Three Thursday Things 06: Three Brands!
Three Brands I Love
Until just over a month ago, I’d spent my entire data career working with healthcare and healthcare business data. At Mission Health, I analyzed pharmacy automation and drug inventory data; at Aspen RxHealth, data related to Comprehensive Medication Reviews (CMRs) and business operations; at Idaho State University College of Pharmacy, COVID-19 testing data. (Shameless plug: check out the resulting manuscript, “Developing sustainable workflows for community-pharmacy based SARS-CoV-2 Testing”, published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association(JAPhA) in January, here.)
Despite my interest in and extensive experience with healthcare data, e-commerce data has fascinated me since I first encountered a digital marketing agency freelance client’s data a few years ago. I went on to take DataCamp’s Marketing Analytics with Python Skill Track, with no specific plans to apply my learnings. I was just curious.
Now I find myself employed full-time as a data visualization engineer at Cart.com, the first truly end-to-end e-commerce solution, with the opportunity to apply what I learned as a freelancer and in my marketing analytics courses. Cart does all things e-commerce — marketing, data science, fulfillment, multichannel management. If a brand needs it, Cart is on the case, ready to simplify the complex ecosystem of a bazillion vendors most brands currently navigate.
Working at Cart and listening to conversations about brands has had me thinking about some of my favorite brands. So this Thursday’s three things are three brands whose products and branding I love.
🍑 MeUndies
I’m not a girly girl. Comfortable, functional undergarments win over lacy, satin-y numbers for me. I can’t focus on dataviz if I am itchy because I am wearing some stupid fancy bra!
I love my subscription services, from BarkBox for the hounds to Purple Carrot for my meals. MeUndies super soft and cute underwear first came onto my radar when they were a sponsor of the podcast Too Beautiful To Live, that I’ve listened to faithfully every weekday since mid-2009. (The pod has been Curing Global Loneliness since 2008. Check it out. Notable fellow listener: Chris Hayes of MSNBC.)
Their branding is bright, fun, and cheeky. Check out this image of a faux 404 page displayed during their recent sale:
☕️ King State
Tampa’s own King State lured me into their coffee shop and restaurant with their branding. I saw their beans on sale at Jug and Bottle Dept., a local bottle shop where 3 Dot Dash, one of my favorite vegan joints, is embedded. The color of the packaging is this fantastic metallic copper-pink-gold, the logo evokes old Florida (but not Florida Man, thankfully), and the coffee is INCREDIBLE. (Order the Ethiopian roast now. You can thank me later.) Their cute merch, like this Hot and Fresh tee, makes me proud to rep Tampa when I am out of town. Fortunately for you out-of-towners, like MeUndies, King State offers subscriptions. Here’s an image from the webpage of their biweekly subscription option:
📓Craft
With ADHD and a very busy life, it’s critical that I keep my projects, to-do lists, and meeting notes super organized. Many friends and colleagues swear by Notion, and we use it at work and on a freelance client project I’ve been working on long-term. I like Notion, but there’s some unneeded complexity and the look and feel is all business, all the time.
Craft provides all the essential functionality of Notion without all the distraction extra options in cleanly and beautifully designed, easy-to-use apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I use all three apps and the experience in the iPhone app is just as good as on desktop. Craft is also super inexpensive.
Back to branding, though. Craft’s website, color palette, and logo all appeal to my aesthetic preferences. Even their release emails — and they have good, frequent releases — stay consistent with that. Here’s a screen shot of the most recent one:
Craft’s vibrant Slack community offers feedback on the app, provides help if you have a question, and shares what they’ve made with Craft, too.
That’s it for this Thursday! See you next week!
Love this. And your unfailing support of Craft is gonna make me try it...