Episode 249: I’m With The Brand (in Japan), part seven

It was a freezing afternoon in New York City and I was a freshman in college, woefully underdressed for the weather.  I could feel my legs getting windburned through my tights, and  should have been studying, but instead I was gallivanting around the East Village and Soho with a woman who would break my heart in just a few months.  She said, “Let’s go to Dean & Deluca and buy something absurdly overpriced.”  I literally had no idea what she was talking about, and I assumed we were going to a department store. 

Instead we walked into the fanciest grocery store I had ever visited. It was a far cry from the Super Thrift in Manchester, PA that we had shopped at for most of my childhood.  Way fancier than the Weis Market in York where everyone knew my grandma by her first name and teenage boys helped load groceries into her car.  While my companion compared various jars of olives and jams, I wandered over to the produce, where I spotted a little wood pint-sized basket of strawberries. Strawberries in February?! How was that possible?  Where had they come from? Apparently very far away because they were….$10.  The equivalent of two hours of folding and size taping jeans at Urban Outfitters.  My companion saw me eyeing them up and exclaimed, “GET THEM! It will be so bougie of you!” But this was easy for her to say because her family lived somewhere swanky in Connecticut, literally next door to Martha Stewart.  I was living off of student loans and my almost-full time job making $6/hour.  I shook my head.  $10 would get me 2 soy burger platter meals at Dojo, my favorite restaurant.  It would be $10 less toward my goal of buying a computer of my own, so I didn’t have to sit in the computer lab in the basement of the library all night.  $10 was a month of birth control pills from Planned Parenthood.  It felt wild to spend that on a tiny basket of strawberries.

But the novelty of those berries lives with me decades later, even as I could walk into just about any grocery store in the United States right now and buy a whole plastic clamshell of strawberries for about $5.  Would they be the best berries ever? Probably not, but they would be there.

I was thinking about those strawberries a lot as I prepped for this year’s trip to Japan (Hi, that’s where I am right now), as I dug through my memories of shopping in Japan to outline the techniques brands use here to connect emotionally with customers. After all, 95% of the reason we buy something, where we buy it, and how we buy it is wrapped up in emotions.  And yeah, that’s not a statistic or anything, it’s just an observation from me, somehow who has spent a couple of decades figuring out what people want to buy before they know it themselves.  

Now you’re probably wondering what $10 strawberries have to do with Japan and emotional branding.  I promise, I’m getting to that.

We moved around a lot when I was a kid.  The place we lived the longest, York Haven, PA had a population of a few hundred people.  Other times we lived on dirt roads in places that seemed to have no name. We also lived in a trailer park that was otherwise surrounded by trees, and beyond that, farmland. The closest mall was always at least  a 30-45 minute drive to the other side of the county. The grocery store we shopped at most often in my childhood was the aforementioned Super Thrift in Manchester. In late elementary school, a McDonald’s opened next door and it was the most exciting thing that had happened in a long time.  So all this to say, it was extra rural where I grew up.  Summer brought a lot of produce: corn, watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and copious amounts of berries.  No matter where we lived, there was always somewhere nearby where wild raspberries were growing.  My mom would send me and my brother out with our Halloween plastic jackolanterns (previously used for collecting candy), now to be filled with raspberries.  A relative owned a farm that grew strawberries. And in exchange for an afternoon of (once again) my brother and I picking strawberries, we could take home as many as we wanted.  By the end of summer, I got kind of sick of berries, which was good, because we wouldn’t see them again until the next summer. Yet because strawberries were unavailable for most of the year, the first berries of the next summer tasted extra good and special.  And even now, a good strawberry fills my brain with a wave of summer sun, followed by the way the air feels just after a long overdue thunderstorm. A feeling so good that you might be motivated to spend $10 to feel it in the middle of a frigid February (because February is the worst month of winter).

 In the fall we ate apples and pears (plentiful at the market and at roadside stands). In the winter, my grandma bought us crates of oranges so we would get enough vitamin c. I know sometimes we had bananas, but it wasn’t a regular part of our diet.  And that was just how fruit was for us: super seasonal. And there were many fruits and vegetables that I just never had until I was an adult.  I was literally in my 20s before I had an avocado.

I asked Dustin if his experience was similar growing up, but he couldn’t remember.  I think he mostly lived on canned beans as a kid.  But he did concede that it did seem like somewhere along the way, it seemed like produce kinda lost its seasonality for those of us in the US.  And the produce section is a lot bigger than it once was.  Think about a trip to the supermarket now as I record this in November of 2025: you could buy bananas, oranges, apples, pears, melons of all varieties, berries of all types, several kinds of peppers, avocados, fresh herbs, peas, green beans, carrots, parsnips,  bok choy, lettuces, spring mix…and so on and so on. In most supermarkets in the US, the produce section is where you enter the store and it’s huge…full of just about every fruit and vegetable you might ever need.  Basically everything is now non-seasonal, which makes it all a little less special.

And guess what? It’s not my imagination.  This is a real thing that really happened.

In the 1970s, produce sections in grocery stores were at an all-time low: most people no longer really knew how to cook fresh produce…and frozen or canned vegetables were cheaper and easier to prepare.  Of course, it also set a lot of us for a childhood where we thought we hated vegetables. It turns out, we just don’t like overcooked, mushy canned and frozen vegetables.

I read an intense detailing of how the produce department has changed through the last 50 years from The Packer, a produce/grocery industry publication.  In the 1970s, the produce section of most grocery stores was about 3% of the total space. Which is so tiny!  And the industry as a whole just looked at produce as a specialty category that was super seasonal that should be shrunk even more to make space for expanded meat departments and more center aislse for processed foods…things that could be available year round.  But in the 1980s, nutrition became very trendy (along with aerobics, jogging, yogurt, wearing weird thong bodysuits over leggings for working out), and people were starting to get more into eating fresh produce.  At the same time, trade agreements made it easier to stock the same produce items consistently, year round.  And in the 90s, it also meant that new, more exotic produce items could join the mix, like pineapple, starfruit, lychee, and snow peas.  According to The Packer, 

“In 1980, supermarkets carried an average of 100 different produce items. Just fours years later, the average was 216, and by 1993 it was closer to 250. Imports had turned most every commodity into a year-round offering by the early 1990s and made specialties standard fare. In hand with this, per-capita consumption of fresh vegetables rose 23 percent from 1975 to 1993, while fresh fruit intake was up 8 percent through the 1980s.”

Soon produce departments were more like 9% of a grocery store’s total selling space. And now, it’s more like 15%

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, 55% of fresh fruits and 32% of fresh vegetables are sourced from outside the United States. Thanks to 1990s trade deals like NAFTA and the WTO agreements, U.S. food imports surged. Fresh vegetable imports nearly doubled, and today about 90% of avocados and over half of non-strawberry berries come from Mexico. And oh yeah, all of these things are a lot more expensive right now thanks to Trump’s stupid tariffs.

This is all to say that: food just isn’t as seasonal as it once was.  And as a result, it’s lost a lot of its specialness for many of us, which I think is one of the reasons it’s easy to get caught up in the arrival of the Pumpkin Spice Latte or the McRib.  We don’t get these things year round (okay, I don’t actually know what’s up with the McRib, but I know it’s a “limited time only” thing).   And this makes us excited about them. The novelty of the McRib means you have to act now before it’s gone.  And the Pumpkin Spice Latte is not only something available during a brief window, it’s also indicative of the arrival of fall: swapping mosquitos and sunburn for changing leaves, cozy sweaters after a hot sticky summer…crisp autumn afternoons are just around the corner.  In fact, fall is the only season that we seem to really celebrate with special food here in the United States: pumpkin everything (put a pin in that), apple cider doughnuts, the so-called “Thanksgiving” foods like stuffing, cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, and green bean casserole.  Over the past decade, fall has become a proper brand in itself (or at least, a universally appealing marketing story), requiring special clothes, special decor, and of course, special food and beverages. It means candles and new cleaning products and hand soaps and room sprays.  Fall is a reason to SHOP.

And sure Mrs Meyers has some spring/summer scents (I can’t resist the tomato scented stuff).  We might feel compelled to pick up some fresh local sweet corn, berries, and melons for summer barbecues. Retailers want to sell us spring dresses, summer bathing suits, shorts, sandals, and beach totes.  But fall in all of its pumpkin-spiced glory is the only season with its own brand. And it’s become pretty lucrative for just about every retailer here in the United States, lifting them out of the slump that tends to come in July and August for any brand that doesn’t sell kids clothes or school supplies.

And that brings me to Japan.  Of course brands and retailers in Japan are also looking to create an emotional connection. As I discussed in last year’s Japan episodes (seriously go listen to them if you haven’t yet….I was kinda surprised by how many listeners did not know I went to Japan last year), shopping is different here, mostly because shopping online just isn’t as popular. To give you some context, about 16% of all shopping in the United States happens online. If that sounds low to you, keep in mind this is ALLLLLLL shopping, including groceries, pet food, building supplies, plants, furniture, etc.  In Japan, it’s only about 9%…people are just shopping a lot more IRL because the country has  done a great job of building in-person shopping into transportation hubs.  Just about every train station has malls and grocery stores literally attached to it.  It’s just so easy to shop in person on your way home.  It’s actually more convenient than shopping online.  And that means, for one, perceived quality matters a lot more.  If a fabric feels cheap or a product seems flimsy or food looks unfresh, no one will buy it.  So yeah, a lot of stuff here in Japan just is nicer, because people get to see and feel it before they buy it.  That said–I did see an actual SHEIN store in Harajuku last week, and I’m still upset about it.  What all of this in-person shopping also means is that the way companies lean into emotional branding is a little bit different when the goal is to get someone to come into your actual store, versus clicking “add to cart” online.  Some of these techniques will sound familiar to you, while others will have you wondering “why aren’t western brands doing this?”  

Welcome to Clotheshorse, the podcast that is dying for some mexican food right now.

I’m your host, Amanda and 京都からこんにちは (hello from Kyoto, Japan…where I am recording this episode).  This is episode 249, part seven in an ongoing series about brands and how they influence our identities and drive consumerism.  Please go listen to the rest of this series! I am very proud of my work on this so far.  And guess what? A lot of this series was ideated last year while I was in Japan. It turns out that getting away from home is good for my brain. (seriously, friends, I’m lowkey a workaholic shut-in when I’m at home). When people ask me how I can afford to come to Japan for a month, it’s for a few reasons:

• I’m super thrifty in my day-to-day life: I rarely eat out, most of the food I eat was either grown by me or bought from one of the many locally owned grocery outlets in Lancaster County. I share a 20-year old car with my husband. I don’t drink alcohol. 
• I am good at finding cheap plane tickets and hotel deals.  I’m also super thrifty while I’m traveling.
• And of course, I actually work the whole time I’m here.  I usually wake up at 5 am, work until noon, take the afternoon off to do something cool, then come back to the hotel to work for a few hours before bed.  It sounds bad, but it’s actually awesome.  I’m having the best time ever!

And while I’m out in the world, whether I’m looking at art, strolling through a mall that targets a teenage customer, or wheeling my suitcase through yet another train station, I’m thinking about what I can learn here that will help my clients and/or drive the conversation here on Clotheshorse.

Before we jump back into the conversation about emotional branding here in Japan, I do have one bit of big news to share with you all:

NPR has kept me informed and provided comfort during some really difficult times in my life. And yes, I have listened to NPR just about every day of my adulthood…even here in Japan. The moment I had the financial stability to become a sustaining supporter, I signed up to make a recurring donation. Currently I am a proud sustaining member of WITF  in Central Pennsylvania.

So imagine how excited I am to say that…this week I am a guest on Embodied, a show/podcast from WUNC North Carolina Public Radio, distributed on NPR stations across the country. This is a big dream come true moment for me!! Even from an emotional perspective, it feels like a big moment for me. Believe it or not, there are still people in my life who view my work on Clotheshorse as a silly hobby. We know it’s never been “just clothes,” but trust me, I get a lot of messages about how I am squandering my talent on something kinda trivial. Hearing about this on NPR makes people take it a lot more seriously! And I’m proud to be considered an expert in this space. Let’s make this conversation more mainstream!

In this episode, I talk with host Anita Rao about my journey as a fast fashion buyer, how fast fashion uses emotional branding to keep us shopping, and why we are an important part of breaking the fast fashion system. I also explain how fast fashion became the business model for making and selling just about everything. And I unpack what Anthropologie and TJ Maxx have in common.

You can stream it online anywhere you listen to podcasts or listen locally! I know that no one reads the show notes, but I will also link to it there just in case!

I’m not sure that I have mentioned it before, but there are epic collections of 70s, 80s, and 90s commercials available for watching on YouTube. Yes, there are people who have harvested all of the commercial breaks from old VHS recordings of prime time TV shows, digitized them, and compiled them for all of us undeserving jerks to watch on YouTube. And yes, Dustin and I will periodically spend hours just watching old commercials together.  We laugh, we get nostalgic, and we talk a lot about how marketing has changed.  And the fast food/chain restaurant commercials are kinda my favorite, because everything is available for “a limited time only.” Whether it’s a McDLT (so much styrofoam), a specific milkshake flavor, or a free glass with purchase, it’s all only for a short time.  The implication: go get it now or miss your chance forever.  This is what marketing people call the “call to action” or CTA.  What’s going to get you to not overthink it and just buy it? Well what if we told you that it will be gone soon (or we might just run out). That’s actually how big sale events and “shopping holidays” like Black Friday work. The CTA is…scarcity!

As I mentioned in last year’s Japan episodes, I’m a big fan of the conbini (convenience store) food here in Japan. And if that is freaking you out, then yes, you need to go listen to Episode 217 ASAP, because that will explain it all to you! But yes, I love the conbini food. And I’m particularly a fan of the tiny little parfaits you can get.  In the spring, they are strawberry focused.  In summer, it’s all about peaches.  Fall comes and the focus is on pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and persimmons.  By winter, chestnut takes over.  And you can’t get a strawberry parfait at the conbini in December. You certainly couldn’t get peach either.  No pumpkin custard in August.  

I came to Japan for the first time nine years ago, on my honeymoon with Dustin.  Even though I was in the very early stages of a six month battle with mono at the time and coughed until I threw up almost every day (yeah it was a sexy honeymoon), I still had the best time ever.  It was a lifelong dream come true to be here. Yes, I ate a parfait every single day.  And since then, I’ve returned to Japan almost every year, splitting every trip between visiting new parts of the country and revisiting familiar ones. I think we get too hung up on every experience having to be new, new, new…when there is so much value in revisiting places, seeing how they change, and enjoying the comfort of familiarity far away from home.  Like, I’m in Kyoto right now, a place I have visited on every single trip to Japan, but I still haven’t seen the whole place.

Over almost a decade, I have been able to experience every season in Japan, and I’m here to say that while spring and the cherry blossoms get all the attention, fall is actually the best season here. Specifically November: cooler weather, primarily dry days full of sun and blue skies, the full palette of fall leaf colors.  And of course, the cafes, conbini, food halls, and restaurants are full of fall delicacies…available only until winter.  And those winter items will be gone when strawberries take over in February or March. And stores will advertise it as a “Limited Strawberry Fair” with a clear end date. Miss it, and well, no strawberries for you. Nature really does dictate what “available for a limited time only” means. Nature is like, “Here’s your call to action: it’s going to be fucking winter soon, so stop dilly dallying and eat this fucking peach ice cream.” Aka “you snooze, you lose.”  And as a marketing message? IT WORKS.  People line up for that special peach ice cream.  They literally make plans around eating that limited edition strawberry parfait that weekend.  And they will bring friends along with them so it’s an entire social experience.

To take it one step further, every prefecture and city in  Japan is known for its own food specialities. Okayama is known for its peaches.  Hokkaido for its cheese.  Beppu–a town I visited last year and I plan on traveling to again this year–is known for a specific custard (“hell-steamed custard pudding”) that is cooked over natural steam vents from the hot springs that fill the area. There are even vending machines around town where you can buy them!  And when you visit one of these places, naturally you have to bring back food from them. So these are even more limited!! The call to action? “Leave without this and you might never have it again.” Intense.

As we talked about back  in part 2 of this series, the idea of scarcity (aka “available for a limited time only”) is a powerful form of emotional branding.  If something is hard to get (or at least feels rare), you’re likely to make a purchase without thinking too hard about it.  If a brand or an item seems rare, you get the additional feeling of being “in the know” and part of an exclusive club. That kind of identity is highly appealing (it’s what makes people loyal Maxxinistas or first in line when Supreme opens).  So yeah, you want to be the foodie who knows about that specific cheese from Hokkaido, so you’re going to bring it back for all of your friends so they know that you are this super cool foodie person.

But also…the seasonality and regional nature of food in Japan means that it also builds tradition…and yes, tradition is also a form of emotional branding. If you always had strawberry ice cream in the spring as a kid, you’re probably going to keep that going as an adult, and pass it on to the children in your life.  If you always buy your mom peaches from Okayama for her birthday, you’re going to keep getting those peaches from Okayama every year.   In fact, the best thing any brand can do is become a part of your personal traditions because that means you are a guaranteed customer for life…and you’ll bring future partners and generations into the fold.   

An example that has nothing to do with food? Toys R Us.  Earlier this year, I explained how the parent company of my last corporate job had acquired the license to open stores using the Toys R Us brand name.   Toys R Us actually closed its last store in 2018.  But with this licensing deal, new Toys R Us stores are popping up everywhere in malls.  But they aren’t the same. The product isn’t the same.  The stores are in a smaller format.  Run by a different company.  Basically the only things that remain the same are the logo and that yes, there are toys for sale. But the company who bought that license and is opening the stores is hoping that that mixture of nostalgia and tradition will mean that millennial parents and gen x/boomer grandparents will bring kids into the store, getting another generation hooked.

Now as I said earlier, here in the US, food has become creepily non-seasonal in many ways.  And yeah, it’s weird when you really think about it.  Yet fall has become all caps FALL, the ultimate brand and marketing story rolled into one.  And one company that has really made that work in their favor is Trader Joe’s, aka “the store that is like 50% pumpkin stuff in October.”  Like, it’s almost kind of annoying.  But also…Trader Joe’s is actually a master class in emotional branding:

1. The Neighborhood Grocery Store Vibe: Trader Joe’s intentionally feels small, local, and friendly even though it’s a national chain. Hand-drawn signs, chalkboards, store-specific art, and Hawaiian-shirt–wearing employees create an emotional sense of familiarity and comfort.

2. Cheerful, Engaged Employees: Crew members are trained to chat, make recommendations, walk you to products, and appear genuinely happy to help. This creates an emotional association of positivity and care.

3. The Treasure Hunt Experience: Trader Joe’s takes a page out of the Japan playbook…it  leans into scarcity and novelty by constantly rotating products, seasonal drops, and unexpected finds. Customers feel excitement and delight, like they’re in on a secret. And there are Facebook groups and subreddits for discussing all of the new products and tracking down discontinued items.

4. The Fearless Flyer (excellent product storytelling): The whimsical product descriptions, goofy humor, and made-up backstories add charm. Like, you actually WANT to read it. It feels HUMAN.  They’re selling fun, not just groceries.

5. Another page from the Japan playbook: Seasonal Products That Often Build Off of Nostalgia: Pumpkin season and holiday treats actually create new traditions, invent NEW nostalgia. Like there’s no way that the people driving the marketing and product strategy at TJ’s haven’t been to Japan!

I will also add here that while yes, I have shopped at Trader Joe’s many, many times, over the past few years, I have moved away from the company because they’ve engaged in some sketchy behavior: union busting, poor treatment of employees, and taking advantage of small food brands/stealing recipes and ideas from small food brands (specifically brand started by people of color).  I will share an article in the show notes that goes into that more.  

But yes, food is sort of hardwired by nature to have its own “call to action,” tradition, and nostalgia built into it.

But beyond food and the “limited time only” created by, you know, NATURE…how else do you get people to act now and think later? To wait in line for hours to buy something, lest they miss their chance?

With an endless array of limited edition drops and collabs. Seriously, Japan has collab madness.  Like, right now Family Mart (the convenience store chain) is literally advertising a limited edition collab with a YouTuber…and the “collection” is two different rice balls.  And also at the same time, Family Mart is also doing a Kirby (retro video game character) collab that features a pink steamed bun and a rice ball wrapped in ham. 

Or let’s see what Sanrio is doing right now:

• Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Kraft cheeses in limited edition Sanrio packaging. 
• The coffee/diner chain Kohikan almost lured me in with some limited edition Hello Kitty merch
• A collab with another character brand called Brunch Brothers
• So many collabs with different fashion brands that I can’t even list them all.  Also, I’m pretty sure I saw a sunscreen collab, make up, toothpaste and more in the last day alone.
• Even an airport (Oita) has temporarily rebranded as Hello Kitty Airport in an attempt to get more people to use it.

But it’s not just brand collabs, it’s pop up stores and cafes (I went to a limited cafe in Shibuya last week that was in partnership with cute brand Swimmer).  You could also go down the street to Tokyo Hands (the most epic and best store) and shop a limited collection collab that Tokyo Hands did with Swimmer, too.  All of the malls have permanent spaces reserved for a rotating array of short term pop up stores and events, whether it’s a special Katamari Damacy restaurant, a J-pop merch store, or a Sanrio collab.   While fashion trends have remained kinda static here in Japan (although there is a disturbing amount of faux fur in all of the stores here right now), brands drive consumerism with all of this limited edition merchandise and experiences.

And you know what else is the ultimate “limited time only” marketing story? Christmas and Black Friday. Yep, every single store and mall in Japan puts up the Christmas decorations and starts playing exclusively Christmas music on November 1.  Every brand has a special Christmas collection. Everybody has been doing “black friday” stuff since I got here in mid November.  And yeah, it’s all kinda weird for many reasons.  And also, why does 7-11 have a limited edition collection of Black Friday pastries?! I don’t know.  That’s not true.  I DO know. Because it sells stuff.

And you know what else is kind of at the intersection of “limited edition” and “only people in the know?” Western brands.  Yeah, I literally saw fifty people in line waiting to get into a Hoka store in Harajuku last week. Yeah, Hoka…the kinda basic running shoe company.  In another shopping mall (Laforet, the heart of emerging fashion and indie design), people were lining up all day for a chance to buy a phone case from Skinnydip London.  But it’s also: Gap, Nike, and Ikea (no, I’m totally serious, people use those blue bags like status symbol purses here).  New Balance, Ralph Lauren, Coleman, Starbucks, KFC, Hooters, Taco Bell, Mister Donut, Tully’s. And there are also American brands that were bought and reborn here in Japan: X-Girl, X-Large, Dean & Deluca, Tower Records.

Secondhand shopping is bigger than ever here.  It makes me so happy to see former fast fashion-ish stores turn fully secondhand! And there are secondhand book and electronics stores everywhere. I even went into a mall in Kanazawa where one floor was just different vintage sellers. But the fact remains that the majority of the vintage stores here in Japan are proudly selling only secondhand clothing from the US, Canada, and Europe. Just as we get excited back home about a trip to Daiso or Kinokuniya, in Japan, western brands are exciting and cool. And wearing something from one of these brands–whether it’s new or secondhand–shows that you are a person of exotic, global interests.  And that’s a pretty cool identity to have.

Another way that Japanese brands build an emotional connection with their customers is by turning shopping into a longer social experience.  For example, Muji is a brand that you might be familiar with because it does have some locations in the United States.  It’s known for clever home goods, affordable minimalist stationary items, and basic but nice clothing.  Here in Japan it is everywhere: every mall and train station has a Muji, and they also carry a nice assortment of grocery items, not unlike a Trader Joe’s TBH.  And of course, right now they have a seasonal assortment of Christmas cookies, snacks, tea, and coffee.  But the bigger stores also have a Muji cafe. So maybe you’ll go shopping with your friends and spend a little bit more time there because you can have a dessert or lunch.  In fact, you might make Muji and its cafe a part of your regular routine with your friends, and you’ll probably make a purchase every time.  Or maybe you won’t be sure you want to buy something after walking around for a while, but then you’ll sit down for a coffee and a sandwich…and then decide you WILL buy something.   Also: watching your friends buy something usually leads to YOU buying something. 

Just about every major chain here in Japan has stores that include a restaurant or coffee shop, all designed to keep you in the store longer and get you to come in when you weren’t really planning on shopping…and making your time with that brand more of a social experience. The department stores are all inclusive, beyond clothing, cosmetics, and home goods, most have half a dozen or more restaurants, a full grocery store in the basement, a flower shop/plant store, a coffee shop, and a salon.  All designed to make that department store just a part of your day to day life. Remember, convenience and reliability are also forms of emotional branding. For many people, being able to take care of many things under one roof is enough to build loyalty.

At the end of the day, capitalism and consumerism aren’t just a western thing.  They are everywhere.  And that means that everywhere we go, someone is trying to sell us something, often by targeting our emotions, memories, social connections, and insecurities…sometimes all at once, and sometimes, just one at a time. Even I, Amanda Lee McCarty, am trying to sell you something. I am trying to sell you the idea that you don’t need to associate stuff with happiness. That convenience is an illusion that makes us compromise our values and standards. That there is a better future for this world, but only if we all work on it together.   And whether you choose to buy all of that is up to you. But I will tell you something that occurred to me yesterday as I was walking through the Kyoto Botanical Gardens (which btw brands itself as “a museum of living plants,” and I love that): There is no brand that will ever be able to sell us anything that is even half as magical as the world living around us.  And I guess, that’s the other thing I’m trying to sell you. Here’s hoping I got the branding right.