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In this edition:

• Column: Marketing Commoditized Categories

• Inspiration: Justin Thomas Kay’s NBA Logo Redesign

• Upcoming: WARC’s “The Future of Strategy”

Column: Marketing Commoditized Categories

When we think of commodities we think of sand, oil, pork bellies, etc.

But the truth is that anything that’s not “branded” can technically be considered a commodity.

The reason being is that such generic products trade on price and nothing else.

“In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.” — Wikipedia

Mark Ritson once illustrated the definition of a commodity by showing an unbranded cup of coffee next to a Starbucks cup of coffee. One costs $1.50, the other costs $5.50. Why?

Well, on the one hand you have a product that carries no inherent additional meaning aside from the combination of its parts. On the other hand you have a product that’s more than the sum of its parts — it carries meaning, attitudes, perceptions.

Every time we discount a brand we are effectively “commoditizing” it because we’re reducing its value to its lowest possible price. Whereas every time we invest into the brand of a product we’re creating value and therefore “branding” it with specific meanings and attitudes that we want to convey to our consumers.

In other words, when we remove the commodity out of the product, we end up with its brand equity.

Can Anything Be Branded?

The goal then becomes to increase the brand equity of what we sell — whether that’s a product or a service — so that we can reduce price sensitivity, grow market share, improve profit margins, and so on.

But can it be done with commodities?

If we go by the unofficial definition of a commodity I mentioned above, then yes anything can be marketed when done so thoughtfully.

One of the most successful campaigns of all time, “Got Milk?”, was about growing the sales of a commodity.

Liquid Death sells $6 cans of water, and has grown its brand valuation to over $1 billion.

Starbucks sells $5 cups of coffee, and does so at an astonishing rate.

And the list goes on.

Now, I’m not saying that oil companies can brand their barrel and sell it for more. That’s not the point. But you can turn it into a consumer product and sell branded fuel, like Shell does with its V-Power Nitro+ Premium gasoline (which goes for $0.05 to $0.15 more per gallon than unbranded fuel).

Creativity For The Rescue

Let’s take a look at how the California Milk Processor Board managed to market its milk.

In 1993, they approached Goodby, Silverstein & Partners with an “open brief”: milk sales have been declining over the decades in California to the point that not even the state’s population growth is managing to keep absolute sales on an upwards trajectory.

“Help us sell more milk.”

They didn’t care whether GS&P made ads about cereal to help increase milk sales, they just wanted Californians to drink more milk.

To do that, they conducted several focus groups across California to understand how they consumed milk. Most folks didn’t drink milk by the glass — it was “____ and milk”. Meaning, milk was an accompaniment to whatever else they were eating or drinking.

To get to the crux of the problem, the planners at GS&P commissioned some qualitative research in which they asked the panelists to keep a diary of what they were eating every day and the feelings they felt throughout the day with one caveat — they could not consume milk in any form for a whole entire week.

When they got together a week later to discuss the experience, the subjects couldn’t believe how big of a part milk played in their lives. Some were frustrated when they couldn’t add milk to their coffee, having to wait for it to cool off and, when sipped on, tasting the bitter taste of black coffee; others described having a long stressful day and after finally having put the kids to sleep, opening the fridge to eat some cookies as a treat in front of the TV late at night and having to wash them down with a glass of water instead of milk.

Sadness. Frustration. Unfulfillment. Hell, even rage!

The key insight they got was that milk only crossed people’s minds when they couldn’t have it. It’s one of those unsung heroes that goes unnoticed — we only miss it when it’s not there.

And that gave birth to one of the most effective advertising campaigns of all time, leading to a +0.7% growth in milks sales in the first year of the campaign (roughly $13 million in retail value), an increase in California’s milk household penetration from 70% in 1993 to 74% by 1995, and a loss erosion reversal of 75 million gallons of milk over the course of the campaign had the decline in consumption been left unchecked.

The Value of An Insight

A great insight, such as the one GS&P uncovered for the “Got Milk?” campaign, can change the game for any company.

But getting to the insight is the hard part. It’s not a formulaic process that guarantees success every time.

It requires a combination of logical and lateral thinking to find the emotional tensions that can yield great creative work.

And once uncovered, that’s not enough. One must then execute it elegantly and effectively.

It should come as no surprise that marketing commodities is more difficult than marketing existing brands. The ground work to bring a “generic” product traded on price to a place where it carries certain attitudes and meanings takes brilliant minds and a whole lotta money in media spend.

But it is possible. However, understanding what goes into a brand and how to convey it to the world is at the crux of the challenge.

Inspiration: Justin Thomas Kay’s NBA Logo Redesign

It’s quite rare to get a peek behind the curtain of how designers go about their business.

It’s such a personal process, which differs from person to person, that I even hesitate to call it that.

But a few weeks back, Justin Thomas Kay recorded a video for GQ Sports about how he would have redesigned the Los Angeles Clippers’ logo.

It’s a fascinating conversational video in which Justin brings us into his world and leaves us with a lot to think about.

Upcoming: WARC’s “The Future of Strategy”

“Grow Your Brain” is an APG Canada initiative in which I interview folks across client, tech, and industry bodies in a relaxed lunch and learn format to gain insights that could be useful for fellow strategists.

If you haven’t had a chance to dive into the findings from WARC's Future of Strategy Report, have no fear. We’ve got you covered.

Join us on Dec 5th via Zoom as Pedro Porto Alegre (yours truly) gets the inside scoop from WARC on what the future of strategy is looking like.

We’ll talk about the challenges that strategy as a discipline is facing, how to cultivate a culture in which it can thrive, and opportunities for it to grow into an exciting future.

Register here!

More of PPA:

• 🤝 Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn and/or X

• 💌 In case you missed it:

  • The Art Of Giving Effective Creative Feedback

  • How To Write Effective Creative Briefs

  • How To Make Your Brand Look Like Itself

PPA 

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing professional with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across Canada. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.