loving brands

This post is inspired by this article: What we talk about when we talk about loving brands. The author begins my stating, "If you want to sell me something, give me an experience, tell me a story, or be my friend." He then gives examples of why he's so into Apple and Fluevog shoes. As someone who works in sales, I'd have to say that this is the very best way to create a loyal clientele base. However, this post isn't about sales techniques. Rather, it's about my sense of brand loyalty and my new commitment to myself to spend wisely. In case you don't know this about me, I'm a total loyalist. If I like something, I'm a fan for life! This explains why I've used the same skincare brand for the last twelve years and why people at local establishments know me by name. It's because I believe in what the author says: "If you want to sell me something, give me an experience, tell me a story, or be my friend."

Here's a great example.... When I was a teenager, I saved some money to buy some real lipstick - the kind that I could try before I buy! I knew that I wanted two different colors - something pinky brown and something chocolatey brown. I finally stopped at the prescriptives counter at macy*s. The lady helped me pick out two perfect colors! Unfortunately, I underestimated my funds and could only afford one of the lipsticks. When I couldn't decide which one to pick, she said, get the chocolaty brown one, and I did. She rung me up and gave me my purchase. The bag seemed a little big, so I opened it and along with my lipstick was a box. I asked the lady about it and she explained that they were giving a gift with a $35 purchase. Embarrassed, I told her that I didn't spend that much. She said, "But the other lipstick you wanted is in that gift. You should have it." This meant the world to me! That incident made me a prescriptives user for YEARS (all through my college years)! In fact, when I applied for a job in cosmetics, prescriptives was one of the lines I listed as a preferred company to work for. Though prescriptives is no longer available at stores, I still have very fond memories of the brand and the wonderful people who work for them. It's like the author declared: "If you want to sell me something, give me an experience, tell me a story, or be my friend."

Today's Small Victories
I dreaded today's WOD. I've never done 400 meters of lunges because I think it's inhumane. It would have been easy to sit this one out. However, I did it. And I did my best to keep the bitching and moaning to a minimum. That totally deserves an award!

Warm-up
Jumprope while the rest of the class ran 400 meters. (Not that I object to running. However, I just bought a new jump rope and wanted to test it out!

CrossFit One World WOD
Strength:
20 reps of back squat at 90#
Bench Presss 3/3/3/3/3
55/65/70/75/80

Conditioning:
Complete the following for time:
400m walking lunge step
Post time and number of steps. If you have a set of knee pads, you will definitely want to wear them.

Joanne's Final Time - 24:04

Notes (to myself) about this workout: For the back squat, I did fine. I may have mentioned this earlier, but when we did this squat challenge a while back, not many people finished it. In fact, a lot of people were injured before the challenge ended. I know this challenge is nothing new and people have been doing this for quite a while. However, I think 10# per week is a bit much. I'm going to do 10# per week for as long as I can, while really listening to my body. If 10# a week becomes too taxing, then I'm scaling back to 5# a week. I refuse to have hip problems like I did the last time.

For the bench press, we ran out of time, so I couldn't really hit a true 3-rep max. Judging from tonight's performance, I think I may be in the 85#-90# range for that. If this is so, then I'm sure that when we do a max bench press, I can PR. Yea.

Finally, the lunge WOD sucked. Anything repetitive like that is just useless to me. I don't mind doing lunges like that, but it needs to be broken up with something else. Bleh. But I did it. So you can shut it!