Brand Specific

After 15 years (give or take) of increasing purchasing power - though lately it feels like it is decreasing with Chicago rent and ridiculous ComEd bills ($60 for a month in a studio!) - I have come to discover that there are three types of purchases that I make. The first are the products where I am brand loyal, I always buy the same brand regardless of price. Somehow through advertising or personal taste I have a select list of things that generics or substitutes will not do (such as M&M's - the generic version is just downright wrong). Second are the products that I will rotate brand but will stay in the name brand category. Laundry detergent, shampoo, face wash, ice cream, etc. These are things that I am not too particular about, but advertising has convinced me that I have to use something with a little shelf recognition. Finally, there are the products that I could care less about their ad campaigns and buy purely based on price. Milk, any kind of noodles, body wash, gas (when I owned a car), etc.

Over the years these preferences have changed. Laundry detergent for example - for years I was strictly a Tide girl. Then I moved from a basement apartment with laundry right around the corner from my living room, to an elevator building, to a third floor walk up. I now am a huge fan of All - simply because they make a "small and mighty" version that uses less and therefore weighs a whole lot less in my up and down treks on laundry day. And recently I moved from the devout brand loyal category of smoker to the smoker whore category.

For those of you that know me personally I have smoked Marlboro reds for years. In the beginning I switched back and forth between menthol and non menthol, had a short stint as a Camel convert (the pressure's of ex-boyfriends!) and around the age when it finally became legal for me to smoke I settled into my reds. I smoked them for two reasons. One, I thoroughly enjoyed them and two, they scared the shit out of others. I know that is a lame reason to smoke but it was awfully fun. To be a girl, 5'6", 130 lbs (give or take), and to smoke such a "bad ass" cigarette lent me some kind of weird toughness. It was great to be at a bar and have some weekend smoking frat boy try and bum one from me. They would recoil in fear as I pulled out my full flavored treats and quickly changed their minds, taking their annoyingly popped collars somewhere else. And this was just fine with me. I was a tried and true believer (even through two bouts of pneumonia and whooping cough) and everyone who knew me figured I would smoke them forever.

So you ask, how did I go from a modern day poster girl for the Marlboro company, to a smoking whore? Three things happened simultaneously that stripped away my red loyalty. One - I discovered that I was flat out broke. Two - I decided that I would attempt a budget to get myself out of brokeness. Three - a whole bunch of Camel coupons showed up at my house when I was out of smokes. Cigarettes are expensive in Chicago (around $8 a pack downtown, $7.50 up in the hood) and here I was holding a handful of $3.00 off and buy one get one free coupons. So I tried some of the new Camel brands. First up was the Camel No. 9. These won me over with their black packaging and hot pink trim. They boil down to a light cigarette, but the package was fun. After 10 days or so of this, I ran out of coupons and tried to go back to my familiar friend Red. They kicked my ass. It was like they knew I had stepped out on them and were not ready to take me back. By the end of the pack it was not so harsh, but I knew that my decade long relationship with the one brand was done. I have since moved on to try many of the new Camel "signature" line. Their advertising and random coupons in the mail have won me over to the dark side. I have at long last moved into my second category of purchasing. I still have not broken down and bought the cheapest, brandless cigarettes, but I have become a smoking whore - whatever(brand name) is on sale or I have coupons for will be what is in my bag until the foreseeable future.