For two years and a couple of international trips, my
family served as unpaid endorsers of Florida. Not because of a splashy
marketing campaign or a particular affinity for the state.
It can all be explained by $5 hats.
It can all be explained by $5 hats.
First, some hat background. I’ve never been, well, a natural
when it comes to hats. To start, I never knew how to break in baseball
caps. I still remember my freshman baseball coach on one of our first day of
practices grabbing my hat off my head and working in the brim, “so he would be
able to look at me.” As an aside, coach and I were each a baseball rarity by throwing with
our left hands and batting from the right side. We had a great relationship and
that was one of my all-time fun seasons for baseball.
Back to hats, though. Over the years, I kind of, sort of, figured out how to break in a hat but struggled to keep them in good shape and
also find ones that fit well. Throw in the fact that I can easily leave a cap outdoors at a tennis court or playground, and you can see it’s a bit of a
conundrum.
On a trip to Florida, no surprise, we were in need of
extra hats and we walked into a Walgreens. On sale, were cheap hats that had
Florida splashed all over. While we were not Florida Superfans, they fit well, protected us from the sun, and
the price was more than right.
While I continued to cycle in and out of other hats, the
Florida hats remained a constant. We wore them proudly in Chicago, Milwaukee and
out of the country as well. No one would pay me to wear their hat or even want me to model it for free, but Xiaoli
and Liam are quite cute so it was definitely in Florida’s interest that they
took turns rocking those hats.
Ultimately, I lost one hat to salt water and the other to
the Loggers Run at Great America. It’s a fair question as to why I was wearing
a hat in either situation, and it's a question I do not have a good answer for.
Should cheap hats become a thing in Florida marketing,
however, they’ll know who to thank.
And there's no arguing with the ROI.
And there's no arguing with the ROI.
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