I met someone at a networking event who told me that branding couldn’t help him, because he was in a commodity market. In my belief system, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I said in my book, The Reluctant Entrepreneur, “If they can brand water, or salt, (and they have!) any company can find its unique approach, role in the market, or other secret sauce and build it into a competitive differentiation, even in markets where there are many people who buy on price.”

It just takes creativity, like CCS Printing, positioning itself as the guide to lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) printing, offering workshops, and using an Indiana Jones-like fedora image to demonstrate their consultative approach to ink on paper. Like Silver Cup Coffee, packaging their retail experience into products and services that take their coffee beans out of the commodity world. Like Ethos water that turns hydration into an act of philanthropy.

If you think you’re in a commodity market, I challenge you to question that assumption. Why do people buy from you, above and beyond your product and price? And even if they buy on price, why would your prospect choose you to supply the product?

-Lynn Parker

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