23. As long as we’re talking about brands and brand loyalty, I have to add that I never understood loyalty to a particular sports team, either. Just because some sports franchise has selected your community to extort, why is that a cause for loyalty and devotion?

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    1. Europeans used to wonder how, for instance Minnesotans could cheer for a team when few if any of the players were from Minnesota. But guess what happened in Europe, what model they adopted?
      In the great movie “The Last Picture Show” there is an accurate portrayal of small town loyalty to their high school team, how old guys get on the team members for losing, which was certainly true in my experience.
      I used to work with a man who would say if you are a fan of any team you are a fan win or lose, good season or bad. People would look at him like he was nuts.

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  24. Here’s a brand to which I am loyal, might even buy their tshirt but I don’t think they would have one, maybe of the ball of videotape: “Rare Visions & Roadside Revelations” now on TPT Life.

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  25. Stiffel lamps (virtually impossible to find these days,) Penzeys spices, Lyles Golden Syrup, La Creuset ware, Hohner Special 20 harmonicas, Evah Pirazzi violin strings, Manhasset music stands,

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  26. I’m a John Deere man. And that happen by accident because in 1946 Dad went to buy a Farmall (red) tractor and the dealer wouldn’t give him credit. So he walked out and bought a John Deere because that dealer would. Hence I’m John Deere green. Now I do have a little red ‘C’ tractor that came from Kellys Dad. It’s the first tractor she learned to drive. So I made an exception for that one.
    It’s like arguing over PC vs Mac. They both work. But I can prove that John Deere will hold it’s value better than other brands.
    And I’m big on customer service. I’ll pay more for a dealer close by because I value that service. That doesn’t work on toothpaste or shampoo… but lighting / stage equipment or farm equipment that fact that I have that guys cell phone number and I know in emergencies I can call him 24/7 is valuable to me.
    Changing brands may or may not be a big deal… it depends what it is.
    I buy quality brand tools because one slipped wrench and skinned knuckle will do that to you.
    I buy tools that I know I can drop (or a student can drop) and it will still work when I pick it up for the 10th time.
    Any blade will plow snow, but when I have 15″ of wet sticky snow like last May, the cheapo one won’t hold up like the heavy, more expensive one I bought.
    Clothing? Whatever. For shirts as long as they have two pockets and 100% cotton. If it has a logo that’s probably where I’ll spill paint first.

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    2. Aha, now you’ve made me name a product to which I was loyal. Back when I biked I always rode Trek bikes, had four of them in a row, which means they are not all that durable. although a $450 bike is not really going to be all that durable.. I bought them like you buy because the Scheels’s here in town sold them and did quick repairs 7 days a week. Usually the turn around time was 1-2 hours. And they backed the product. Anyone want the last one? Never mind, not many miles left on it.

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  27. Not exactly a brand, but Husband is a self-described Cheapenarian, perhaps a counter to his dad’s need to always have the “top of the line” (most expensive) of any given thing. So he doesn’t (even try to) get my desire for a particular quality, such as organic or “whole” (without additives), or a “natural” fabric over another, etc. I’m trying to use LOCAL as my brand of choice more often; go for Caribou or Dunn Brothers instead of Starbucks, etc. But I fail miserably as I’m sucked in at Trader Joe’s… Would like to do more Farmers’ Markets, too, but it’s hard, starting July, to beat the one in the back yard…

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    1. Speaking of Top of the Line and somewhat OT: I was working my way through a pile of mail and first came across Heifer International’s The Most Important Catalog in the World which shows how the donation of one cow or a flock of chicks can make a huge difference in people’s lives.
      Next in pile was a catalog from Dean and Deluca, a very upscale deli/foodshop in NYC. One of the first things I saw was 12 cupcakes for $85 or 8 cookies for $65.
      Quite the juxtaposition

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  28. I’m loyal to certain brands only insofar as they work for me. Farmers Market – I go to a small one and have found that the sweet corn at a certain booth is good, so I always buy it there (that’s one example). Clothing – I usually buy mine at thrift stores because I don’t want to pay new prices until I lose weight – and there are certain brands that I know fit me, so I look for those. Laundry detergent is tough – I must have something that is fragrance free. For quite a while, I used Trader Joe’s brand because it was not expensive and it got clothing clean. But I had some problems with really bad itching on certain parts of my body – so bad that it would drive me crazy and when I looked up symptoms, I found there was a certain type of cancer that was characterized by severe itching on that body part. Before I decided I should prepare to die, I decided to switch to Seventh Generation Free & Clear – and the itching went totally away. Guess what brand of laundry detergent I am loyal to now?

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  29. I think people who are into photography tend to have favorite brands of camera, I know husband does (bit I couldn’t tell you what it is). Back when cameras still used film, I know he liked Nikon, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what he uses these days. After he switched to digital cameras, our friend, Mike, offered him his father’s old Hasselblad. He had always dreamed of owning a Hasselblad, so took it. He tried it out for a few months and decided he was done using film, and gave it back.

    We have never had a computer that wasn’t an Apple, mostly because that’s what we first learned on. When I worked for Peat Marwick back in 1984, all management employees were issued a Macintosh 128K to use at home; we never switched to anything else.

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    1. We bought a Mac at first because that’s what Kelly was using at Mayo Clinic. And then they went to PC’s and my farm accounting software stopped supporting Mac’s. And now we’re diversified. But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it!

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