We’ve just lived through another black Friday and the start of the holiday “shopping season.” Tomorrow is cyber Monday. If you are like 99% of the population, you are shopping like it’s a second full-time job, and it seems the point is to save a ton of money.

If you are a consumer goods brand, then maybe this is the time of year you count on to sell everything in your distribution centers. And how have you strategized to compete? Unfortunately, but most likely, you are now dropping your prices (and throwing in shipping) to attract every shopper you can. Of course, almost every brand (and retailer) is also flipping the same switch right now by selling everything cheap… and what a legacy it has become. Yes, maybe you will bolster your bottom line, but you have branded yourself now as an organization that constructs some kind of strategy to uniquely position yourself 11 months of the year, and now you holler at the fat part of the bell curve and compete on price when you hit the home stretch. All things to all people, because who can resist a bargain? In truth, anyone can compete on price, and even if you hit plan this season, you know you will have to resort to this same routine over and over to make your numbers. You have become the kind of brand that, despite all the innovation and product performance and dignity and coolness you claim to bring to the market, you slash prices to get the sales and try to hit a growth target. And that is now your “position” in the mind of the market. Your competition, by the way, can do the same thing and beat you senseless next year — it’s just discounting. So, what is it you believe your brand stands for, other than selling stuff cheap?

On the other hand, maybe you are one of the very few brands that is NOT urging consumers to run from the Thanksgiving table to shop, and is NOT slashing prices for black Friday and cyber Monday. Thank you. Hopefully that means you stand for something other than commoditization and price battles. You have a product or a service that may not be for everyone, but must be worth your asking price, plus a message that you stick to, because you mean it: concern for the climate, social justice, watch-dogging the politicians, giving back to the community, or just giving a break to someone who needs helping hand in the first place. Whatever it is, it costs you something, which we all know is not a shortcut to current quarter profitability. But there has never been a time when genuinely standing up for something decent has ever meant more than it does to consumers right now. As a brand, you are committed to staying true to what you do and why you do it, rather than making double-digit growth no matter what it takes. You take the confident position of a unique, meaningful brand that is worth the price even during the holiday shopping massacre, and you will be rewarded – possibly this holiday season, or maybe not, but for damn sure in the long run. And ultimately you will take market share because (a) more and more consumers want to be part of something that matters, and (b) you are impacting how people think.

Keep up the hard work – brands like yours are the ones that really matter, and we need people like you to make the change happen.