The concept of the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) has been enshrined in marketing and sales circles for decades. Advanced by advertising executive Rosser Reeves in the late 1940s and 50s and then introduced into the lexicon in his 1961 book Reality in Advertising, he called on brands to extend their product advertising from product features to the specific unique benefits their product delivers to consumers.
As marketing professionals, we’d like to share a quick lesson in one of the fundamentals of marketing having to do with relevance, what we call being “meaningfully different.” Marketers know it’s not enough to be merely relevant to be worthy of a customer’s admiration and loyalty. Something must be relevantly different to attain this status.
A key objective for all brands is to create a promise that customers value at a level significantly greater than a price that includes not only cost, but a reasonable margin as well. Products that create such value for their customers have the potential to dominate their category.
We all believe that our brand and business is unique, that no-one else could possibly do what we do, that we are the one and only. But is an obsession with uniqueness necessarily true, or even helpful for our business and brand?
Branding Strategy Insider helps marketing oriented leaders and professionals like you build strong brands. BSI readers know, we regularly answer questions from marketers everywhere. Today we hear from Kari, a brand marketer in Toronto, Canada who asks this about brand differentiation.
