Sunday Sharies 11.13.22

A QUOTE

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”
– John Dryden, English poet and playwright


A QUESTION

Which of your habits serve you, and which ones are inconvenient?


A THOUGHT

Every morning - every single morning - I do the same thing. Within 2 minutes of waking, I add Deluxe Coffeeworks House Blend (medium-fine grind) to my Moka pot filter.

This morning, waiting for the satisfying sound of brewed coffee gurgling into the top chamber, I thought about habit and loyalty.

My daily habit of drinking coffee explains my loyalty to Deluxe Coffeeworks.

Brand loyalty is a symptom of a habit, not the cause of it.

A habit is something we do unconsciously. A lot.

  • drink coffee each morning

  • scroll through social media if slightly bored

  • buy a Monster when filling up at the gas station (I won't come back to this one, it's just a habit confession)

These things are familiar. We get a little excited by them, the way we get excited if we bump into a friend walking down the street. Habits give our brain a big hug.

Where a habit is automatic, loyalty is a conscious choice.

To my mind, loyalty is more fickle than habit. That's because loyalty to a product or brand is only "exercised" to the extent that it serves our habit.

For instance, millennials are no longer loyal to Facebook, but we haven't dropped our social media habit. Other platforms started to offer easier access to the dopamine release we're after. Tiny red dots are alive and well.

Brand loyalty is a paradox, because the only thing we're really loyal to, is our habit.

Siena Hickey