If You Think You Have A Commodity Offer, You Probably Do

My wife came home a few months back very excited.  “What’s going on?” I asked. "Win the lottery?” 

“Even better," she replied. “Fresh eggs!”  

“Huh, what do you mean,” I asked.

“Ondrush Farms didn’t open yet, but they posted a sign announcing in big letters - FRESH EGGS -  with a phone number," she replied. "So I called them up and just got home with a few dozen eggs.” 

“Great, how much did they cost?”  I asked.

She had no idea. Eggs for the Silbert household, were no longer a commodity.  

Just look around and you’ll notice that almost all industries that have been supposedly “commoditized," still have brands that resonate more to the customer than other brands because they refuse to accept the commodity label.

Here are three commodities I experienced on a recent flight: 

Airlines

I flew JetBlue for the first time out of JFK. I live in New Jersey, so I almost always fly out of Newark. Due to JetBlue having a direct flight to Austin, I took the train to the plane from Manhattan which worked out quite well. JetBlue has a great terminal, friendly staff, and plenty of well-documented perks that I finally experienced for myself, including Satellite Radio, DirecTV, and extra legroom that you don’t find on other airlines. I had heard great things about JetBlue and now I experienced firsthand the subtle difference of flying JetBlue compared to other airlines. In the last few years and even more so in the past year, the majority of airlines have made the act of flying closer to taking the bus. I did not feel that way with JetBlue.

Water

While at the JetBlue JFK terminal, I arrived early for the flight and thus decided to eat ahead of my 8 p.m. departure. As I waited for my food from the Chinese quick service restaurant, I went to select a drink. There were a number of choices and I narrowed it down to Black Cherry soda, which is typically not carried everywhere, and water. As you might expect there was one brand of Black Cherry and about half a dozen brands of water. 

The bottles of water came in all different shapes and sizes with all different price points. The interesting thing is that as far I could tell, all the different brands of water cost more per ounce than not only the black cherry soda, but the other drink products as well. I ended up paying up for the Fiji water, which had a similar price point to the other bottled waters, but to me was a premium “bottled water” brand, and thus it was easier to justify the ridiculous airport terminal price point. Some bottled water firms, like Fiji, over the last ten years have figured out how to differentiate to ultimate of commoditized industries… water.

Your Local Pizzeria

In my neighborhood, there are conservatively 20 pizza restaurants within a seven-minute drive of my house. The majority of them are surviving but there is one, Denino’s, that rises above the others. It is consistently packed during dinner hours, and in fact during some days they do not allow individual slice purchases, they are just too busy. Denino’s takes pride in their pizza.  

A great example is recently they brought out a pizza for my family  and part of the crust was partially dented.  As the pizza was being put down on our table, our server informed us they were bringing my family another pizza because of the dented crust.  They did this even though their restaurant was just starting to fill up and thus they could have immediately filled the table. 

The more you look around the more you will find that your industry is less commoditized than plenty of other industries and it is only when you start believing it yourself, can you make the bold moves required to differentiate your offer and your brand from your competitors.

By the way, a few days after coming home with the “Fresh Eggs”, my wife came home all excited again. "What now?" I asked, “Fresh eggs from Ondrush Farms again”?  “Fresh Corn!" she replied with a smile (this time knowing the corn was three-times as expensive as the corn from our local super market).