1. Meaningful Difference. Kantar’s singular BrandZ database of 20,000+ brands across 50+ countries is based on research tracking brand equity since 2006. It’s a leading resource for studying how brand value is built.
Several years ago, Restaurant News, an industry trade press, told us that the latest, greatest new trend in restaurants was Mediterranean food. From Italian to Greek, to Turkish to Lebanese food, Mediterranean restaurants were the next big thing on the radar. Not all of these concepts took off. There was a lot of overlap in menu offerings. Falafel anyone?
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.
