What Chilli Sauce Teaches Us About Brand Devotion
I once spent 18 minutes in the Asian foods aisle of my local dairy trying to choose between three brands of sambal oelek. All were reasonably priced. All had near-identical ingredients. One had slightly better packaging. I chose the one I always buy, obviously. Because when it comes to identity, there are empirically no small decisions.
What’s wild is that this is where brand strategy has real teeth. You can hammer away on top-line numbers and category research, but one tastebud-sized emotional signal can tip the whole customer journey. Familiarity, allegiance, ritual. These are not soft metrics. They’re what separate the brands we tolerate from those we inexplicably evangelise to our friends, as though we own shares in them.
Here's a spicy example: Lao Gan Ma, the now-famous 'flying granny' chilli oil from China. The label looks like it hasn’t changed since 1984, because it hasn’t. Zero influencer marketing, no glossy redesign, but it has become an underground global phenomenon. People collect the jars. Chefs namecheck it on TV. There are Reddit threads that read like religious doctrine.
This kind of fierce, almost irrational loyalty doesn’t come from sponsored posts or brand personalities with cheeky winks. It comes from consistency, specificity and a dash of mystery. Brands that are too eager to explain themselves rarely become cult favourites. They’re too clingy. So if you want real love, be the chilli sauce that doesn’t care whether anyone likes your label. Just taste good enough to get people arguing in the supermarket.
What’s wild is that this is where brand strategy has real teeth. You can hammer away on top-line numbers and category research, but one tastebud-sized emotional signal can tip the whole customer journey. Familiarity, allegiance, ritual. These are not soft metrics. They’re what separate the brands we tolerate from those we inexplicably evangelise to our friends, as though we own shares in them.
Here's a spicy example: Lao Gan Ma, the now-famous 'flying granny' chilli oil from China. The label looks like it hasn’t changed since 1984, because it hasn’t. Zero influencer marketing, no glossy redesign, but it has become an underground global phenomenon. People collect the jars. Chefs namecheck it on TV. There are Reddit threads that read like religious doctrine.
This kind of fierce, almost irrational loyalty doesn’t come from sponsored posts or brand personalities with cheeky winks. It comes from consistency, specificity and a dash of mystery. Brands that are too eager to explain themselves rarely become cult favourites. They’re too clingy. So if you want real love, be the chilli sauce that doesn’t care whether anyone likes your label. Just taste good enough to get people arguing in the supermarket.