On some level, all stories of successful brands resemble one another: the competitors in some category of good or service seem interchangeable until one of them, often a newcomer, dreams up some way of standing out from the crowd. O.K., maybe it’s not always that simple, but differentiating one choice partly by way of advertising, packaging and other image-enhancing strategies has long been a way of persuading shoppers to reconsider what they had previously seen as a mere commodity. Even, it turns out, bullet shoppers.

The ammunition business appears quite healthy these days; there are even reports of shortages attributed to ammo-hoarding by Americans who believe draconian gun restrictions are in the offing. Of course there is more to the bullet market than fear-driven stockpiling. Alliant Techsystems (ATK), a defense contractor, is a leading maker and seller of bullets — to the military mostly, but increasingly to hunters and other civilian gun owners. (In fact, a Business Week article last year suggested that the company is putting even more focus on the latter market in anticipation of slackening military demand.) ATK has been in the consumer-ammunition market for only a few years, but the commercial-products group of its armament-systems division now manages a portfolio of about 20 consumer-ammunition brands. That’s a fair amount of differentiation. Some of the reasons are obvious: the ammunition needs of duck hunters and of pistol-range enthusiasts are quite distinct from each other. But some of ATK’s ammo-brand differentiation sounds more akin to the sort of image making many people associate with, say, energy drinks or deodorants.

ATK bought the ammunition-maker Federal Cartridge Company in 2001. That firm’s pricier Federal Premium line had been aimed (as it were) at those willing to pay more for, say, their bonded or all-copper construction; the line had been around since the 1970s and was advertised in hunting magazines and the like with pitches that emphasized function and performance. But outside this high end of the market, “ammunition tended to be a last-minute decision” for most hunters, explains Jason Nash, an ATK communications and events manager. Soon after acquiring Federal, ATK introduced a new bullet line called Fusion, with what Nash calls an “aggressive” box design, including a foil label. Advertising for the brand was intended for 25- to 35-year-old deer hunters — a younger and more mass crowd, in other words. Recently, Fusion signed on Brock Lesnar, a mixed-martial-arts star (and hunting enthusiast) as a celebrity endorser.

Image Credit... Photographs from Federal Premium Ammunition

This experience guided the more recent introduction of the Black Cloud brand of shotgun ammunition, used by duck hunters. Waterfowl hunting laws mandate the use of nontoxic shot, most of which is made from steel, so there’s not much room for differentiation in materials, but Black Cloud does brag about elements of its shell design (notably the “unique and patented” Flitecontrol Wad) and the construction of the shot inside it (Flitestopper Steel, to “devastate waterfowl on impact”). Still, technology by itself is not a marketing strategy.