> On the whole, I'd rather live in a world of commodities than brands, honestly.
Of course you would! Commodification is good for the consumer, not the producer.
Once you begin focusing on brand, you are embracing the path of a commodity--it's a defensive posture that subtracts from quality and identity.
Anyone can buy branding and in among commodities, that is the only hope. Identity and quality, however, must be built in.
How is brand different from identity? And if you have a quality product, isn't it your brand that communicates this to your customers?
"Branding" is a focus on perception, on advertising and promotion. "Identity" is a focus on developing your core values. The touchstone is whether or not what a company projects is decided by marketing strategy in isolation or by business development as a whole. Ideally, these are one in the same, but they rarely actually are coincidental.
But there are other "decommodification" techniques that don't work so well. The same thing that gives you that great apple goodness is the reason we're all suffering with DRM, vendor lock-in, and senseless incompatibility. These are all just variants on the same theme: don't make things simple for the consumer, force them to "choose" you over your competitors.
On the whole, I'd rather live in a world of commodities than brands, honestly.