Rosser Reeves’ Marketing Milestone—
The “USP” (Unique Selling Proposition)

A powerful tool to persuade your market to buy only from you.

Dear Marketing Maven,

In our last issue, we saw that Albert Lasker made marketing history — and built an enormous personal fortune — once he realized that advertising is the application of master salesmanship to an entire market. And, just as with a human sales force, the results of every ad should be scientifically measured.

As practiced today, that also means tracking results over time to see which ads most effectively boost not only initial sales but also repeat business and, wherever possible, the lifetime value (LTV) of every customer. That’s what scientific advertising means.

How Rosser Reeves improved advertising effectiveness with the USP

Rosser Reeves was one of the giants of Madison Avenue’s golden age in the second half of the 20th century. At his ad agency, Ted Bates & Co., he helped create enormously successful advertising for mass-market products such as Anacin, Colgate, Wonder Bread and other famous brands.

In 1962, TIME magazine reported that Reeves’ ad agency had rocketed from nowhere in 1940 to become America’s fifth-largest advertising agency, with $163 million in annual billings.

Here’s how he did it…

After World War II, Reeves saw that in America’s booming economy, new products were proliferating at a rapid pace in every major market. The competition grew fiercer every year, just as it does today.

As a result, prospects were no longer asking, “Why should I buy a new car?” (or new washing machine, new refrigerator, or anything else).

Now their foremost question was:

“Why should I buy from you instead of your many competitors?”

Reeves saw clearly that in a booming consumer culture, this is the key question an ad must answer persuasively to be successful.

To answer this critical question, he developed the USP strategy — the Unique Selling Proposition.

Reeves’ philosophy is fiercely simple and uncompromising: advertising exists to sell — not to entertain, tell a joke, impress with your cleverness, show off your creativity, or win awards. It’s meant to sell. To do so, it must deliver a powerful USP.

In his classic book Reality in Advertising, Reeves laid down three requirements for a USP.

1. Make a proposition. Tell your prospect: Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.


2. Make it unique. Your competition must either be unable to make the same proposition or simply be overlooking it, giving you a golden opportunity to claim it as your own.


3. Make sure it’s important to your market. The promised benefit must be powerful enough to move substantial numbers of people to your product or service.

To accomplish this, Reeves strongly preferred working with products that offered genuine superiority, so he could dramatize their superiority and make them more memorable. He loved the phrase…

“A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.”

And by “gifted,” he meant a product that offered a desirable advantage that competitors could not match.

To illustrate, here is the story behind one of Reeves’ greatest campaigns…

Historic example: the blockbuster success story of M&M Candies

While working in Europe during the 1930s, a candy maker named Forrest Mars observed soldiers eating candy-coated chocolates and developed his own version, which he called M&Ms.

Their candy shells helped keep the chocolate from melting on soldiers’ hands. Because of this, M&Ms were adopted as a staple ration for U.S. forces during World War II. After the war, Mars wanted to sell his candies via TV, the hottest new mass-marketing medium ever to come along.

He hired Rosser Reeves.

If Reeves had been just a journeyman copywriter, he might well have taken the tired, traditional approach of selling M&Ms based on their wonderful chocolate taste. After all, that’s what prospects want in chocolate, isn’t it?

And if, in your product research, you focus only on your prospect, that’s what you may come up with by default—the obvious desires that every other product addresses—and the familiar claims the consumer has heard countless times and screens out.

But Reeves knew better. He understood that before he wrote a word about his prospect’s wants, he should research his product’s unique strengths … and see if these unique benefits could be the foundation of a Unique Selling Proposition.

He knew that in his deep research, he might discover that the product satisfies a different desire than he might have guessed at first, and this could give him a fresh, much more compelling message to feature in his advertising.

So instead of writing puffery about rich chocolate taste, Reeves did his homework and discovered something unique about M&Ms. Thanks to their thin candy shell, they would melt in your mouth, but not in your hand.

Reeves’ digging had uncovered a rich gold strike! It meant that millions of chocolate lovers could now buy a delicious treat and not worry that it would melt in their hands, making a mess. M&Ms wouldn’t turn soft and mushy on store shelves, quite relevant in an era when many stores lacked air conditioning. They wouldn’t make your fingers messy and stain your clothes. You and your children could enjoy chocolate anywhere, anytime, without needing a napkin to wipe your fingers.

Aha! He had his core message — “M&M chocolate candies melt in your mouth, not in your hand!”

Then and only then did he start creating the ads — magnificent, utterly compelling TV ads demonstrating this core strategic message. These ads were so powerful that to this day, all these decades later, I can vividly remember a commercial in which the announcer showed two closed fists on the TV screen and asked, “Which hand holds the M&Ms?”

Then he’d open one fist, showing a melted mess of chocolate. He’d say, “Can’t be this hand! Must be this one!” … and then he’d open his other hand, showing prim little unmelted M&Ms.

He’d end with the tagline, “M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand.”

If you search online, you can probably find examples of Reeves’ ads. Yes, they resemble curious antiques from a bygone era. But their selling power is unmistakable and quite instructive.

Recently I found an early version of one of these historic M&M ads: here

Based on the unique advantage Reeves’ ads spotlighted, millions of moms started buying M&Ms to put into lunch boxes so their kids wouldn’t mess up their clothes at school.

It’s the most reliable copywriting formula ever discovered: A brilliant strategy (a message based on a product’s unique benefits) plus a compelling execution (an ad that shows how this unique benefit improves the prospect’s life) = your greatest odds of achieving a blockbuster ad campaign.

Result: the Mars candy company started minting money

Reeves’ campaign helped build an enormously valuable brand. By the time Forrest Mars died in 1999, he was a multibillionaire, one of the richest men in the world. Several of Mars’ descendants have been listed among the world’s wealthiest individuals.

If you’re a copywriter, imagine the opportunity, the vast wealth, that would have been lost if Reeves hadn’t looked first at what’s uniquely strong about the product.

If you’re an entrepreneur, imagine the opportunity, the vast wealth, that would have been lost if Mars had aspired only to create another me-too chocolate candy with no clear-cut, built-in, immediately understandable, unique, and highly desirable advantage.

But because both were smart, dreamed big, and prized uniqueness, they teamed up to create the most powerful combination in all of marketing—a gifted product and a gifted pen!

What the USP has meant to me

Learning the USP strategy was the major turning point in my career. It skyrocketed my winning percentage whenever my ads were tested against ads by other copywriters.

While other copywriters focused on clever headlines and unbelievable promises backed up by little or no proof, my ads followed Reeves’ advice and made my career.

I’m not alone in my praise (and gratitude).

Jack Trout, the famous American marketing strategist, author, and advertising executive, has said of Rosser Reeves’ USP approach, “In many ways it was the beginning of modern-day marketing.”

Legendary copywriter Drayton Bird has written, “Rosser’s idea—simple, like all good ones—was to find one benefit nobody else could offer and hammer it home relentlessly.”

World-renowned business growth specialist, author, and marketing wizard Jay Abraham adds…

“Whatever it is, your USP is the single most valuable asset you possess as a business owner.”

Why would Jay Abraham make such a strong statement?

It’s because a strong USP enables you to align a constellation of powerful wealth-building principles all at once. These principles are:

1. In business, wealth is an income stream, not a one-shot event.


2. A successful USP helps you win not only the initial sale. Far more important, your USP can keep living in your customers’ minds rent-free for a lifetime, creating a stream of loyal repeat sales from buyers who consider you their automatic go-to source for whatever product or service you provide.


3. Once you become their go-to source, your loyal customers often become your unpaid auxiliary sales force, telling family, friends and co-workers why they repeatedly buy from you.


4. If you accomplish the above with an ever-expanding group of customers — and you deliver on the unique set of benefits that your USP promises — you’ll maximize your odds of achieving exceptional wealth and success in your business.

How, exactly, do you create such powerful and memorable USPs?

We’ll explore that question — with outstanding examples — in future issues of these Marketing Maxims.

Sincere wishes for a good life and (always!) higher response,

Gary Bencivenga

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