Instead, the USP became yet another repository for jargon or marketing fluff. Look at all the deodorant on the shelf at your pharmacy. There is no meaningful difference that couldn’t be copied if a rival cared to. The ingredients are mostly identical. Each of those has a USP displayed on the packaging or else buried somewhere in a Powerpoint deck.

If you worked at the company trying to sell deodorant, you would know the small details that make your product different. When you brief the agency, you would point out those differences and magnify them. And why not? From an internal perspective, those differences are what you and your team worked so hard on to develop this product. Those details would validate you. Or your boss.

But a strategist is also a diplomat. You have to find the information that makes it OK for stakeholders to understand that their chemical compound, though different, is not meaningful to the consumer. Research can play a role to identify, confirm or debunk a USP. In-home user tests, interviews, focus groups or surveys will help find the reasons why people buy your product or competitors. If you go in open-minded the research can guide you.

What would the USP be for a chocolate bar? It’s chocolate, nuts, crisped rice, caramel. There really isn’t anything truly ‘unique.’ Yet, we kept offering them to fill the space in the strategy for a USP. Tradition isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a waste of time in some cases. The Unique Selling Proposition has value if, and only if, the product actually has one. If not, leave it behind. As with all tools, take what’s useful for creating better work and skip what’s left. That’s why Snickers has success talking about hunger, and not a specific product detail.

It is worth spending time searching for a USP. It is a powerful connection to your target audience. The next best thing is understanding the market your product or brand serves and make sure your brand is the leader in that area. If your client sells furniture, for example, you may need to own ‘comfort.’ Or you may need to own ‘decor.’ But your client needs to be perceived as the best in the market of their customer need to be the category leader. Michelin may be known for safety, but if customers didn’t associate connect ‘safety’ with tires, sales would be down the drain and there would be an RFP out.

The Drivers Of Consumer Motivation

Some in the industry quip that there are only eight strategies to sell anything. That may actually be an overestimate. Phil Barden lays out the top six motivations that drive consumers and can be the basis for your strategy.

Barden backs this with neuroscience and a diagram of the parts of the brain activated by each motivation in his book Decoded. He lists the three primary implicit consumer (and human) goals as security, autonomy and excitement. He adds the additional goals of discipline, adventure and enjoyment. His feeling, and I can’t disagree, is that this list “is complete in the sense that nothing important is missing when it comes to analyzing the motivational drivers of categories, brands and communications.”

Understanding the implicit goals of consumers is why I don’t believe in the USP. The USP implies that the additive chosen by a food engineer is more important to purchase than the desire of the customer. It’s not. Usually.

Instead, I subscribe to the commitment a brand will make to the customer to meet their goal; explicit or implicit. Marketers want to build relationships with customers, they want to transcend the transactional and build loyalty. Customers probably don’t want this in all reality.  But if you want to be meaningful to customers, then you will want to write a brand promise.

The brand promise is quite literally the promise the brand can make to its best customers – and keep. The job in strategy is to build on a foundation of truth. But here’s how this idea differs from the USP. The promise has to meet the customer at least half way. Michelin tires promise to be the safest tires for your car. That’s a promise the customer cares about, based on implicit goals. In this case: security. A USP for tires might be the combination of reinforcement mesh and tread pattern providing advanced grip. Most consumers don’t care. They care about being safe on the road. When they’re researching tires, they might read how the tires provide that safety, but in all likelihood they will look at price and read reviews. If anything.

“And keep.” If those last two words won’t hold true in any draft of the brand promise, throw out the idea. The promise itself has to be true of course, but if it can’t be virtually guaranteed, that’s not the promise you want the brand to make. So it’s all about proving the promise. This can be the first stage of a campaign brief. This is why I rarely use service in any form as a brand promise. It’s too easy to fail – too many variables, too hard a promise to keep.

The Role Of Brand Campaigns

Michelin could simply demonstrate the stopping power of their tires with videos or even print ads to show how much farther other tires slid. It’s a powerful way to prove the promise. The campaign phase is all about building the triangle that connects the brand, the customer and their goals. The three things must all align to earn a sale or to build loyalty.

Campaigns demonstrate that the brand understands the customer and their goals. Often marketers talk about the emotional response of consumers to advertising. While emotion is important, it’s more important for the advertising or message to get consumers to feel they will be able to achieve their goals.

The brand promise is the communication of the explicit goals of the customer. This brand will let you do this. The campaign needs to be designed to touch the implicit goals Barden gave us above. The brand promise identifies the ‘what,’ the campaign presents the ‘how.’ If there’s an emotion to be pulled from the consumer, it might be “you get me and what I’m trying to do.”

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Adam Pierno. Excerpted and adapted from his book Under Think It.

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The best products are referred to as ‘stars’ and are in the high growth, high-income quadrant. As you invest, you have the potential for strong returns with an established product.

Strong moves with media and messaging with stars will pay dividends. Go big. An example of a star category is job boards. There is no limit to the growth potential of that market because people will always be looking for new jobs, and there is no reason a new player couldn’t introduce a new dominant brand.

‘Dogs’ are the opposite of stars. Dogs aren’t generating money and there isn’t strong market growth, meaning major investing will have to happen to even hope for profit. Don’t go all in on media here. Messaging will have to be innovative to break through and earn awareness. Laptops are dogs as a category. Competition and substitution is high and differentiation is hard earned.

Look for ‘cash cows,’ the businesses that are in low market growth areas but generating a lot of cash through outsized or growing market share. These products usually have high awareness and are churn and burn brands for campaigns. Reminders and trigger media will keep revenue coming in. Smart phones are a cash cow category. The market is mature and overall growth is maxed out in the United States. Brands are just reminding consumers to upgrade. And statistically they do every 2.2 years.

‘Question marks’ provide the biggest risk and reward. These are products or businesses with low market share in a high growth market. A competitor to Airbnb would be a question mark because it would undoubtedly play a challenger role in a market that Airbnb is growing almost single handedly. It’s possible that Homeaway or another new competitor could enter and grow with the market as more people adopt home sharing as a practice.

Here you’ll also need to consider where the product is in its lifecycle. The four major stages are Introductory, Growth, Maturity and Decline. Messaging and investment would obviously differ in the growth and decline phases, but by how much depends on where the business falls in a Boston Matrix. A cash cow in decline is still worth some media spend, as long as you are monitoring sales and market trends to know where the end of the line is.

First introduced in 1970, the matrix continues to prove a valuable addition to every brand manager’s toolbox.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Adam Pierno. Excerpted and adapted from his book Under Think It.

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To help bring STEEP to life, let’s run through an analysis for electric car and engineering brand Tesla.

Social:

The initial product strategy attracted a wealthy user base and positioned the product as premium. Traditional eco-consumers favored the Prius, but upscale buyers came to Tesla for the prestige, a part of their stated strategy to move downmarket. Acceptance for electric vehicles has grown in the US and abroad, while Tesla has introduced lower priced products more accessible to the masses.

Technology:

Tesla has innovated with battery, charging and self-driving features making their line desirable and ahead of trends. Major carmakers haven’t figured out how to make and market a comparable vehicle in the US yet. The Prius outperforms on efficiency but underperforms on power, a sacrifice many Americans are not yet ready to make. Tesla shared its patents publicly, a move that demonstrates the brand’s commitment to improving tech for electric cars and renewable energy. Tesla’s early self-driving technology positions the brand well with the trend of autonomous vehicles replacing traditional cars.

Economic:

The growing market for electric cars and batteries means Tesla’s promise of lower cost cars is coming true. With many states still offering incentives for electric vehicles and for alternative power sources that return power to the grid, the time may be right for mainstream adoption in the next 18 to 24 months. On the commercial side, manufacturing facilities are in demand in the US, with individual states competing with subsidies and other tax incentives to take the sting out of the start-up costs.

Ecological:

Fossil fuels are widely accepted to be passé. Electric power has fewer damaging effects on the environment and is gaining consumer appeal on a mass market level. However, the ecological costs of manufacturing batteries may offset some of the fuel benefits. Long term, the eco-damage may be less severe, but regulators and consumers have a lot to learn about these benefits.

Political:

It is a challenging time for innovation in the automotive space because the big players are well entrenched with government lobbyists. Each of the big automakers and oil companies is invested in existing models and working on legislation to extend the service lives of current vehicles. Pressure is on for politicians and candidates to demonstrate commitment to voters on ecological issues and change.

As you can see, STEEP analysis can be a revealing marketing tool for evaluating different external factors which impact an organization.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Adam Pierno. Excerpted and adapted from his book Under Think It.

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Porter found the process not only useful for developing the strategic plan, but also critical to understanding the structure of the industry. Nothing happens in a vacuum, but for some reason advertising agencies expect strategy for their clients to work that way. For those who employ it, the five forces allows them to have a look around the world their client’s business inhabits and map out the wider context. It’s impossible to make decisions without that context. Or at least, intelligent decisions.

The First Force Is Competitive Rivalry. This force looks at the intensity of the competition in the industry, but goes beyond the traditional. We start with the known category players and examine their offerings, pricing and customer base. When we describe rivalry, it’s considered high if there are few players, product or category parity and low or no barriers to prevent customers from switching brands. The cola wars are a great example of high competitive rivalry in an industry. Two big players, nearly identical products and ease of switching. In this environment, advertising and price wars often occur.

The Bargaining Power Of Suppliers Is Force Two. As in any industry, and in the first force, competition drives cost. This goes levels and levels deep. Apple has a potential problem with screen manufacturers because suppliers are rare. The fewer suppliers, the more control they have over pricing.

This is why the DeBeers Corporation goes to such lengths to control the supply of diamonds. They’re the only supplier so they get to keep costs high. If you’re a manufacturer that uses diamond for your product, profitability is threatened by the control DeBeers has. If they raise prices, you are forced to choose between raising prices of your own product or cutting margins.

Force Number Three Is The Bargaining Power Of Customers. When there are many brands in a category, and high ease of switching as identified in competitive rivalry. Customers can impact pricing, especially when they are an in-demand or smaller audience. This all relates back to the laws of supply and demand. Many options for consumers usually drives down cost and makes business harder and less attractive.

Mattresses are an example of an industry that has suffered from increased bargaining power of customers. Going back 10 years, there were only a few players locked into tight distribution deals and (overly high) prices. But advances in materials, production, shipping and distribution via the internet has loosened the choke hold of Sealy and Serta. Customers rarely need to buy in this category, and they finally have some control, which they are happily exercising. A handful of foam mattress brands have broken through, thanks to renewed bargaining power of consumers. Leesa, Tuft & Needle, Loom & Leaf, Lull; too many to count. Now, prices are coming down as competition has increased bargaining power of customers.

As with industry attractiveness, strategists must look at the ability for other companies to enter the market. Force Number Four Is The Ability Of New Entrants. Especially today, this is a huge concern, which is often (always?) overlooked. See: Amazon buys Whole Foods. What other companies or brands could enter the market we’re examining?

Using our cola example, Virgin entering the market was a splashy move based on their understanding of the marketing and distribution needed to compete. Ultimately failing in US markets, they did well in the early stages. The critical piece for strategists is to look at the marketplace and investigate what other brands could make a move to enter the market. Not easy to do, but necessary to protect brand and business interests over the long term. Most companies don’t look for indirect models. Look at your client’s business and make some educated guesses about who may enter their category based on similar audiences, distribution, products or supply chain.

In the same vein is The Fifth And Final Force – The Threat Of Substitutes. Once, Blackberry was a powerful company because of the uniqueness of its flagship product. It’s barely mentioned anymore. Why? Touchscreen smartphones from Apple and Google’s partners et al replaced it. So, why did consumers switch? The product was superior and offered at a competitive price point through intelligent distribution with mobile carriers. In Apple’s case, they also built a unique supplier network that kept Blackberry from making any defensive moves. If you remember, the co-CEOs of Blackberry dismissed the iPhone because of battery life and security deficiencies – core strengths of their device. They didn’t understand that people would be willing to make that substitution for a touchscreen experience. “We’ll be fine,” Jim Balsillie was quoted as saying.

The five forces model helps fill in the context, but it leaves out partnerships and strategic alliances. It’s also just the model, and importantly does not include guidance for action. As a strategist, that’s where you come in. None of these tools mean anything on their own. They have strength when you tie tools together with marketing prowess to draw conclusions. When competitive rivalry is high, advertising needs to stand out. Niche markets create more power for the brand, so you need to figure out ways to put your brand or your client’s brand in a niche or to emulate one.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Adam Pierno. Excerpted and adapted from his book Under Think It.

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Let’s cover some of the key concepts today starting with the marketing mix – the Four P’s which was developed in the late 1950s. Of the four, three of them – Product, Price and Place – are assigned to the agency 99% of the time. The agency gets to skin the last P, Promotion. This is flawed. Separating promotion from the other parts is an outmoded thought. This is especially true with digital products, which may actually only have 2 Ps. Product, Place and Promotion may all be the same thing.

Agencies have become much more involved in Place. There are countless great examples of experiential campaigns and executions that help re-contextualize the Product or brand for consumers. For example, 360i helped Nestle’s Lean Cuisine reframe the promise of the product by executing an experiential campaign in public spaces like New York’s Grand Central Station. They invited women to define how they would like to be measured instead of weight – choosing attributes and descriptions of their accomplishments instead of pounds. An artist helped bring each to life by painting a scale which the women were invited to hand in an exhibit showcasing all of the scales. Women used phrases like “Back in College at 55” or “Caring for over 200 homeless children per day” to show that lives are more than just one metric on the scale.

The most effective client/agency relationships allow for collaboration across the spectrum of the marketing mix.

When Crispin Porter + Bogusky found research that showed consumers were eating even more on the go than was understood in 2004, they created a product – not an ad – for Burger King: Chicken Fries. The packaging is designed to fit in a car’s cupholder. The product was an initial hit, and when the brand pulled Chicken Fries off the menu, fans begged for their return via reddit and other online forums. They’ve been on the menu ever since.

Takeaway: If you are going to make an impact on your client’s business, you need to be thinking about the entire business and not waiting for the last P. Understanding how they arrived at the product and pricing – if not advising on those elements proactively – is critical.

I’m not the first to suggest the Four Ps are no longer relevant. There were attempts to add three more P’s (People, Process, Physical Evidence). There are also dozens of models that have been introduced to replace it. For example, The Four C’s. There are probably five models called the Four Cs that can be found. Professor Bob Lauterborn introduced his Four C’s in the early 1990’s which updated the Four P’s with modern terms. Consumer Wants and Needs which replaces Product, Convenience to Buy which replaces Place, Cost to Satisfy standing in for Price and Communication for Promotion. Professor Koichi Shimizu authored his own updated version: Commodity, Cost, Communication, Channel.

Another version of the next Four C’s adds new dimension. Clarity means making your message simple and understandable. Consistency means reinforcing that simple message repeatedly to break through. Credibility means serving messages that consumers can find believable and worthy of paying attention to. Competitiveness means explaining how the brand or product is different or better than competitors.

Before we go too far with messaging nuance, let’s look at overarching modes of communication. Today, there is a push towards the societal concept of marketing management (think: Toms Shoes or Even Stevens subs). Some brands are thinking more broadly about their message, a far cry from product or selling concept. Product concept says if we create something great, we will not need to market it. Selling concept says if we promote the hell out of our product we will drive sales. Marketing concept says we should identify a consumer need and design products to meet that need. This is known today as product market fit. In the product concept, we are much more tactical and less focused on the brand promise. This usually applies to highly specialized products and markets today. Societal concept is most interesting because in essence it closes a loop back to a product focus, while hiding that fact in a brand message that is powerful to a specific audience.

Toms Shoes offers a powerful societal message. For each pair you buy you trigger a donation to someone with no shoes. That is a powerful and unique value proposition. Could this work with a luxury car or private jet flight? Not likely. Because most of us don’t consume those things, or think people are truly ‘in need’ of them. It wouldn’t work for private jet flight, but might work for coach domestic air travel. Pay attention to the types of products and brands that use the societal concept. They are typically lower in the commodity chain. In fact, the first designs of Toms Shoes were on the plain side. People didn’t buy them for looks. They bought them because compared to Keds or another utilitarian type of footwear, they served the same purpose, made a statement normally hard to share – and actually helped someone.

Ridesharing brands like Uber and Lyft would never be able to use the societal concept. Until maybe now. Initially, Uber was treated like a luxury; the private driver for everyone. In fact, the approach used was initially marketing concept, then transitioned to product concept. In Uber’s case, 70% of the communication you’ve ever seen has been recruiting for drivers – not recruiting customers!

With the emergence of Lyft, Flywheel and dozens of other brands the time might be right for a rideshare brand to use societal concept. In fact, Lyft was initially conceived as a social good to reduce the number of cars (and their ecological damage) on the road but this hasn’t made it into their consumer marketing as they’ve scaled.

Now that ride sharing has become widely accepted and commoditized, a brand could shift. For every ride, we donate to a transit service in Haiti or donate subway cards in inner cities. That might be a meaningful differentiator between Brand A and Brand B in this space.

What I’m describing is part of product positioning. How do people think about the product in the context of their category. There are a lot of shoe brands, Toms is the one that gives back. There are a lot of rideshare brands, Uber is the evil one. Axe deodorant creates desirability for those who wear it but Degree keeps you drier longer, a factor in social acceptance.

Takeaway: All of this is usually decided by the brand’s marketing team before they brief you. Sometimes, the claim they ask you to make isn’t very strong or might be true but isn’t compelling. Make it your business to understand and have a point of view on how you will sell, based on what will motivate the audience.

Joy – Pain = Value

To describe all the mental processes we make when we consider a brand I would have to write all about neuroeconomics. Luckily, Phil Barden already wrote Decoded.

To boil down what is critical for strategists to understand – different sets of mental operators drive the way we think as consumers. We essentially weigh the joy we will derive from a product. This is heavily skewed by our perception of the brand.

Once our brains score how much joy the thing will provide, we begin deducting points for pain. This could be things like high price, effort to buy or waiting for delivery. If the pain doesn’t cut too far into the joy, we act. We click. We subscribe. We buy.

Inside an agency, there is often fierce debate about brand ads versus promotional ads. It’s possible to do both, as many great restaurant brands have proven in their TV ads, with 25 seconds for branding and five seconds for the value or promotion.

But this goes further than the brand and the offer. People lose joy whenever they encounter friction. Starbucks has mastered reducing friction. Customers walk in, order, wave their phone and leave. Better yet, they order on the app before they arrive, pick up their drink and leave. It’s no coincidence that sales increased shortly after they introduced this feature to their app. It reduced pain and increased value.

But, sales started to wane because there was different pain being caused. Non-users waiting while mobile orders were prepared ahead of theirs. A reduction in conversation and engagement with baristas due to technology. For non-users of the app, pain increased and value decreased.

Takeaway:  As you think about messaging in campaigns, find the right weight for increasing the joy and diminishing the pain. As you think about execution, find ways to make it easier for people to engage. Increase joy. Decrease pain. Whatever those may be to the end user.

Satisfaction Is Not Enough

Satisfaction is a traditional and now weak measure of brand or product success. This is often measured and reported by Consumer Reports and J.D. Power among others.

When you last ate at McDonald’s were you satisfied? Were your very basic needs and expectations met? Most likely yes. Great! Success for the brand! What if I asked if you to rank the experience at McDonald’s on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being Nordstrom service with Lyft convenience and Houston’s food? Still satisfied?

What if I asked you the basic Net Promoter question – would you recommend this McDonald’s based on this experience? Comparing the value of ‘satisfied’ customers to the value of Net Promoters tells us that satisfaction is baseline. If customers aren’t satisfied you don’t have a business. But it takes much more to sustain and grow.

Takeaway: Satisfaction was a common measurement device before brands began designing delightful experiences. Just satisfying customers means losing them soon. Design programs to overachieve and measure more significant indicators to prove success and brand growth. Satisfaction is now meaningless. Aim higher.

You don’t need an MBA to think strategically about brand marketing. But you do need to understand the key concepts well enough to communicate and to know what they’re trying to do. The concepts above are basic items that are often discussed on the brand side, and rarely mentioned inside the agency.

A lot of the foundational pieces of marketing don’t make sense anymore given the way consumers find products. And the way consumers market for products on behalf of brands. But it’s important to understand. Most musical virtuosos don’t start that way. They learn the basics before breaking the rules and creating their own. Understand how marketing works so you can know how to bend it to your goals.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Adam Pierno. Excerpted and adapted from his book Under Think It.

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