The Importance of Being Different

In the 1950s a man named Rosser Reeves, who was chairman of Ted Bates & Company, a New York ad agency, identified and introduced a concept he called the U.S.P. — the Unique Selling Proposition.

Reeves’ finding was that the U.S.P. is the single most important element in determining whether an ad campaign will be successful. He used his concept in many successful campaigns for clients such as Anacin, Colgate, and Viceroy Cigarettes. His ads were incredibly powerful and made Ted Bates & Company the fifth largest ad agency in the world by 1960.

He created what is considered the most successful U.S.P. ever in the history of advertising for his client M&M Mars. The product was M&M candy; the U.S.P. was “The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”

The U.S.P. is not something you have to put in your ad copy, although that is the most powerful way to make it work for you. It can also be used as a basis of understanding that drives the development of ad copy or an ad slogan based in the U.S.P.

Now, nearly fifty years later, the U.S.P. concept is frequently misunderstood and loosely adapted as a headline, slogan, tagline, or elevator speech. Legions of companies produce advertising with meaningless phrases used as U.S.P.s.

To develop a U.S.P. for your product, business, service or destination, you need to understand the concept of the U.S.P. As defined by Reeves it consists of three parts.

A Benefit. In using a U.S.P. you must make a proposition to your customer that is “when you buy this product, use this business or service, or visit this destination, you will get this specific benefit.” Note that the benefit is singular. Not a list of benefits, but one benefit. One simple benefit is easy for the consumer to remember and believe.

Something Truly Unique. To have an effective U.S.P. you really must have something unique to offer. It can’t be contrived. It must be something your competitors don’t have, won’t offer, or can’t offer. A great example of how a U.S.P. launched a no-name start up business idea into a global corporation is the U.S.P. developed for Fed Ex – “When it absolutely, positively has to be there over night.”

Selling Power. A U.S.P. must sell, so you must have something that consumers want. Only if you have something consumers want can the U.S.P. convince them to choose you over your competitors. Reeves firmly believed that you can’t create demand for a product that no one wants by flooding the market with advertising.

In developing your own U.S.P. you need to be prepared for competitors to jump on your bandwagon. Dominoes Pizza enjoyed spectacular growth when it was the only pizza company who could use the U.S.P. “Delivered fresh to your door in 30 minutes or less or its free.” When other pizza restaurants started doing home deliveries and found they could also do it in 30 minutes or less the Dominoes claim was no longer unique and its position in the market declined. Until that time, however, that U.S.P. was worth more than $1 billion to Dominoes.

How to Identify Your U.S.P.

Developing a U.S.P. starts with differentiation. To gain a huge competitive advantage start by exploring what makes you different from others in your market category. List as many things as possible that you think are distinctive about your product or service. A great visual way to do this is to take Post-It Notes™ and write one thing per sheet. Put the sheets up on a wall.

Next make a list of all your major competitors.

Then, one by one pull the Post-It Note™ sheets off the wall if any of your competitors can make the same claim.

When you finish this activity, what still remains on your wall? Like most businesses, you’ll find you don’t have many distinctive qualities in your product or service that are truly unique.

The next step is to list all the benefits your customers will enjoy because of your unique qualities.

How many of those benefits solve a problem, eliminate some kind of pain, or fill a need for your customers? They are the ones with selling power. Eliminate any benefits that have no real selling power.

What remains is the basis for your U.S.P.

Like many products, services, destinations and businesses, you may find you have no U.S.P. If you do have uniqueness, with selling power, this activity will help you communicate it to your customer.

Consider the product Nyquil. The shelves in any drug store are packed with products that relieve cold symptoms. Some are for congestion and coughs. Some help with fever. But only Nyquil has the U.S.P. “The nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, so you can rest medicine”. Try to think of the U.S.P. of any other cold medicine.

Sometimes your U.S.P. doesn’t have to be truly unique. It can be a claim or benefit that no other competitor is making. Therefore, to the consumer, it is unique. If you are the first to make the claim, you own the claim and the U.S.P.

For example, in the 1970s Land’s End was the first marketer of men’s dress shirts to make a claim about the thread counts of their cotton. Compared to many popular department store brands there actually was no real difference. But there was a perceived difference in the mind of consumers because they didn’t know the thread count in department store shirts. Lands’ End differentiated the quality of its shirts by focusing on the quality of the cotton and sales exploded.

Your U.S.P. is the essence of what you are selling. That’s why you need to develop a U.S.P. before you start to develop your advertising. When you do, integrate it into all of your advertising and marketing materials, your signage, your Website and your promotional items. Just be sure you actually deliver what you claim in your U.S.P.

In 1960 Rosser Reeves published his experience in a book called Reality in Advertising. It has been out of print for decades. But you can still find copies by searching on Amazon.com. Whatever price you have to pay, I recommend you add this to your library. In the over-saturated market of business advice books, this one is truly unique.

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