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Posts Tagged "Branding"
I just completed a 30 day challenge at the Moksha Yoga Hamilton studio. I don’t know if I have ever fallen so hard for a brand before. This brand has stolen my heart. It all started when I found myself suddenly at loose ends with my exercise program, as I had stopped one thing and was looking for something else. I decided to sign up for 21 days of yoga at Moksha Yoga for $30. (I think the price may be even better now) I didn’t really plan to join, but it seemed to be a great thing to do and then I would have 21 more days to figure out what I wanted to do next. That was all well and good, but then they gave me a little card with prizes to be won and I figured out that if I attended 21 times in 21 days, my first month was free. Hmmm! That would be awesome! And I like a challenge. Jordan, the woman who led my first class, gave me great information about lying down on the mat when I was too hot. She helped me to feel safe and welcome and like I belonged there. I won’t talk about my yoga journey here. You can read that here if you want to. Right now, I want to talk about my experience with the Moksha Brand. After the first day, I felt like coming back the next day. I also learned that I never wanted to leave hot yoga again without showering first… UGHH! I came back again and again. Each teacher was welcoming, kind, loving, and seemed genuinely excited by my journey. This summer we went to a French Immersion Family Language School in Sancerre, France. While we were there, my family talked about the skill the teachers had of acting genuinely impressed by our French, which drove us forward and helped us try things that felt new or foreign without feeling self-conscious. The teachers at Moksha have this...
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This summer we traveled to France. We spent 3 days around Paris, a week in a medieval village in the south of France called St. Ambroix, and a week in Sancerre. We rented a car and got to drive the highway in one direction and drove through all the smaller roads coming back. We didn’t have a GPS in our rental car and it felt quaint to attempt all that foreign driving with a map and a conversation. We drove through hundreds of roundabouts and our policy was to keep going around until we knew which way to go. We twirled around quite a few traffic circles on our journey. One of the threads of conversation that wove through this vacation, was the concept of “France–the brand” and how it compared to France–the reality. In North America, the concept of France and French products act very similarly to an upscale brand. If something is from France, it is guaranteed to be expensive, potentially hand-crafted, and new and cutting edge from a design perspective–innovative. France, the brand products might also center around fairly expensive European style food. In other cases, the word french is added to something ordinary to make it sound upscale. Some examples of how “French” is used to make a product more upscale would be French roast, French vanilla, French press, French toast, and of course French fries. France has nothing to do with producing coffee, vanilla, fries, or bodum coffee pots, but the word “French” gives them a little something special in their branding. Apparently before it was called “French toast” it was called German toast–apparently in previous centuries the German brand used to be more popular than it is today. Now, French is chic. French lavender is another example. Apparently French lavender is a variety native to Spain–maybe North Americans aren’t the only ones who use the word “French” to make their products more marketable. We found France, the country to be so different than France, the brand....
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We had an opportunity to add a stop in Iceland on our way to Paris. Travel tip: If you book on Iceland Air, you can make a stop in Iceland at no additional charge. Iceland can be both wildly expensive or strangely inexpensive depending on how you travel. Almost all of the amazing geological sites are free. Because the country is an island, most of the consumer goods are imports, so if you stay away from shopping you can avoid high costs. Renting a car was interesting given that much of the country is impassable in a passenger car. We kept worrying that we were going to drive into a forbidden area but it never happened. We did see some giant SUVs that take people into the interior of the island. Next time, I want to go in there! We found an amazing Bed and Breakfast called Minna-Mosfell. They are near the Golden Circle and about 45 minutes from Kevflavik airport. The hosts Gudrun and Valur are warm and inviting. Their reviews on Trip Advisor are the best I have ever seen. They have a place with 3 rooms with a shared bath. Their set up is a lovely shared space with a sitting area and a table as well as a small self-catering kitchen. They have fresh home-made bread each morning as well as homegrown eggs, cheese, and tasty treats. We were able to make some sandwiches to take out on our day-trips which made our visit in Iceland so amazingly kid friendly. They provided a picnic backpack and a thermos for each room. This allowed for considerable savings and we ended up eating out for one simple meal each day. Their hospitality was unbelievable. The landscape in Iceland is fantastic. It looks like a moonscape when you fly into to town with all the lava. There are very few trees and when we were there in the summer, it was green everywhere with purple Lupines blooming all over the place. Driving around Iceland...
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The firmly-held Montessori principles, and the fact that they work, have resulted in a strong “Montessori brand” that has not only endured the exile of its creator and several wars, but has remained constant through changing societal attitudes towards children and education.
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We decided on Friday to drive across the border to have dinner in Niagara Falls–the American Side. It is an hour drive and we wanted to pick up some mail at our post office box. We have been traveling and using Trip Advisor to pick restaurants and have found it to work fairly well. We wanted to try it out near home as well. We try to eat in a restaurant that is in the top 20 restaurants on Tripadvisor and although we are sometimes disappointed, our hit rate is much higher using this strategy than just looking around and picking a restaurant. I have a corn allergy which is making it harder to eat out, so I have to try to find restaurants that can help me get a meal that will work for me. On Friday we decided to try the Red Coach Inn. It had some good reviews and I looked at their menu online. It looked good and very reasonable in terms of price. We got there and it is lovely. The location is great. The waitress did an amazing job of taking care of us and of managing my corn allergy. She went to the kitchen to ask questions, looked at labels and generally was kind and helpful. We ordered a shrimp cocktail, a Caesar salad, and a house salad that comes with almonds, blue cheese, and strawberries. Our kids ordered a lobster trio and we each ordered the surf and turf. While the service was outstanding, our meal just wasn’t up to the standards we expect when we spend $180 for dinner with tip. We want something better than average. My frustration was with the amount of food the kitchen was serving that they don’t make on-site. They don’t make their salad dressings, they don’t make their wings, and they use cornstarch to “hold” their Bearnaise sauce. We had an opportunity to speak to the manager. He came to our table to apologize for a very small error with my meal (this error was really...
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