Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [22]
In the 54 cases in which both ads in a pair mentioned benefits, the ads that included more specific benefit claims also had 1.22 times better recall than the other ads. Thus, ads with specific benefits had recall that was half-again better than ads that did not mention benefits.
Sellers can add persuasiveness by advertising a benefit that has not been claimed by any other brand, as this next principle describes.
1.1.2. Communicate a unique selling proposition (USP)
Claude Hopkins was preparing a campaign for Schlitz beer in the early 1900s. When he toured the Schlitz plant, he nodded politely when the manager told him about the wonders of the malts and hops. But he became excited when he saw that the empty bottles were being sterilized with steam. When the manager told him that every brewery uses this process, Hopkins replied that what they did mattered less than what they advertised. He then wrote a classic campaign that said, “Our bottles are washed with live steam!”
The unique selling proposition (USP) is a short statement of a key benefit that no other competing product has claimed or articulated well. The benefit could relate to the product, price, or distribution. It should be a meaningful benefit that customers had not previously considered seriously—or a feature that is obviously related to a benefit.
Try to think of a brand that has no comparative advantages for consumers, either real or imagined. Most people find this to be difficult. In 1921, an economist, Frank Knight, said that nearly every manufacturer “has a monopoly on some features of its product.” Thus, it should be possible for advertisers to find a USP for nearly all brands.
Following in the footsteps of Hopkins and Knight, Rosser Reeves coined the term USP in 1960. He believed that all campaigns should have a USP, and he built his agency’s advertising campaigns around them.
A non-exclusive USP could open the way for a competitive brand to use comparative advertising. Thus, it is more effective if the USP can be tied to a real comparative advantage that is not found in any other brand.
Some companies have changed their product to be able to claim a USP. For example, Revlon’s advertising agency suggested that it add silicon to a hand lotion because no other product contained silicone. Revlon also changed the name to Silicare.
If the USP is stated in terms of benefits rather than features, it is likely to have a longer life span. When Ted Bates was asked to work on the Colgate toothpaste account around 1950, its tagline was: “Ribbon dental cream—it comes out like a ribbon and lays flat on your brush.” This statement contained a feature that had become commonplace as pastes replaced tooth powders. Bates replaced the feature with benefits in “Cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth.”
Here is a well-done application: Solvite, a U.K. company that makes wallpaper adhesives, decided to use sticking power as its USP. Although other brands were equally sticky, none had used it as a selling point. In one TV commercial, Solvite used the wallpaper paste to stick a pair of overalls on a panel of plywood. The next day the company put a man into the overalls; a helicopter then picked up the panel (and the man) and flew over Miami to show “the sticking power of Solvite.” The campaign, which reportedly had an incredible return on investment, received an IPA Advertising Effectiveness Award (Broadbent 2000).
And another good example: In 1997, the Bartle Bogle Hegarty agency took the 200-year-old Boddingtons beer of Manchester, England and created the highly successful “The cream of Manchester” campaign. While other northern England beers were also creamy, they had not considered advertising this (Berger 2001).
USPs are widely used in advertising. For example, our analysis of WAPB found that of the 480 full-page print ads, 56 percent claimed a USP.
Evidence on the effects of USPs
Our analysis of quasi-experimental data supports the use of