About a year ago, I decided to “find myself”. I ended an emotionally abusive five-year relationship with the father of my son. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t looking for a man to fill the void that I had always felt. I wanted to learn more about myself, having not spent too much time doing that throughout my life, as cliché as it sounds, I thought I would date me for a bit.
I started doing research and learning about the things that interest me, doing morning yoga and riding my bike, reading all the books and watching all the documentaries that caught my attention. One of the things I’ve always been intrigued with is the concept of Socrates, “Let food be thy medicine”. So naturally, I fell into watching a long string of several documentaries that talked about what we can do for our health in terms of dieting.
Eventually I found myself jumping on the bandwagon of veganism. This was something that I always said that I would never be able to do, because I love food so much, but it ended up being a rather adventurous segment of my life. I tried a lot of new things and most of those things weren’t half that bad. But there was one area that I struggled in, and that was sweets. I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth. Most baked goods and candy don’t have the vegan stamp on them, and that pretty much sucked. I started making weekly trips to Whole Foods in search of my new favorite candy.
The first time I saw the Hail Merry cups I loved the artwork on the packaging and I thought it was interesting that they had to be kept cold. I had to try them. Since that point in time, I have fallen off the bandwagon of veganism and I am back to my old dieting habits, but these cups (the lemon ones in particular) have definitely stuck, and are my new favorite go to when I want a sweet treat.
So basically, the vegan movement was what really drew me to this favorite candy. The colorful, attractive yet simplistic design and short ingredient list were simply a plus! While this could also be considered stereotyping, companies will undeniably gear their design, logo, slogan etc. towards specific target audiences in order to make them more likely to buy their product. Typically, products that are going to be geared towards hippies, yogis and vegans, will have a simple “all-natural” looking design, use more wholesome ingredients, and be eco-friendlier.
I can attest to this because most of the products that I buy fall within these descriptions, whether it’s for toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner, clothes, or obviously, food. While I don’t define myself through these products or my habits, my hobbies and values definitely reflect in the brands of product that I buy. It’s human nature to fall victim to something that is designed tactfully and specifically meant to entice you.
So by targeting specific audiences and doing research to see what entices them, companies are able to advertise more efficiently and sell more product in a quick manner. Specifically, when it comes to social media, algorithms can play a large part in helping the business to find said target audience or singling an individual out as potential customer for that business. While this product wasn’t brought to my attention on social media, I’m not so sure that I would’ve ever seen or found these if I wasn’t a Whole Foods shopper. And I probably wouldn’t be a Whole Foods shopper if I wasn’t living (or at least trying to live) a certain lifestyle. Either way, I am so pleased to have found these amazing gems, and will probably be a customer for the foreseeable future.
