...yes, ketchup

My dad grew up on a farm, and even though he left to become a career police officer, he always had a huge garden. And as you might expect, he was good at it. He loved tomatoes, and every year we had a bumper crop. One year he decided to make ketchup. How hard could it be - the ingredients are right there on the Heinz bottle. But it was not Heinz. It did not look like it, taste like it, pour like it...it was a pale imitation of the real deal.

 

The day my dad put his ketchup in a Heinz bottle and told me "it's all the same," is the day I realized the importance of a brand. Not just because Heinz was great every single time I used it (which was a lot) and this was not Heinz; because my dad knew the only chance he had was to associate the homemade stuff with the gold standard of ketchups. That's the power of a winning brand.*