byR.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Living in Colorado, I regularly shop at various Kroger supermarkets such as City Market, King Soopers, and Kroger itself. So, I’ve become quite familiar with the Kroger generic brand and their long list of private label brands. As the second largest retailer and largest grocery chain in the United States, Kroger has become an expert at building many different brands. In particular, Kroger have replaced many products that previously had their generic Kroger brand with one of their private label brands.

Of course, you don’t have to be a grocery store to use ingredient branding for your products. For example, car manufacturer Dodge does a similar thing by branding their Hemi line of truck engines. But, Kroger is perhaps the master of creating private label ingredient brands. Here are just a few of the Kroger private label branded products that my family and I enjoy.


Check This Out / PSST!

One of the best value brands that Kroger chain stores carry is Check This Out household items, also known as PSST! While I’ve never been impressed with their diapers, household essentials such as bathroom tissue and trash bags are an acceptable option if you’re short on cash. These items tend to be a better value than the dollar store equivalents with a cost of roughly a dollar or less. 

What I like a lot about the Check This Out brand is how direct the name is. With the little owl saying PSST to you as you glance by the shelf, you feel like you’re being let in on a little secret. Indeed, there are certainly some PSST deals to be had at Kroger stores.


Comforts For Baby

One of my favorite baby diaper brands is actually Comforts for Baby. The price is significantly lower than the name brands like Pampers and Huggies and they have actually held up better for my babies and toddlers than the big name brands. Comforts for Baby also has baby formula that two of my babies tolerated better than the national brands. They also have a wide array of other baby care products such as infant gas drops and sippy cups for a good price.

What I especially like about Comforts for Baby branded products is the direct message of the name brand. These are products that can offer my babies comfort.  From my experience, Comforts for Baby products actually do, and I’m happy to go out of my way to a Kroger store to buy them when I need them.



Good to Dough

One of Kroger’s newer private label brands, Good to Dough is the Kroger store brand for loaves of bread, hamburger rolls, and hot dog rolls. It rolled out (pun not intended) in May 2018. While it definitely is one of the cornier names for a private label brand, it is actually accurate to the brand’s mission. 

The concept behind Good to Dough bread is that it’s actually vegan-friendly and contains no high-fructose corn syrup. That’s not the case with most bread products at the dollar price-point. The bread isn’t gourmet, of course, but it’s more than sufficient for making some toast or a quick sandwich. I actually prefer it to a lot of the name brand breads. The no corn syrup is definitely a plus for health, too.


Pet Pride & Luvsome

For our dogs, we’ve been buying the Pet Pride dog food and Luvsome gourmet dog food for years. As many other major dog food brands keep experiencing recalls, I have not seen this happen with the Kroger private label dog foods. In my experience, my dogs have been healthier eating this food than the more common brands. It is not the cheapest dog food, but it is very affordable and well-worth it at the price point.

For our cats we buy the Pet Pride and Luvsome cat foods and use the Pet Pride cat litter. The Luvsome litter is good, too. But, but the Pet Pride does the job well enough at a lower price point. 

I like these brands because buying Pet Pride makes you feel like you’re actually taking Pride in your Pet and Luvsome is the brand you buy when you want to give them a bit of extra love. This sounds corny, but these ideas really do get into your head when you buy these products on a regular basis.



Simple Truth & Simple Truth Organic

Kroger has been making it a point over recent years to dedicate more and more time to natural and organic foods. By reducing unnecessary ingredients and using organic and non-GMO (genetically modified) ingredients when possible, Simple Truth and Simple Truth Organic foods have become some of my favorites to buy. 

The price point of Simple Truth products is usually similar to other natural and organic food brands, but the price is lower enough and the quality good enough that it is worth the small savings. They also offer some snack foods, such as gluten-free crackers, that other brands don’t even offer, at least at as low of a price point.


What’s So Special About These Private Label Brands? 

Kroger has become one of the best private label manufacturers by carefully crafting their branding directly to the purpose of the product that it’s branding. These aren’t just your ordinary store brands. Each of these brands exist for a specific purpose that shoppers can easily buy into. That’s the power of ingredient branding: turning everyday items into products that clearly add value to your life.

By using this ingredient branding, Kroger has been able to upsell their own products with private labeling and eye-catching packaging. This branding strategy gives shoppers an additional emotional incentive to pinching a few pennies for a product comparable to, and in my experience even superior to, many of their national brand name counterparts. 



How Can You Apply Ingredient Branding to Your Own Business?

With ingredient branding, you’re giving a label to a product or service that is complementary and consistent with your main brand. But, that product is also a key ingredient to your brand’s success. For example, say you have a software-as-a-service (SaaS) package as your main offering. Then, say you particular premium upgrade in your that adds a lot of value. It’s a lot easier to upsell that upgrade as its own brand. 

Really, ingredient branding allows you to brand components and features of your products and services that set you apart from your competition. How does branding these ingredients to your success help them become more marketable? People can get a quick mental and emotional attachment with the branding message before you even explain all the benefits of purchasing that particular brand.

Kroger has really mastered ingredient marketing in the grocery sector. It’s a branding tactic that’s used in many different industries. But, there may be a chance for your business to find your own ingredients to brand. 

If you’re looking to take advantage of ingredient branding as part of your brand building strategy, contact one of the Brand Shamans today!


** The author of this post was in no way compensated by Kroger or any of its subsidiaries in any way for this post. The opinions of this author are entirely his own.

At the end of the day, it’s just you and your brand. You and your brand sleep in the same bed at night, whether it’s been a great day, a mediocre one, or a really, really bad one. You gotta take it home with you. In fact, you are your brand.

When you look in the mirror, you should see a reflection of your brand. The brand you create should be a direct extension of you and reflect your values and standards. If these aren't the case then you and your brand need to have a talk.


But my brand isn’t me, it’s just what I do, right?

Well, what you do is you. If you build a brand, even if it’s not your “personal brand,” it still is personal.    But, both brands should be personal to you. They are interconnected, whether you realize it or not.

In fact, as you build your business brand, you are also building your personal brand. In our social media-driven world, it's more important than ever for leaders of a brand to build their own personal brands to give a face to the business brands. People today demand more personality and humanity from brands. So, your own self reflects on your business and vice versa, even if you don't want it to.

Really, all a brand is at the end of it all is the idea that other people have of you in their minds. It’s what your business represents. So, you should be able to stand behind what you want your brand to be one hundred percent.

If you feel that you and your business brand are separate entities, you will find it slip away from you. That's true with your personal brand, too For some people, it's really one in the same, but both are still connected.

Even if your business brand is going to get sold off sooner or later or outright fail, you need to stay connected and in tune with both your business and personal brand. Otherwise, one or both are going to get away from you and rebuilding either one the way you want it to be may become out of reach. If it’s a good one, someone will be happy to take it over for you.


So, should my brand and I have a sit-down and chat?

If you feel that you and your brand are out of sync, then you are out of sync yourself. No matter the reason, you do need to step back and refocus. What are you all about? How can your brand become an extension of what causes and ideas are near and dear to you?

By asking yourself these questions, you’ll build a much stronger brand. You'll also become a much better person, by staying true to what you are and letting your brand become a vehicle for those things. While staying true to yourself sounds cliche, people don’t really follow that advice.

It’s even more rare that a brand is truly used as a vehicle of self-expression and to further ideas and causes. Yes, it happens. A lot of those brands are wildly successful, because they are authentic. People like authentic, and people love when you take that authenticity far as you can possibly take it.

Those who are willing to make major sacrifices for their brands are the true Brand Heroes. Those who never let their brands go in exchange for money or stock options or anything are the ones who will topple everyone else in the end. Doubters will eat their words when they see your success if you never stop moving and taking your brand with you. Your brands, no matter how many you have, are like your vehicle. Built, driven, and maintained correctly, they can reliably put you on cruise control to whatever your destination might be

Remember, you are your brand. Have that conversation with yourself. Know that you and your brand are one in the same. Never give up on your brand and never give up on yourself. Only then will you and your brand truly be in tune and become a force for good and whatever change you want to make in the world.


Want to become a Brand Hero? But, not sure where or how to start? Hire the branding experts at Brand Shamans and we’ll show you how!

Need a way to work at home that's not complicated and doesn't require an investment? You can now become a Brand Shamans affiliate for FREE and earn money from home (50 % of every sale) by simply sharing links on social media.

How Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for an affiliate account on Payhip and follow the instructions. Once we receive your request, we will review it. If you are approved (most people are approved), you will see products in your account to share, once that approval has gone through the Payhip system. We use this 3rd party system to help ensure our affiliates that payments, stats, and sales will be processed fairly and in a timely manner. This helps build trust between us and our affiliates. PayHip is a trusted manager for affiliate programs and online shopping carts.

How Much Will I Make?

How much you make depends on how many sales you can generate, which products you choose to promote, and so on. But we give 50% commission on every sale generated through your link. That could actually amount to big profits, especially if you're a good seller or you are able to sell some of our larger packages.

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What Products or Services Will I Promote?

We have a variety of products and services that you can share with your audience. Some of these include branding & content services, handcrafted artisan jewelry, author marketing services, healing items and services (talismans, tarot & oracle readings, etc), hobby items, gifts for parents and kids, pet toys, and more! You can take a look at our online store, Intent-sive Nature to get an idea of what we have to offer. Then, sign up for the affiliate program separately at PayHip.

What Do I Need to Do?

All you need to do is sign up to be a Brand Shamans affiliate.  Once approved, simply grab the affiliate link for the product/s of your choice and start sharing the links via your social media networks, your blog,  or your website. Remember to share wisely without spamming in order to get the best benefit. Follow the rules wherever you share. Also, share in your own name, rather than ours. Each time someone makes a purchase by using your link, you will receive 50% of that sale via PayPal. It's really that easy! 

What if I Need Banners or I Need Help?

We have a Facebook group called Brand Shamans Affiliates that you can join  after becoming an affiliate. This is where you  can ask questions, find tips, and get banners to use when promoting your special affiliate links. 

*We are not obligated to approve or keep any affiliate and reserve the right to reject pr remove anyone at any time, though that is rare. If we find that anyone is violating laws, rules, and regulations regarding social sharing, that person will be removed from the affiliate program. There also may be other (rare) reasons for this.

Personal branding has become more important than ever. It matters in job hunting, freelancing, and building any sort of business – even a side-hustle! On the flip side, business brands are becoming more and more like people all the time. The social media accounts of brands you love – and brands you love to hate – have become their own personalities.

Sure, you still have celebrity endorsements. But, more and more, people want to connect with people who are directly connected to a brand. Giving faces and voices to the people that build the brand from within real people who are completely invested in what your brand stands for, makes your business more human than ever..

The power of interviews has long been known for building personal brands. Yet, many business brands – and even some people with successful personal brands – don't realize realize the true brand building value of doing an interview.  Not only is it essentially free exposure, but you put a face to your brand, which is invaluable in our socially super-charged world.

If you're trying to build your personal brand, building your reputation, and marketing your skills, doing an interview with a venue that has a decent audience can be invaluable. There are many kinds of interviews. They can be done on audio podcasts, in YouTube Videos or Facebook Live chats, or in text form on blogs. Whichever type works best for you is fine. They all are effective in their respective ways.

What an interview does is to bring new dimensions to your brand, both your own personal brand (as an author or designer, for example) and your business brand. Obviously, you want to find an interviewer that asks the right questions. But, even interviews with more general questions are fine, as long as you have good and engaging answers to give.

You may not think you're great at giving an interview, but you're probably better than you think. After all, the whole point of an interview is to put you on the spot. You're going to get some unexpected questions and how you answer them can go a long way towards giving people a good impression.

So, the best thing about doing an interview? You don't really have to do the research. That's all on the interviewer to do. You just have to answer some questions. Being prepared is good, knowing the interviewer and all that. But your main job is to just be you and answer questions as honestly as you can – within reason, of course. The smarter your answers, the better you and your brand will look, of course.

Think of an interview as a conversation about your brand. Try not to stress about what questions are going to be asked. The whole idea is to come out from behind your brand and put yourself out there. That can be very difficult to do. But the rewards are well worth it. Not only do you get yourself and your brand out in front of new people, but you also bring personality to your brand and give it a face. People like to relate to people, and the more your brand becomes like a person, the more people will want to interact with it.

So, if you have a chance to do an interview, don't delay. The sooner you do it, the sooner you give you personal brand - and the brands of your related businesses - a new chance to grow!


Want to become a Brand Hero? But, not sure where or how to start? Hire the Brand Shamans and we’ll show you how!

"You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra

Oh, Yogi, of course, you can observe a lot just by watching!

The great Yogi Berra was an amazing baseball player and later a very good team manager and coach. He's also famous for saying a lot of things. Many of them, often known as "Yogi-isms" seem odd at face value, and many of which seem obvious. However, sometimes if you really think about these "Yogi-isms" you realize that there's more to it.


Observing Means Paying Attention to the Right Things

What Yogi Berra meant is that you can learn a lot from observations if you pay attention to the right things. In baseball, as well as football and other sports, there are little things to watch for to give you a competitive advantage. You may have heard of "stealing signs." Indeed, cracking the code to your opponent's coaching signals certainly helps. It's a big deal in American football, too.

Just by watching the social media pages, blogs, and other public channels of companies who are in a related field as you, or even your direct competition, you can learn a lot. Seeing how people engage with other brands can tell you what they might be doing right. In fact, you can also see what's not working, too, which is just as important. This is called competitor research. You can then adapt some of these things that are working for them to attract the same sort of brand engagement.

Beyond just taking cues from your competition, you can learn a lot by observing your own brand engagement, as well. You can glean valuable insights into what you may or may not be doing correctly just by how people interact with you (or don't). If people aren't interacting, you may want to consider how to increase brand engagement. The best question to ask yourself is "how can I offer more value?"


Watching Your Own Brand Engagement Closely Can Give You Clues About What to Do Next

Watching how people interact with your brand should give you an idea if something should work or not work. Obviously, if something you post on your blog or website is getting more views than usual or more likes on social media, then you're doing something right.

Also, it also doesn't hurt to hint at things that you're trying. It's a sort of passive market research. Social media, in particular, is a great place to test out ideas before you commit to them. But, what if your brand is consistently getting no real engagement? What is there to watch, then?

You just have to watch the right things. If your website and/or blog is getting page views, that's something. If people are liking your page, that's something. Engagement isn't always super obvious. But, it's watching the less obvious things that can give you the most important information.

For example, say you have a blog post that consistently gets views when you share it on social media. You may also have a post that gets a lot of search traffic on its own. Obviously, people are attracted to that post. Creating social media content around that post, taking quotes from it, and making attractive images out of them, is one strategy. Sometimes, you can just reshare popular content that doesn't compete with your brand, but complements your brand's values. Use a variety of strategies to attract engagement to your website and social media. Then, focus on the ones that bring the most engagement, and of course, any that bring you sales and new customers.

The knowledge and insights you need to take your brand in the right direction are likely there already for you to see. You just have to take a step back and observe. Sometimes, it's what's not being done by others, or done as well as you could do it, that you end up seeing.

The key to increase your brand engagement and jump-start your business may even already be right in front of you! Need help with creating engaging content or doing competitor research? Hire the social media, content marketing, and branding specialists at Brand Shamans and we’ll show you how!

The vibes your brand puts out there are important to your company's success and image. Is your brand representing its true purpose? Does what your brand puts out there truly align with what you envisioned for the company? Do you know your brand's true purpose or does it even have one yet?

Every Brand Needs A Purpose

Does your brand have a purpose? It should! Each brand's purpose is what helps people connect. If there's nothing behind it except a product, people will have a hard time understanding why they want or need it. Does your brand help people in some way? Does it have a unique meaning behind it? Make sure there is a purpose for doing whatever it is your brand or product does.

Your Brand's Purpose Needs To Be Obvious

Not only does your brand need a purpose, but it needs to be very obvious. For instance, if your brand's purpose is to spread the word about a specific cause, that should be evident in everything you do. Logos, blog posts, social media posts, ads, product labels, shipping packages, and anything else put out there by your brand needs to reflect that purpose.

What Vibes Is Your Brand Representing?

Are you sending out mixed messages or vibes? Does your brand truly represent what you want it to? Listen to your audience. Watch their reactions to what you do. Does it really reflect that purpose? If your brand is about healing, like ours, do all things put out by your brand reflect healing? Make sure that nothing puts out vibes that are the opposite of what you intended. If you've mistakenly done this, no worries! You can still fix it! That's what the Brand Shamans are for! We help heal brands.

If your brand needs help discovering its inner spirituality or purpose, let us know! We can help!

Many brands, communities, and other entities often forget about the connection that needs to happen with their audience and members. This connection is what keeps them interested and also is what keeps your brand or community authentic and focused on what it's all about. We call this brand or community spirituality. If you think about it, your brand or community is an entity that you and your audience or members are dedicated to. There is a spiritual bond. If not, there should be! We help you bring everything into focus surrounding the spirituality or inner connection of your brand or community. Once this happens, the rest falls into place quickly.

We Study Your Business And Help You Heal It From The Inside Out!

We'd love to know more about you, your business, and your goals. Drop us an email via the contact form (below) to give us an idea of who you are and what you need and we'll get back to you. If you don't have time to give us a life story, a few lines is fine. We'd love to explore your website for the rest! As a complementary test run, we'll even interview you for FREE to introduce you to our audience and publish the results on one of our popular channels (also FREE). This is one of the very first steps in helping heal your business, brand, or community and it's FREE, so you have nothing to lose.

Is This A Religious Service?

It's whatever you want or need it to be. We base our services on what you would like your brand to be and represent. Brand spirituality refers to your brand as an entity and in itself is not a faith-based service. This is a journey of discovery! You may be familiar with self-discovery. This is the same thing, but for your brand. Though, if you would like a certain faith implemented into your brand, we can help you with that, too! We are non-faith-based and open to helping with any beliefs or non-beliefs.

Analysis Of Your Brand Helps Discover Its Inner Spirit

Is your brand really doing all it can for you? Is it representing the values and ideals you want it to? What message is it sending? Is it one you agree with? Are you connected with your audience and staff? For a small fee, we can analyze your brand (this includes your website, social media accounts, and more). Brand refers to your product, book, or anything else that needs branding. The analysis will be personalized based on your brand's needs.

Your Brand Needs A Customized All-Inclusive Community Building & Engagement Plan

Once one of our Brand Healing Specialists (aka Brand Shamans) has done an analysis, we can outline what we feel will work best for you based on that research. This step is FREE and is where you will gain your FREE insight that is needed in order for us to take action. Actions may include things like email discussions on what your brand means to you, interactions via social media and/or your online community, content marketing that matches your brand, and more! This custom brand healing plan can help you find your brand's inner spirit and begin the healing process on your company's life path.

Why You Need To Take Action!

Once you have your analysis, it's in your hands to take action by having us kick your brand or community's spirituality into high gear. If there's not enough interaction going on around your community or brand, it's not connected properly. Let the Brand Shamans work together as a team with you and your audience to find your brand's inner spirit and strengths.

Watch Your Brand Or Community's Spirituality & Positive Interactions Improve!

When the connection has been found, watch how your brand or community's spirituality and positive interactions improve! Many companies and communities forget the connection part when it comes to engaging with their audience and members. We help you bring everything and everyone together to find a common ground and purpose surrounding your community or brand. Once this happens, the rest falls into place quickly.

Take Action Now! Get A Head Start On Your Brand's Healing Process Today!