Everybody has one. There is one brand that you will buy no matter what. Perhaps they dazzled you with great service, or their reliability is out of this world. Maybe their stuff is just plain cool.

I have a couple of irrational brand attachments for very different reasons. The first one is Dell. I have been a fanatical Dell customer for 10 years, and it was early in my customer life that I became one. My hard drive suddenly stopped. Dead. My attempts to revive it were futile. When I called Dell, I was floored to hear that a local agent would be calling me to arrange to have the new hard drive installed. The story gets better – the agent informed me that my hard drive was obsolete and their smallest one now had twice the storage space. When I inquired about the cost, the agent answered “nothing, it is under warranty.” Within 24 hours (on a sub-zero night in February), I had a gigantic hard drive installed and ready to go. That is dazzling service!

My other irrational brand attachment is to Fender. They’ve been in the electric guitar business for 60+ years and didn’t get to be the leader (sorry, Gibson) by accident. Fender guitars sound great at first grab – you don’t have to do anything to them to get an amazing sound and feel. Every Fender I’ve owned has been an incredible out of the box experience.

There you go. Two ways to build an irrational brand attachment. You can make your customer service an unexpected delight. You can provide an expectation that the product will be wonderful. There are many other ways. Pick yours.