This is a post about brand identity. And it’s a story about how and why I spent too much money for a pen, without any regrets.
Agency fusion has a tradition that happens on the anniversary of your hire date. For every privileged year of employment, you get $50. The catch is that you have to spend that money within 1 hour.
So, when I hit my 2-year AF anniversary, I got $100. Up to that point, I hadn’t decided what I was going to buy; but then it hit me—something I’d long wanted, but never enough to buy with my own money : a fancy fountain pen.
Since entering the professional world, I’d been quite happy with the pens that my various employers made available to me. The first pen I recall liking was the Pilot G2 .05 gel pen. But a handful of years ago, my life changed when I discovered the Pilot Precise V5 rollerball. I could write an entire article on the perfection of the Pilot Precise V5. But I won’t. The point is that even though I’ve been happy with the fine disposable pens on the market—it was time to graduate to a new level of penmanship.
From that moment of decision, I knew exactly where to go: Tabula Rasa. This store, located in the Trolley Square mall, is a haven for wealthy people who suffer from a penchant for fancy stationary, high-end personal care, the finest knick-knacks, and the world’s most celebrated writing instruments. Over the years, I would stumble into the store, feeling out of place as I admired the beautiful collections of Mont Blanc, Faber-Castell, Parker, Cross, Waterman and more – all behind glass; all with subtle price tags sitting next to them of prices anywhere from $70 – $1200. I knew those pens weren’t for me. But I had a hope that someday I would find a reason to need the kind of pen that important people use every time they sign an important document.
Today, I strutted confidently into the store and browsed the wide selection of expensive quality pens. What I didn’t know was that you should reserve at least a couple hours if you’re going to test-drive pens.
After many pangs of choosing between what provided the best form and what offered the best function—all within my price range—I finally decided on a Parker Sonnet. It’s beautiful. I am certain Don Draper from Mad Men would use this pen. It has modern styling and a fine point that releases just enough ink to make my notebooks happy. I genuinely look for opportunities to use it, just to experience the feeling of the tip of the nib whispering to me as it glides along my notebook paper. My journaling frequency is at an all-time high. It makes me wish I was using it right now to write this post.
Some day the worlds between paper and digital will be merged and I will be able to write this entire post with my Parker Pen and all will be well with the world.
In the meantime, let’s talk about brand identity.
Parker’s logo and packaging wasn’t what led me to make my purchase. The brand had never reached out to me. We didn’t have a relationship on Facebook. I didn’t even know they made a fountain pen. Nor did I care.
I didn’t care until I decided to buy a pen. And then I wanted to make sure the brand I was buying was one that stood for quality. I wanted to know that it was respected. I wanted to believe that the finest craftsmanship was put into my pen. That among people that spend a ridiculous amount of money for pens ($130 is fairly inexpensive in this world, btw), that my pen wouldn’t be looked-down upon.
I became a brand believer after I made the investment. After I committed. I now look for reasons to love my pen. And, as time goes on, I find more and more of them.
This happens with cars.
It happens with shoes.
It happens with purchases big and small.
If a purchase is personal—and so many of them are—and a brand preference isn’t already established, the decision process will follow something like this:
1- Suzy needs [insert commodity here – desk, television, notebook, etc].
2- Suzy visits retail channels (sometimes google is one of these channels) with intent to purchase said commodity.
3- Suzy is introduced to brands. Each brand offers a different version of what Suzy thought was a simple commodity.
4- Suzy selects and buys a product – the higher the price, the more important the decision.
5- If, after using the product, Suzy’s expectations are met, she becomes a brand believer.
Here’s my point: my purchase happened because of Parker’s brand identity. And when I say brand identity, I’m not talking about top-of-mind awareness—I didn’t have any. I wasn’t drawn in by Parker’s beautiful logo or persuasive advertising—I wasn’t familiar with the former and I’ve never seen the latter, if it even exists. No, the reason I bought the Parker pen is that Parker is the type of brand that is carried at the type of store that carries fancy pens. It is that Parker is the type of brand that makes a pen styled in the fashion that I was drawn to. It’s that everything Parker has done over the many, many years of its history have come to build a reputation based on their products, their operations, their values, and their users that rave or complain about them. I bought the pen because I got a sense for all of that when I was ready to buy a product in the fancy fountain pen category. That is why I say I bought the Parker pen because of Parker’s brand identity.
Brand identity is more than Facebook likes and Instagram posts. It is the company history. It is the products. And the way those products fit into customers’ own stories. It is all of this and more. That is what you buy when you buy a brand. That is why brand identity is a never-ending process. And that is why the next time you see me, you’ll probably see me with a notebook and a fancy pen, because a fountain pen is now part of my identity.