A good friend of ours gifted us some Boll & Branch shit for our wedding. I’d never even heard of Boll & Branch until then, but whatever, maybe it’s nice.

Cats love boxes, so we kept the box around for Covy and Melon to play in. In a moment of candidness, Melon posed for the picture below and I snapped it. It was so good that I decided to post it on Instagram and tag Boll & Branch asking if they would sponsor Melon.

I’ve tried this before. Six years ago I posted this pic of Melon and asked Chewy to give me cat supplies. Chewy refused to comment. Honestly the Chewy pic is better than the B&B pic. I don’t use Chewy anymore!

But this time, B&B actually replied. Someone wrote me saying they thought the pic was great and asked for my order number. Slightly panicked, because I didn’t expect this, I texted my friend and asked for the order number. Once I sent it to B&B they confirmed my address and said “something fun is on its way!“. Oh my god. It actually worked.

A few days later, another B&B box arrived with a hand written note.

Obviously social media marketing is a priority for companies, but there’s a whole separate division that is tasked with replying to social media posts. Imagine being a social media rep for Frontier Airlines. You’re getting tagged in tweets constantly saying you fucking suck and you have to reply with “We’re sorry, thanks for using Frontier!“.

But dealing with the positives is less familiar since social media is largely complaining. I 100% did not expect a reply from B&B. Clearly they have some policy of you can give this $5 throw blanket to any customer who publicly says they like us. Now, let’s evaluate the costs and benefits.

• The cost is a $3 throw blanket and some shipping.
• The benefit is that I went from thinking of Boll & Branch as a generic faceless company that I’ll probably never go to again, to now being a… loyal customer? I almost WANT to spend more money there simply to justify their outreach. It is now top of mind for gifts that I might purchase for someone else.

In the year of our lord 2024 this is how the world works. When there are 20 different massive companies who offer similar products, you have to win customers some how, and this way is as good as any. Try it for yourself.