Creative corner - September 07

The USP. Still Unique, 50 years on? 

The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is probably the most commonly used, and misused, acronym in marketing. If I had a dollar for every time a creative, planner, account person or marketing director referred to the USP - ‘this is our USP', ‘what is our USP?', ‘we need an USP!' - I'd be retired on a beach somewhere.

However, not a lot people know that the creator of one of marketing's most famous and powerful phrases and concepts is a man named Rosser Reeves, former chairman of what was then, The Ted Bates Company.

Rosser never gained the same type of fame in advertising as David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett because he never had his name above the door. To quote friend and foe David Ogilvy after Rosser passed away in 1984: "Rosser, you taught me that the purpose of advertising was to sell the product... thank you.... you taught me my trade."

Reeves' book, Reality in Advertising, which outlines his thoughts on what makes effective advertising, became the most seminal in advertising during the second half of the 20th century.

50 years on, I for one think that the USP is still very relevant today as it was and has been since its creation by one the founders of the Bates culture. In fact, I still hear the term USP used inside and outside agencies today, and with regular frequency.

Why is this so? Well I think it's simply because good ideas last. And the USP was a great way to force us marketers to distill a concept or thought into one powerful, persuasive point. A point that would organise and inspire all that had a job in the food chain of marketing the product, service or brand in question.

It also helped us think from the receiver's perspective and interrogate the substance of an idea or proposition - is it unique, is it persuasive and does it propose something? I know many a good creative who would die for a brief that just told them that, sans all the other hyperbole, we seem to find comfort in rationalising a thought. Just think about what the USP's would have been for some of the world's longest serving brand ideas - for example:

Nike was all about celebrating the athlete in everyone. Apple was about standing for personal creativity and Virgin was about challenging the conventional.

The only thing that has changed a bit since Rosser penned the USP, is that product parity is rife. Rosser's belief was that for a USP to be truly unique, the product had to possess something unique and of benefit to the customer.

With competition exploding over the last 30 years, giving consumers more categories and channels to consider, it has become much harder to present a tangible uniqueness. This led to much discussion and debate in the 80's and 90's, where many people argued that the USP was too functional and the ESP (Emotional Selling Proposition) made more sense.

In 2007, we could even argue ethical selling proposition makes more sense. Looking at it from this standpoint, one can also argue that new acronyms are just old ways for new marketing folk to sell their services. New acronyms do not mean that the USP is obsolete, but that society is evolving and that what sells is changing. Therefore, cracking a lasting USP requires understanding key change points in society.

So, even though the USP has moved on a lot from the tangible to the intangible, it still helps us organise and inspire ideas, which in today's world of personal circuits, gestate in different forms of content.

And it is this content that needs to be less push and more pull, inviting people to engage with brands. The consumer's control in opting in and out of different content and media, makes the USP even more important in developing relevant ideas that cut through their ever increasing ‘not for me' guard.

So, long live the USP concept and dear Rosser. They both remain unique.

Digby Richards, chief operating officer, BatesAsia 141