The most prophetic thing Thomas Merton ever did was to say to a shopkeeper who asked him what brand of toothpaste he preferred, “I don’t care”. Merton was intrigued by the store clerk’s response. “He almost dropped dead” he wrote,  “I was supposed to feel strongly about Colgate or Pepsodent or something with five colours. And they all have a secret ingredient. But I didn’t care about the secret ingredient ….the worst thing you can do now is not care about these things”

The ultimate goal of the marketer is to have us see consumer products not as mere things, but as keys to our identity.  Brands are marks that owners put on their property …., and we are in perilous territory when our self-image, and even our self-worth, is founded on which brands and labels we can afford to purchase and display.

Kathleen Norris, The Secret Ingredient