"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.'"

"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."

"The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product."

"These three points are summed up in the phrase 'UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION.'

This is a U.S.P." Rosser Reeves. Reality in Advertising

Today's image: Howl. By Fred Winston. Great shot. Thanks, again, for sharing.

We can all learn something from the great Rosser Reeves. Celebrated as one of the creators of modern advertising, Reeves invented the notion of U.S.P. or what we now commonly refer to as positioning. In his 1961 book, from which we have liberated the above excerpts, Reeves also offered a new definition of advertising.

"ADVERTISING IS THE ART OF GETTING

A UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION

INTO THE HEADS OF THE MOST

PEOPLE AT THE LOWEST

POSSIBLE COST."

The definition is as he originally wrote it, in all caps.

My thought is Reeves' thinking is as fresh, relevant and important today as when first published. This classic writing belongs in your library, and you're in luck. After being out of print for decades, it's again available at a very affordable price. Use the link above - the book title - to purchase via Amazon. Reality in Advertising is a must-read for every serious student of media, marketing and advertising.

More good reads and a great listen deserving of your attention:

Kipper McGee, the venerable radio programming ace and marketing maven, has a book out. Brandwidth has dropped and available now in soft cover here and Kindle here. Don't have a Kindle? No worries, the Kindle eBook version can also be read on any computer by downloading a free reader. Highly recommended.

It's official, we have a winner. Sean Ross delivers the dernier cri and reveals the Summer Song of 2015, here Bravos, Sean. Thanks for again doing a thoughtful and thorough judging.

There's a bunch of good writing on the web but none finer on the subject matter relevant to radio than jacoBLOG. Fred Jacobs and his Jacobs Media gang do a simply exceptional job of presenting the important and interesting. Fred's latest post, Making the Donuts AND Driving the Trucks, is another example of why you need to make jacoBLOG a part of your daily weekday reading. Don't miss it if you can, here.

Related: We wrote about this distribution premise of Fred's post as a paradigm shift, one we called "Export vs Import" in 2007. It was the first year we began to advise clients on the importance of exporting content. My sense is our thinking, while perhaps ahead of its time, remains relevant today. Read the post, here

Creating killer content

has become the first

big step. It's no longer

the finished art.

Vox Jox Redux: The great Claude Hall in collaboration with the always amazing Rollye James delivers the goods via a cool new site. Updated each Monday morning, it's a curation of interesting conversations about radio and more. Rollye is also providing a killer set of links to all manner of good stuff. Congrats and cheers to Claude and Rollye on a wonderful, fun read! Worth the jump, here

Highly recommended: Penn Jillette's Marathon Life in Magic. Here's The Thing, a podcast by Alec Baldwin via WNYC, here

As many of you know, I have been absent from this space for some time. Some 48.5K tweets later, I've decided to come home and invest more attention here. Now, how to get used to a channel that is longer than 140 characters. Thanks to all for your support and encouragement.

"Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind." Rudyard Kipling

"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean." Goethe

"Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one." Sam Rayburn

Today's image: New Day 1600 by myuserid. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Marketing ace Tom Asacker has written an article that deserves your attention. Ball of Brand Confusion [via PDF here], Tom's latest offering, suggests "Marketers are obsessed with words." Tom then goes on to counsel us..."You are not in the words business; you're in the business of adding value to customers' lives."

He's right.

The focus of attention and resources should first be on the product or service experience. There is only one moment of truth, that moment of actual first usage when everything you are is determined, defined by the product or service experience.

Having the right concept while critical to success quickly becomes subordinate to execution.

But what about words? My sense is words, in the context of marketing and advertising, do play an important role in positioning, creating product or service expectations. They may also serve to affirm experience, or not. "Tell the story, take out the good lines and see if it still works" advised Hemingway.

A good example of promotion over product is the movie trailer. Too often the trailer creates expectations the movie simply fails to pay off. The trailer, showing off the movie's best moments, is sometimes better than the movie itself. We are also seeing cutting room floor footage being used in trailers (i.e., scenes not even in the final cut).

Here's the thinking of two brilliant ad men...

"Writing good advertisements is very difficult indeed. But writing good anything is very difficult. I think it was Aldous Huxley who said it is easier to write a passable sonnet than a passable advertisement. I couldn't write a sonnet to save my life, so that's not the case with me." David Ogilvy

"We approach now, and gingerly, the most dangerous word of all in advertising - originality. Here, without doubt, is the Golden Fleece for which all of Madison Avenue is seeking. Here, misty, distant, and infinitely desirable, is the copywriter's Holy Grail. Unfortunately, it has ruined more advertisers than it has ever made, for it has never been defined - and the searchers thus are never sure just what it is they're seeking...This preoccupation with 'originality,' at times, leads writers to absurd extremes. Suddenly, one of the very few truly original advertisements will appear. It may be a great success. Immediately, these writers begin to imitate it - unaware that they are copying merely the form, rather than the concealed gears, pulleys, and mechanisms that the master copywriter has concealed beneath the surface." Rosser Reeves

From the same classic writing [Reality in Advertising], Reeves reminds us of role when he quotes the legendary copy writer Claude Hopkins "...writers abandon their parts. They forget they are salesmen and try to be performers. Instead of sales, they seek applause."

One more thought from the great genius of Mr Reeves "...unless the product has a truly unique advantage, as opposed to a pre-empted claim, it is vulnerable to the manufacturer who is willing to spend money on product development and put a dramatically superior product into the field."

For media folks allow me to again sum it up in a sentence: All that's important is what comes out of the speakers and what's on the screen(s), everything else is a footnote.

Bonus: Jessica Person

Congrats & cheers: Casey the K, Lee Harris and all involved in the WLHA Staff Reunion. A wonderful time was had by all this past weekend. Check out the WLHA Tribute Site here.

Have an amazing week. Make something happen!

"Leadership involves remembering past mistakes, an analysis of today's achievements, and a well grounded imagination in visualizing the problems of the future." Stanley C. Allyn

"We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us." Christian Bovee

"One of the greatest victories you can gain over a man is to beat him at politeness." Josh Billings

Contrast!

It's what separates the winner from every other player.

It's the dramatic difference! that Tom Peters rants about (thank you very much TP!).

It's the essence of the Rosser Reeves USP, the heart of the Trout & Ries positioning premise and the real secret of the Seth Godin purple cow.

Job one: Create Contrast

Creating contrast is, in fact, the single most critical factor in every winning political campaign. It's what Ailes gets, what Klein is doing his best to make happen and, clearly, what Abrams fails to grasp. In the last century we called it "integrity in the short listen" or "impact in the short viewing" or "perceptions on the first visit." They all hold true today. How exactly is your "brand" experience dramatically different (and memorable)?

In my experience (day jobs), creating contrast has been the key to producing winning results, truly remarkable achievements and progress, in every single broadcast, cable, online, political and retail endeavor where we have been fortunate to be involved.

Contrast.

Don't even consider winning your market without first thinking about, imagining, adopting and committing to a very serious contrast strategy.

20th century challenge: get better
21st century challenge: get different

Contrast! Remember the words of Emile Zola "I am here to live out loud."

Congrats & cheers: Balihoo raises $1.5 mil in their first round (they're looking for a biz dev person)

Photo: The UW Arb, Madison
by mjlmadison
Cool pic, thanks

via The Isthmus Pool


"Advertising is the art of getting a unique selling proposition into the heads of the most people at the lowest possible cost." Rosser Reeves

The Super Bowl numbers are out. CBS posted a 42 rating, 63 share, about 93 million viewers. In Chicago WBBM-TV put up a 50 rating, 77 share (lagging the '86 season record 63 rating, 87 share). In Indy WISH-TV had a 55 rating, 79 share. At $2.6mil that's national delivery of a little under 3 cents a head. A cpm of $27.95 is remarkable. The key is the right message. It's a shame most national ads were so very poor this year. CBS posted some killer 18-49 numbers, a 57 share 7-10p. FYI - second-best total bowl numbers of all time and the third highest rated program of any kind in TV history.

Congrats & Cheers: Bant Breen named prexy of Interpublic Group's Futures Marketing Group. Smart guy, smart move.

Some of the news, most of the time: 23/6 is the working title of the original video program slated to debut next month on Barry Diller's CollegeHumor.com, IAC's Michael Jackson at the helm, editing by Daley Haggar. Well-written story by Jessica E. Vascellaro in today's WSJ here.

Reading: Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. Interesting take on what's happening in CGM. Visit their blog, Church of the Customer, here, their main site here, Amazon info here.