Expert: Peter Gabany - 10/2/2005

Question
Good day,
Can you tell me how does one check to see that the Unique Selling Proposition he or she comes up with is not taken by another company and it is ok to use

Regards,
Sunil Mahabir

Answer
Sunil,

I almost guarantee that the USP for your product or service will be taken by someone else. There are few ways other than competitor by competitor/product by product comparison to determine where others place their USP.

Recently though a client has come up with a novel approach for their integrity line of seed. They package it in clear bags. The idea is that they SHOW you the quality. Now, that has little to do with the quality of the product but let's use it as their specific USP. Would that mean that if you were in the same markets that you couldn't adopt the same practice? Well how about the same USP?

If this client really did nothing to position that USP or promote it in any significant way, it would be easy for you to take it over and OWN the USP. There are tons of portable MP3 players out there but only 1 iPod.

How many people are lowest price or service guaranteed and call this their USP? Let's go one step further. The USP for Volvo for over 40 years was safety. The tag line always presented as safety. There has been some recent movement away from that position. While I'm not disputing that they are still safe vehicles they are abandoning that positioning - why?

Maybe because the point of difference from other manufacturers is narrowing and in some cases out-ranking Volvo. Mercedes, BMW even Toyota are claiming significant safe car stances.

What do we learn from this? Be flexible but try and remain consistent. Look to differentiate but know that this is only one small part of a complex marketing puzzle. Look for the obvious and exploit the position and know that customer relationship is far more important than the USP.

Pete