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Chocolate! The best food ever (closely followed by cheesecake, roast duck, and fettucine alfredo).   Chocolate was once very, very expensive.  Only the upper-classes could afford it.

Then Milton Hershey came along and figured out a way to make it cheaply.  His chocolate tasted different than the old world brands, but it was cheap.  People bought it and people ate it. It was “the chocolate” around here.

Chocolate goes upscale

Now, of course, we have Green & Blacks, Dagoba, imported Dutch chocolates, and Amazon to bring us single plantation chocolate, higher cocoa content chocolate, imported chocolate and on and on.  New kids on the block can distinguish themselves by being organic, completely over the top (Max Brenner, or, my favorite, Michel Cluizel – which flies chocolates in regularly from Paris).

Why chocolate on a marketing blog?

Well, one I have a craving for it.  But more importantly, it shows how companies in a crowded field, or an industry that was ordinary, can stand out and differentiate themselves. Change the packaging, change the contents, make it harder to find, easier to find….

Copy the chocolatiers and make your business stand out

How do you stand out from other designers or writers?  Are you faster?  Slower? Do you make your illustrations by hand with pen and ink? Or work wonders with Photoshop and Illustrator?

Not everyone wants to (or can) pay $5 for a chocolate bar.  Likewise, not everyone will appreciate the value of a hand-drawn one-of-a-kind blog header.  Some will (those are your tribe).

How do you stand out?

Share your strategy in the comments.  Or, ask for feedback.

P.S.

When I was a kid, my dad would buy imported Dutch chocolate shaped like little wooden shoes.  Haven’t seen them in years.  Does anyone know where to find them in the US?