Understanding USP the Rosser Reeves Way

Friends’ thank you very much for taking out time from your busy schedule to read my blog(s). Sharing knowledge with you has become my passion now. I feel encouraged after reading your feedback in the comment’s column. Friends’ Everything, I do or say is PR. I’m delighted to share one more blog i.e. 135th Blog titled ‘Understanding USP the Rosser Reeves Way’. 

Friends’ If you’re working in the field of media, advertising and PR or student of mass media – mass communication you might have heard or used the term USP. Do you know from where the term USP had originated? USP was developed by advertising agency Ted Bates & Company and promoted in a book ‘Reality in Advertising’ by Rosser Reeves, published in 1961. Rosser Reeves (1910-1984) was a highly successful advertising person and the originator of the Unique Selling Proposition, also known as the Unique Selling Point or USP.

Reeves believed that the purpose of advertising is to sell. He insisted that an advertisement or commercial should show off the value or Unique Selling Proposition, or USP of a product, not the cleverness or humour of a copywriter. The unique selling proposition USP or unique selling point is a marketing concept first proposed as a theory to explain a pattern in successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s.

The USP states that such campaigns made unique propositions to customers that convinced them to switch brands and has been used to describe one's "personal brand" in the marketplace. Today, the term ‘USP’ refer to any aspect of an entity that differentiates it from similar entities. Communicating the USP is a key element of branding.

Friends’ Unique Selling Proposition or Unique Selling Point or USP is a factor that a business has, that makes it different and or better than others in the similar category of product or service. It makes a product or business stand out from the rest in a market.  Dr. James Blythe, Professor of Marketing at the University of Westminster, London (UK) described USP as one feature of the product that most stands out as different from the competition, and is usually a feature that conveys unique benefits to the consumer.

In his 1961 best-seller ‘Reality in Advertising’, Reeves defined his industry changing concept in three parts:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: ‘Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit’.

2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique; either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.

3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the target audience, i.e. pull over new customers to buy the product.

To sum up; later the term ‘USP’ was replaced by the term ‘Positioning’ popularized in Al Ries and Jack Trout's book ‘Positioning: Battle for Your Mind’. ‘Positioning’ determines what place a brand should occupy in the consumer's mind compared to the competition. Positioning, which is also commonly known as mindshare marketing; the aim is to stake a claim to the cognitive association in consumers' minds, connecting the brand's trademark with the benefit claim as simply, consistently and frequently as possible.

Thank you for reading the blog.

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