Few commodity businesses are renowned for their marketing prowess. How do you market a product that has virtually no differentiating features, a price that is more or less fixed, and a level of capital intensity that seems to call for chasing orders no matter what their profitability?

For many years, the answer to that question has been simple you don’t. Instead, you aimed for a low cost position and tried to run as much volume as possible past your fixed cost base. Product and service differentiation? Managing the order mix? Prioritizing customer segments? These were luxuries best left to industries where a half percent upswing in return on sales is less cause for excitement.

Volume, average cost, and market price are no longer the key drivers of profit and chasing tonnage has ceased to be viable

But the rules are changing. Successive waves of mergers, restructurings, and downsizings not to mention a relentless focus on benchmarking have flattened out the big differences in average costs that used to characterize such industries as pulp and paper, steel, non-ferrous metals, and transportation. Rival commodity companies of roughly the same scale now find...