Dear Brand Loyalty,

Thank you for ruining my life.
It seems only yesterday that I was taking down the sustainable christmas tree and bringing it back to the place where my wife bought it, to be replanted so that it can grow again. Ain't that swell?
Were there any left overs from Christmas 2019? Oh yes. A little plastic global village, with global brands well represented. Cute? Very. Plastic? Even more so.
Mr. Loyalty, I want to thank you for your plastic. Very sustainable, indeed! I reckon your village will last another three thousand years, if it doesn't somehow land in a fireplace. Have you ever witnessed a plastic village melting in a fire? The scent...  makes me sentimental. It takes me back to my youth, Brand.
And who remembers the wonderful soccer cards you threw around not so long ago? I certainly do. Ari van Veenendaal! Every day I was picking up bits of paper, tear sheets from the cards – stickers really – that my kids were frantically collecting and that were even more frantically handed out by the beautiful girls your wonderful client Albert Heijn hires to sit at the register, but will soon make redundant by installing do it yourself cash registers (please give Albert my thanks for making people redundant).
Did I mention kids? Did I mention soccer cards? Where have I seen that combination before? This morning, in my living room. In the bedroom of my kids, their classroom. Brand, once more you have successfully infiltrated the lives of my kids where it matters most. You are ruining their sleep, and you are ruining their education and I love you for that.
Only this time you have included a soccer ball and a pump. Great idea! More fake leather and plastic, exactly what we needed in our house.
Every few months or so for the past couple of years we start all over again, – soccer cards -'moestuintjes' - fuzzy animals – and I want to thank you for that, Mr. Loyalty. I want to thank you for your reiteration, the basis of all influencing.
Brand, it's so wonderful how you ruin the concept of collecting, the concept of scarcity, the concept of freedom in the name of profit. Now my kids only want me to go back to the aforementioned Mr. Heijn, and that is exactly where you, Brand, want them – and me! – to be, to buy every plastic we can dream of.
I understand that you are happy.
Let me restate that: that you create happiness. (Because that's the business you're in.)
Happy with yourself.
Happy with engineering people.
Happy with the profits you make by making my kids and me do things that help your clients.
Good luck, Mr. Loyalty, and thanks again for your commitment to destroying the planet. We could never do it on our own.

Yours, till I die, etc.