Brand Building for Industrial Lubes: Lessons from Consumer Marketers

Skyrocketing crude oil prices. Increasing standardization of product attributes. Significant overlap among product offerings. As these forces converge to create a perfect storm driving commoditization and competition in the industrial lubricants market, lubricant marketers are beginning to rethink their once-effective product-centric sales approach.

Seeking new strategies to differentiate their company and their products to maintain market share, many lubes marketers are finding that brand building isn’t just for tennis shoes and soft drinks anymore.

What is branding–– branding is that invisible yet powerful force that drives consumer behavior, sometimes unbeknownst to the consumer. Bombarded with brand messages nearly every minute of every day, many consumers may not even realize the influence these messages have on their day-to-day purchasing decisions. Yet many industrial lubricant marketers are struggling to determine the importance or relevance of brand management to their products.

However, in an industry where (not unlike tennis shoes and soft drinks) product attributes are becoming more standardized and significant overlap among competitive offerings is developing, branding can be an extremely efficient and effective competitive tool in the industrial lubricants market space.