unique selling proposition – Maine Creative Services

USPs Gone Wild: Our sneakers will "make your boobs jealous"

Tom McKay — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:30:00 +0000

Talk about a hot and sexy USP (Unique Selling Proposition): Reebok says their new EasyTone walking shoe will firm up your butt and sculpt your legs so well, “your boobs will be jealous.”

That’s according to one of their ads. I haven’t seen that particular ad, but I read about it in the NY Times, so it might be true.

I did see one TV ad claiming the new sneakers tone leg and buttock muscles better than regular walking shoes. Is it just marketing BS, or could it be true? A lot of people seem to think (or at least hope) so. Sales are smoking hot, just like your legs will be.

Reebok says the EasyTone is their biggest hit in five years. And no wonder. They were designed by a real rocket scientist, former NASA engineer Bill McInnis, now Reebok’s head of advanced innovation.

But what about the controversial claim? Can the shoes live up to the boast? According to the Times,

“The claim is backed by a single study involving just five women, walking on a treadmill for only 500 steps. Some wore the EasyTone or another Reebok walking shoe, some were barefoot. Sensors indicated that the EasyTone worked glutes 28% more than regular walking shoes. Hamstring and calf muscles worked 11% harder.” (Edited slightly for length, clarity and emphasis.)

Wait — who cares if your leg and butt muscles work a little bit harder? All we want to know is, do boobs really get jealous?

Ignore customer's attitudes. Change their behavior.

Tom McKay — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:39:43 +0000

Changing customer attitudes is a difficult and expensive proposition under the best of circumstances, and this ain’t them,” says ad agency president Sharon Krinsky in a delightfully snarky blog called The Ad Contrarian. For the time being, she says ignore your ad agency’s brand babble and focus on giving your customer a practical reason to try you now.

In difficult economic times like these, she says, your marketing should focus on trying to change customer behavior, not their attitudes.

“Contrary to what most people think, behavior is easier to change than attitudes. It is easier to convince you to eat a Big Mac than convince you that a Big Mac is a good thing to eat. It is easier to convince you to go to Las Vegas than to convince you that going to Las Vegas is a smart thing to do.”

How can you woo them your way? With a good deal, a special offer, a service enhancement, innovation or new benefit. As always, focus on differentiating your product, service or company in a meaningful way.

Photo by ralphbijker

Free gas and the psychology of copywriting

Tom McKay — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:37:13 +0000

It will be the hottest marketing promotion of the summer — until it runs out of gas. Companies of all kinds are giving away tankfuls of free gas as long as you buy something: a new car, hotel room, even Calloway golf clubs. With $4 a gallon fuel prices and $50-75 fill-ups becoming part of our auto-oriented lifestyle, gasoline giveaways are a real attention-getting promotional idea.

Expect to see it a lot of them this summer, before they fade away by Labor Day, says a marketing professor at at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.

But why bother with gas cards at all? Why not just take $50 off the product price, or give customers the cash as a rebate instead? After all, money is money, right? Shouldn’t consumers be just as excited about a $50 discount as a $50 gas card?

Aha, that’s where the psychology of marketing comes in! Any copywriter worth his thesaurus knows that buying decisions are primarily driven by emotion, not logic, no matter how we try to convince ourselves otherwise. Suzanne Shu, a marketing professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, says:

“The more (a) purchase feels discretionary, like staying at a luxury hotel, the more the gas cards have impact because people can use them to justify something they might not do otherwise.”

So if you’re thinking of going down the “free gas” road for your next promotion, just remember those roads are going to get pretty congested. Link

photo credit: pixelnaiad

Did you let a good one get away?

Tom McKay — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:57:06 +0000

Seth reminds us of the first rule of b2b selling:

“If it gets to the RFP (Request for Proposals) stage, you lost.”

In other words, you should already have dazzled the prospect with your knowledge and ideas and closed the deal — long before it ever reached that point. As Godin put it:

“The RFP is an organizational punt, it’s a way of saying, ‘it’s all a commodity, we can’t decide, cheap guy wins.'”

And who wants to compete on price?

The missing ingredient in (most?) word-of-mouth

Tom McKay — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:42:40 +0000

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned Andy Sernovitz of MarketingProfs and his list of ingredients found in good word-of-mouth marketing. Then I asked you to figure out what was missing from my list. (Note: It’s on Andy’s list, but I purposely omitted it to make a point.)

The missing link is the same thing that causes a lot of products, services, blogs, and companies to crash and burn. With it, you’ve got a shot at success. Without it, you’re doomed. What is the missing ingredient?

It’s what makes something — anything — exciting, buzzworthy, viral. It’s simple, once you think of it. Ready?

It’s having a fantastic product (or service). Then adding some features that make it remarkable. (“Remarkable”= “worthy of remark” = word of mouth!)

Sure, it’s obvious and elementary. But look around at many businesses today, especially some online businesses and Web applications. You’ve got to wonder, what is so special about this? What were these people thinking? Who did they think was going to use (buy) this?

Online or off, I believe the biggest problem most small businesses have is cultivating their uniqueness. Your Unique Selling Proposition, to use the old marketing textbook phrase. It’s really tough to distinguish yourself from competitors when everyone is offering essentially the same product or service.

Finding and promoting what’s different and fantastic about you — that’s the essence of all marketing. Once you find (or add) that, copywriting and promotion becomes easy.