Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock
Commodity. I didn’t know that was a bad word. During the early years when I covered business while reporting a lot of subjects, I learned that one invested in commodities. It is an article of trade or commerce, especially a product that can be processed and resold, such as in mining and agriculture. Rice is a commodity. Hogs are a commodity (Go Hogs!). Their prices go up and down.
“Buy low, Sell high, Guess right: My, oh my.”
But an article in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday the 9th said a product turning into a commodity kills it. This was “101 Brand Names, 1 Manufacturer” by Ellen Byron, that focused on the tainted pet food scandal but expands to how many companies rely on large manufacturers to make their products.
I’ve addressed it too, but now I know more.
The Journal article has two key quotes:
… Markets — and price — can be hard to sustain once products are perceived as commodities.”
And Byron quotes marketing strategist Jack Trout:
Commoditization is the real enemy of branding.”
Yet people profit from, say, growing corn. It’s a commodity because it has no brand? What about types of corn — feed and sweet — not to mention patented hybrid varieties to grow? Yet we know what this means. Corn is corn on the grocery’s produce aisle, unless marketing happens: four pieces of DelMonte corn in 14.5-oz. plastic bags, as opposed to ears in the husk and sold by the pound. But that means branding is a fake value-added process, and we’re being conned?
Last Monday’s (5/9/2007) Journal had an op-ed guest column by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter E. Hussman, Jr. In its first paragraph:
News has become ubiquitous, free, and as a result, a commodity. Anytime you are trying to sell something that becomes a commodity, you have lost much of the value in providing that product or service.”
So this kind of commodity is not an investment like soybean futures and beer bellies? You cannot brand a commodity, although you can brand a sheep — baaaaa, ouch! You go to the store and buy a box of cereal, valued added in the processing, whose components of grain and sugar were (or are?) commodities.
A commodity is a necessary item that needs finishing. Thus, flour is a commodity and bread is a Wonder.
Young adults are not going online for the commodity news has become. They may check a headline or two, a few ball game scores, the actor in a drug bust, but not the details. If they have jobs that afford them a little play time on the company’s lightning-quick broadband Internet browser, then they’ll look for a laugh or a tune. Local news is of no interest, except on the very rare occasion it is about their street, or their kids’ school.
It is not that they don’t care. They’re despondent. They feel they have no say in government. What’s the difference between John McCain and John Edwards, to name two on the second tier, when the Engine of State still will move on if either gets elected president, representing either party. The Engine killed Clinton’s ideas, say the one on national health insurance, even though that might have been good to kill if it would have bankrupted the country from its particulars not being fully thought through 15 years ago.
News must have been a commodity for a very long time. Newspapers were bought for a variety of reasons; information-as-commodity was “finished” in unique, desirable ways. The reader appreciated being informed, being entertained and being prodded toward buying value from the advertisements.
What Americans who’ve quit absorbing lots of news want is another C-word: Content.
Content is our entertainment more than ever: on paper, “On The Air,” online. Yet the around-the-clock availability of information renders it less necessary. Most Americans don’t have horrific troubles. Sure there’s family, health, job security, but that’s true in any peaceful age. But war? Recession? If Iraq directly affected us, by universal military draft or civilian rationing, we would pay for Content, for updates and general information, the latest on alternatives and rebellions.
You know, apparently we can afford $3 gas. Was your neighborhood convenience store looted over the weekend? Didn’t think so.
The problem is not free news, or a commodity structure for opinion polls, movie reviews and city council meetings, but that:
Democracy Is What’s Become a Commodity.
This freedom business is everywhere. At least everywhere we notice. It looks easy. In the U.S.A., Democratic is a brand. Republican, too. (What value is being added?) But though a commodity it’s not everywhere in the world. And it’s not easy — everywhere else. -30-
