The post discusses Chelsea lip gloss, made by Chanel, which is described by its maker as follows:

This brilliant pink lipgloss delivers the ultimate pop of colour, along with subtle shimmer and a high-shine glow. Part of the limited-edition Knightsbridge Collection, its striking hue is named for a thriving artistic and cultural area of London.

Photo by buzzybee

In Holly’s memorable phrase, the gloss is, in reality, ‘weaker than Anthony Worrall Thompson’s resolve in the Tesco cheese aisle’. She ascribes the discrepancy between copy and product to the writer being given little or no information from which to work.

It’s a point well worth making, but what’s most striking for me is the fact that the copy devolves to exaggeration by default – something that happens in many situations, regardless of source material, product, audience or brand. (And I do it myself.)

Here’s a few definitions of some words used in the Chanel description (from Collins):

brilliant adj. 1. shining with light; sparkling. 2. (of a colour) reflecting a considerable amount of light; vivid. 3. outstanding; exceptional… 4. splendid; magnificent…

ultimate adj. 2. the highest or most significant…

glow n. 3. brilliance of colour

striking adj. 1. attracting attention; fine; impressive… 2. conspicuous; noticeable

On one level, these show that the writer did a pretty good job, in the sense that the words chosen have just the right connotations for the concepts they’re trying to convey. But on another level, they describe an idealised version of the product, rather than the physical reality. Why do we write this way?

Why we exaggerate

The main reason, I suppose, is just to put the product in the best possible light: to communicate the benefits in the most powerful way. But this is clearly a question of degree: you can stretch credibility too far.

Another reason is the need to sustain aspirational brand values in descriptive writing. At the level of concepts and slogans, we can aim for something elegant and thought-provoking that dramatises a benefit without having to say that much (show, don’t tell). Slogans like ‘I’m lovin’ it’ and ‘Just do it’ are pure surface, explaining nothing. But when the context or format obliges us to go deeper, problems arise. Describing the physical reality of the product while staying true to the values projected by the headline or brand can lead directly to exaggeration. We can see this very clearly in the Chanel example.

Thirdly, there’s simple force of habit. Copywriters remove or recast negative ideas, elide or gloss over weak points and bend the truth to make the argument as watertight as possible. It’s simply what we do; having acquired the necessary skills, we become unconsciously competent and polish up the message almost without thinking.

And because it’s what copywriters do, there’s an element of cultural or peer pressure; a sort of verbal arms race. When everyone else is exaggerating, we have to exaggerate too, or our message might not prevail. If our lip-gloss shade is ‘bright’, and a competitor’s is ‘brilliant’, who’s going to close that sale?

The effect of exaggeration

I think it’s fair to say that, for most people, outlandish exaggeration is simply the accepted language of commerce. It’s just how adverts talk. We’d be alarmed to hear such words from a real person, but we’ve become completely accustomed to hearing them from brands.

As a result, we’ve become inured to their effect. The currency of marketing communication has been hyperinflated, with marketers shoveling on the hyperbole and audiences ignoring it, seeing through it or perhaps actively rejecting it. Exaggeration is the monosodium glutamate of content, habituating the reader to ever-stronger flavours while also making everything taste the same.

As a sidenote, it’s interesting to consider the implications of this for social-media marketing. While one brand channel (Twitter, Facebook) is saying ‘be my friend’, another one (TV, press) is screaming dementedly in the customer’s earhole about how great the product is. Is that really the best basis for engagement?

In some cases, however, I personally believe that exaggeration is more effective than we might like to admit. I’m thinking about zappy ads for toys aimed at children, scaremongering ads about germs aimed at homemakers or exciting ads for alcoholic drinks aimed at young adults. When the audience is particularly receptive or susceptible, I think the exaggerated idea is, at least partly, taken at face value. It might not lead to a purchase – the child sees the ad and pesters the parent, who says ‘no’ – but it still has an effect. When we hear or read language, we have to respond, even if only in thought.

The Innocent way

Seen in this light, exaggeration is irrelevant or ineffective at best, cynically manipulative at worst. So what else might work?

Well, there’s certainly scope for fresher language – words that are still vivid and forceful, but more precisely attuned to the actual nature of the product and/or less familiar in their effect.

For example, take the word ‘exciting’. It gets pinned to a vast range of products and services, very few of which are, in fact, very exciting. As a result, it has lost all its power in the commercial context. If we want to evoke excitement, we need to find a new way to say it. Other usual suspects include ‘great’, ‘delicious’ and, in B2B, ‘innovative’.

Some brands, such as Innocent, seek to make their words fresh again by taking the road less followed and shaking up the usage. Here’s what they might have done with the Chelsea prod desc:

Cheerful Chelsea is as thrilling as the district that shares her name and pinker than an embarrassed flamingo. Take her along to any party where only the shiniest, most shimmery shades are welcome. Part of the limited-edition Knightsbridge Collection.

It’s still exaggerated – more so, probably – but at least it’s unexpected, and the use of wackywriting takes the edge off the hyperbole. The only problem with this is that it’s pretty labour-intensive, and may simply be too costly if you’ve got 500 product descriptions to create. (Many Innocent-style brands, including Innocent, write a lot of their own copy – killing two birds with one stone by saving costs and keeping a tight grip on their tone.)

The plain way

What about just toning down the writing? If we pull right back from exaggeration, what is the effect?

Chelsea is named after an area of London. It’s pink and shiny, with a sort of sparkle effect.

If exaggeration is monododium glutamate, this is plain boiled rice. In its effect, it’s weirdly point-blank and conversational, pulling you up short by being so totally different from what you expect. It also gives you the feeling of being addressed by a real person instead of a manic shrieking automaton.

However, the price of honesty is eccentricity, as a result of which it may completely miss the target. Exaggeration is so widely used that it’s almost an established style that readers have come to expect – if we take a very unexpected tone, they might be disorientated and just bail out.

Cognitive dissonance

This recent piece by Nick Usborne points out the futility of trying to change the reader’s mind. If you attempt to communicate an idea that is not in tune with your reader’s beliefs, the result is cognitive dissonance – a jarring discrepancy between what the reader already knows and what you are trying to tell them. ‘As you write your copy,’ notes Nick, ‘Your reader needs to be nodding his or her head.’

He’s right, of course. The way to sell is to identify those who are most likely to buy and focus on showing them compelling benefits – to ‘persuade the reader to do something they are already inclined to do,’ as Nick puts it.

When we resort to exaggeration, I think we are showing that we have given up on this goal. Instead of setting out a reasonable case for a purchase, we’ve resorted to turning up the volume in an attempt to browbeat the reader into buying. In a way, exaggeration denotes a loss of faith in the product, or our ability to sell it, or both. That’s why, when it comes to persuasion, less may well be more.

Proposition Joe tries to out-think Marlo, fails

Clearly, they hadn’t bothered to check my rankings before the approach, even for the most obvious keywords. It’s hard to understand the omission. After all, how hard is it to type a word or two into a search engine? (Particularly if you’re a search agency…)

The crux of the agency’s approach was the result they’d achieved for a well-known national retailer, putting them on page one for a generic term, from nowhere. But my situation is different. I need steady incremental gains or defensive maintenance, not a ‘big bang’ result from a low base. So those results, though impressive, weren’t the right way to persuade me to take action. They were all to do with the agency’s success rather than mine.

Contrast that with the double-glazing salesmen who went to the trouble of checking out the windows at the back of our house before they knocked on the door, so they could offer to replicate our 1920s mullions in the replacement sealed units.

Bless. How could they know how much we hated the umbrageous, uncleanable mullioned panes, and longed to be rid of them for ever? Also, to be honest, I was a bit creeped out by having someone check out the house without our knowledge. So we used someone else. But at least they made an effort.

The difference between these two approaches is in the value propositions behind them. Whereas the SEO agency were offering their skills and achievements and hoping my needs would fit with them, the window sellers had something to offer that chimed with my needs – in theory at least.

Of course, defining your market is always the first step. There’s no point attracting random attention for its own sake – you need relevant attention. But in this case, I was squarely in the target segment for both firms. It’s just that one came cap in hand, the other bearing gifts.

In order to make an approach based on your value proposition, you have to know what it is. Lots of B2B firms don’t. Falling into the classic trap of mistaking features for benefits, their ‘proposition’ is actually more like a CV. Effective B2B marketing needs to arrive like a birthday present, not a job application – bringing good news, benefits and improvements right to the prospect’s door.

It may be that the prospect knows nothing about the solutions you offer. They might need some in-depth technical or commercial explanation before the benefits are fully clear. That’s fine, as long as your marketing starts from one of their problems, priorities or desires and offers them a benefit.

As I’ve blogged before, most B2B benefits ultimately boil down to one of three things: make money, save money or save time. If you can show why your product or service does one of those things, any business owner or manager is going to listen (provided the benefit outweighs the cost or hassle). Relevant case studies and testimonials are powerful persuaders.

Around those core benefits are the other ‘hard’ elements of the value proposition – service, consultancy, customisation, after-sales support, training and so on. Then there are ‘soft’ elements like your culture, your approach and your general ‘personality’ as a business. All these aspects need to come together into something that prospects genuinely value.

I’m sometimes surprised by how often these issues come up while I’m working on a website or a brochure. Instead of being told what the client’s value proposition is, I have to work it out before I can take their project forward. It just shows how powerful a discipline copywriting can be in terms of clarifying ideas.

‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’

If, like me, you fondly remember being taken to the cinema to see George Lucas’ magnum opus in the late 1970s, you probably can’t read those words without a little shiver of anticipation. Appearing silently in cyan text on a black ground at the beginning of the film, they conjured up far more magic than the doughty, bisyllabic title ‘Star Wars’ ever could.

Such is the power of the tagline. Even if your company name is an emotional blank (‘IBM’), you can always bolt some words on to it to make it sing (‘I think, therefore IBM’). Provided your audience makes a lasting link between the phrase and your brand, you’ve added a new verbal and emotional ‘hook’ to your value proposition.

This article looks at a few types of company tagline, weighing up the pros and cons of each, and discusses the special case of B2B company taglines.

What is a company tagline?

A company tagline is simply a brief phrase that is closely allied with a company name or brand.

It can appear in a range of media, typically including websites, stationery, printed marketing collateral, TV advertisements and so on. Often, the tagline appears in close proximity with the company name and/or logo; in some cases it is ‘locked up’ with the logo so that graphic and phrase form a single visual unit.

Is there a difference between a slogan and a tagline? Well, in my mind, a slogan is associated with a particular product, service or marketing campaign, whereas a tagline is associated with a company or a brand. Some marketers express this distinction as ‘product tagline’ vs ‘company tagline’. So you can have several slogans or product taglines, but only one company tagline. And your slogans are likely to change more often than your company tagline, which is a key part of building equity in a brand long-term.

Every company tagline is different – or should be. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Lloyds TSB – see below.) However, there are recognisable types. Let’s look at a few of them.

Factual taglines

These taglines simply state a fact about the company.

• ‘Gaming since 1981’ (Computer & Video Games)

Whether these taglines work depends on whether the fact invoked constitutes a customer benefit. Many facts of which companies are justifiably proud don’t actually translate into benefits. For example, will I give more weight to CVG’s views on Heavy Rain because they were around to review Manic Miner? Well, I might, but someone born in 1995 probably wouldn’t – in fact, in the fast-moving games arena, being around for decades won’t necessarily establish credibility. As in other areas, longevity is a boast rather than a benefit.

Egocentric taglines

These taglines aim to encapsulate what you do or who you are as a company.

• ‘Touching lives, improving life’ (Procter & Gamble)
• ‘We try harder’ (Avis)
• ‘We’re Exxon’ (erm, Exxon)
• ‘Good with food’ (Co-Operative)
• ‘Beyond petroleum’ (BP)
• ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’ (ABC Copywriting)

In some cases, egocentric taglines can allude to a customer benefit – they offer, at some level, a promise of value. (One could argue that the P&G and Avis slogans do this.) But at other times, they’re simply corporate chest-beating (Exxon’s above being an egocentric boast par excellence). And because the best copywriting focuses on the customer, not the company, that’s probably best avoided. You want your tagline to leave at least some space for your audience to inhabit. That’s why ABC’s tagline includes the word ‘your’. Saying ‘We choose words carefully’ would be far less engaging, inviting the response ‘so what?’

Benefit taglines

These taglines communicate a benefit that you offer to your customers.

• ‘Every little helps’ (Tesco)
• ‘Reach out and touch someone’ (AT&T)
• ‘Feel better, look better’ (Boots)
• ‘Discover a world of flavour’ (Unearthed)

To write a benefit tagline, you need to isolate the single most important benefit that people get when they choose your products or services. As I’ve suggested before, your selling point doesn’t have to be unique. But it does need to be compelling.

In some cases, such as Tesco above, the benefit is very loosely defined, or only alluded to tangentially. But it’s still there. The Tesco tagline positions the chain as a ‘best price’ value proposition (‘every little saving helps’) while also faintly evoking its broad service portfolio (‘every little extra service helps’).

Often, benefit taglines are written in the imperative (as with AT&T, Boots and Unearthed above) – a direct command to the reader. The unspoken postscript is ‘…by choosing our product’. AT&T aren’t suggesting that you reach out and touch someone in the queue at the chemist’s.

Abstract taglines

These taglines, increasingly popular in the post-Lovemarks marketing world, express almost nothing concrete about the company. Instead, they abstract tangible customer benefits or brand values into an emotional state or abstruse metaphor.

• ‘For the journey’ (Timberland and, bizarrely, Lloyds TSB)
• ‘See what you can do’ (O2)
• ‘I’m lovin’ it’ (McDonald’s)
• ‘Just do it’ (Nike)
• ‘Make. Believe’ (Sony)
• ‘It’s you!’ (Yahoo!)

The most obvious problem with this kind of tagline is that conjures no benefit, and therefore creates very little ‘glue’ between the phrase and your brand. So while these taglines might be striking in the context of a particular campaign, they might not give readers a lasting, memorable reason to buy from you specifically. ‘For the journey’ might prompt me to get some kit together for my outdoor holiday, but it doesn’t give me any particular reason to choose Timberland – unless I recall the phrase and the association with that particular brand when I shop.

As these examples show, abstract taglines are the preserve of companies whose brands already have strong ‘recognition’ and ‘penetration’, in marketer-speak, and they’re looking to give them an intriguing new twist to keep them fresh in people’s minds. Multinationals have enough above-the-line spend to throw so much branding mud at the wall that some is bound to stick – but that kind of marketing muscle is beyond the reach of most middling or emerging brands.

Abstract taglines magnify the mystique and aura of ‘touching’ a major brand. If you’re a sole trader or SME, they may not be so effective: you probably won’t be able to deliver an experience that lives up to the glitz, or promote the message in mass-market ‘push’ channels like TV or outdoor advertising. A plumber who sticks a phrase like ‘For the journey’ on his promotional pens probably won’t gain any new customers as a result.

Question taglines

These company taglines pose a question to the reader. The question may be rhetorical, or there may be an implication that the company asking the question can somehow help with the answer.

• ‘Where do you want to go today?’ (Microsoft)
• ‘What’s in your wallet?’ (Capital One)
• ‘Doesn’t your dog deserve Alpo?’ (Alpo, a US dog food)

Question taglines tread the fine line between intrigue and irritation. Generally, questioning your audience is risky because you’re asking them to think when they probably can’t be bothered. It doesn’t help if, as with Microsoft, the question you’re asking them is open, abstract and not directly related to your product. The Alpo/Capital One method is much better – ask a leading, rhetorical question that, when the natural answer is provided, implies or leads to a purchase.

B2B taglines

You’ve probably noticed that most of the examples I’ve given so far are B2C (business-to-consumer) taglines, rather than B2B (business-to-business). That’s because creating and using a B2B tagline is a very different – and far more difficult – proposition.

B2B taglines are fundamentally unlike their B2C counterparts because the mindset of the target customer is so different. Whereas B2C brands usually seek to establish ‘soft’ emotional connotations for their products, B2B marketing is much more focused on concrete benefits. B2C brands are often trying to attract disposable, personal or leisure income to an optional purchase; B2B is about securing budgetary commitment for a carefully considered commercial project.

While some B2B brands do have emotional overtones, they’re much weaker, rarely feature in buying discussions and never constitute an overriding reason to buy. While I might spend extra cash to get a Mac rather than a Dell at home because I love the Apple brand and experience, I’m probably going to have a harder time convincing the financial director that we need them for the whole office on those grounds.

Stripping away the emotional elements of the buying decision effectively levels the playing field between B2B brands, commoditising their products to some degree. For many high-end B2B providers (i.e those likely to market themselves using a tagline), the justification for their higher prices revolves around premium quality, better service or superior RoI. Ultimately, most B2B benefits boil down to ‘make money’, ‘save money’ or ‘save time’; they’re not about the customer feeling, believing or loving anything unique.

The perennial problem in B2B marketing is that everyone else is saying the same kind of thing and invoking the same kind of benefits, obliging the B2B firm to go into detail (e.g. with testimonials or case studies) to make their case. But that type of detail is the exact opposite of a tagline, which is essentially a broad-brush, unsubstantiated statement of a brand value.

Because they can’t encapsulate differentiation, many B2B taglines end up sounding generic, bland or non-specific:

• ‘Syncronising the world of commerce’ (UPS)
• ‘Invent’ (Hewlett-Packard)

Others end up relying on copywriting clichés that do accurately describe the benefits on offer but have lost their communicative power through overuse.

• ‘High performance. Delivered’ (Accenture)
• ‘Simplify, Automate, Secure’ (Computer Associates)

The hazard here is the same as with abstract B2C taglines – you end up making a generic case for using someone like you, rather than promoting yourself uniquely. The benefits are real, and the words are the right ones to describe them, but there’s just no differentiation to be had at such a macro level.

Many B2B taglines could be swapped with those of direct competitors, or even firms in other industries, with precious little effect. But you can still stand out if competitors have dissimilar taglines, or no tagline at all. Just don’t fall into the trap of using something crashingly unoriginal – see this post on the many firms who use ‘Our people make the difference’.

When I’m asked to come up with a B2B tagline, I often suggest that it should be informative rather than touchy-feely. If the brand is completely anonymous (e.g. ‘GHD Technology’) then the tagline can give the audience an insight into what’s being offered (e.g. ‘On-site PC service and repairs’).

It’s dull, but effective. The initial touchpoint for B2B brands is very often online – and when people are surfing, you need to hook them by confirming that they’ve reached the right place. If your brand doesn’t do it, the tagline should; visitors might not bother to hang around and discover exactly what kind of ‘proactive solutions’ you ‘deliver’, or in what area you’re hoping to ‘exceed expectations’.

By precisely positioning a B2B firm, the right descriptive tagline can turn an also-ran into a specialist player – perhaps even a unique one. Many service providers want to look big by claiming a ‘one stop shop’ or ‘full-service’ offering – in many cases, they’d be better off admitting their limits and turning them into selling points (see Let’s be honest).

One final thought – if you really love your tagline, why not turn it into a song? It worked for KPMG in 2001, when their corporate anthem ‘A Vision of Global Strategy’ became an explosive internet meme, albeit not really for the right reasons. Firms would kill for that kind of viral exposure today. Listen to the song here, or sign up to its Facebook appreciation group here.

Further reading

• List of slogans at Tagline Guru – long list of high-profile US B2C slogans
• Top 10 brand tagline trends for 2009 – fascinating details of the most-used words in brands’ taglines (also fairly US-focused)
• The Tagline Trap (PDF) – article on the perils of B2B firms attempting to imitate B2C taglines (written by the wonderfully named Gib Trub)
• Taglines: The Cheesy Way to Express What Your Business Does – article suggesting that B2B firms should not have taglines, with a link to…
• What’s your company slogan? – UK Business Labs forum where many B2B and B2C SMEs have posted their own slogans
• A nice beat, but can you dance to it? – Fast Company’s survey of corporate songs, including background to KPMG’s anthem
• This post is listed at Aauml Web Directory

Listerine begins a noble tradition: actively instilling fear in its customers

To celebrate Hallowe’en, I thought I’d focus on the pros and cons of scaring your readers as a copywriter. 

Negative copy focuses on bad things that will happen if people don’t choose a particular product, service or course of action. The sell is predicated on the idea that the consequences of not buying will be distressing, embarrassing or otherwise undesirable. We might call these potential outcomes ‘negative benefits’. Copywriting driven by negative benefits points out a problem that the customer has, before positioning the product or service being promoted as the solution to that problem.

Whole product lines have been driven by this kind of copy plot. As Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner recount in Freakonomics, Listerine brought a completely new problem – ‘chronic halitosis’ – to the public’s attention while simultaneously offering the solution. The fact that Listerine’s marketers had invented the faux-medical term didn’t hold back the campaign or the product. Nowadays, the sell for such products tends to be more positive – we buy in order to have fresh breath, rather than to avoid bad breath.

Jumpers worn over shirts clearly won't work as maternity wear

Negative benefits don’t even have to be real to be effective. Saatchi & Saatchi’s famous ad from the 1970s asked ‘would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?’ The question is rhetorical but still thought-provoking, which was surely the intention.

In most cases, there’s a choice to be made between selling on a positive or a negative. Insurance can be presented as obtaining peace of mind (positive) or avoiding financial crisis (negative). Even classic ‘distress purchases’ – those that we make because we have to, not because we want to – can be positioned positively. For example, buying sticking plasters could be portrayed as part of being a good parent. Or there may be the opportunity to stress some benefit that mitigates the distress of the purchase, as with one-coat paint or similar convenience products.

So, is it ever right to focus on the negative? Personally, I think the scare tactic needs to be used with great care. You’re evoking negative associations and banking on the reader taking the next step to the solution that you’re offering – rather than simply walking away before you even get to make your pitch. I once saw an ad for a will-writing service that described the problems of dying intestate in such apocalyptic terms that it was a complete turn-off. It made it sound like the taxman would take every last penny and your family would end up on the street. The aim was to cultivate a healthy fear of financial chaos, but the copy went too far and ended up generating resentment and irritation (in my mind anyway). As ever, there were positive aspects that could have been emphasised instead – being organised, helping relatives and so on. In most cases, it’s probably less risky to associate your product with positive feelings and enjoyable outcomes that will mean something to the customer.

The exception may be products that solve a well-known or long-standing problem that the customer will definitely recognise and be interested in solving (as opposed to one they’ve never thought about before). An example would be online comparison sites that offer to take the hassle out of buying insurance, holidays or other items where the choice is very wide. Here, people are well aware that buying can be a chore, making the task of the copywriter far easier – there’s no need to explain the problem before offering the solution.

What goes around comes around... 2009 is the new 1979

The problem you offer to solve shouldn’t include using a competitor’s product, no matter how inferior that product is in reality. Comparative advertising or ‘knocking copy’, which actively criticises a rival offering, is another high-risk tactic. However, it’s one that can work in the right circumstances, as Saatchi (again) proved with ‘Labour isn’t working’.

Most modern ads, if they choose this tactic, opt for (say) a comparison table that purports to let the facts speak for themselves. Of course, the advertiser is controlling the game by choosing the areas for comparison, but this can give the impression of being impartial – or at least factual.

However, mentioning your competitor is dangerous for two reasons. Firstly, it’s an invitation for the reader to start thinking about the competitor rather than you. If they’re not paying careful attention, it might be the competitor’s brand that sticks in their head, not yours. In a way, you’re inviting them to check out your competitors before making a decision. Or, if they’re already using a competing product, your pitch implies a criticism of their choice. Telling the customer they’re in the wrong is rarely the way to close a sale. By contrast, offering to improve their situation is a great opening offer. So it’s better to focus on what you can do for the customer, not what a competitor can’t.

Most markets feature products and providers that are, to some extent, interchangeable: not completely commoditised, but not completely unique either. Each product or provider probably has some unique attribute, but it’s just one of many factors affecting buyers’ choices, along with price, quality, convenience, switching costs and so on.

If uniqueness isn’t the be all and end all for your product or firm, it follows that relying on USPs exclusively doesn’t always make for good copywriting, or good marketing. ‘Unique’ doesn’t necessarily equal ‘good’. In order to sell, your USP needs to meet all three of these criteria:

• Does it translate into a benefit for the customer?
• Is it clear – easy to communicate and understand?
• It is compelling – that is, does it have the power to motivate a switch from a rival product?

The sorts of attributes that might constitute strong USPs are:

• The only product to offer a particular function or benefit (patented devices, secret recipes, proprietary solutions)
• The only supplier to offer a particular range of services or set of skills under one roof (the ‘one stop shop’ argument)
• The only product, service or company of a certain type in a particular location
• The leading or largest company of its type, perhaps in a particular location
• The cheapest product or service of a particular type (but use with great caution: if price isn’t compelling, it won’t work as a USP – plus if you’re undercut, your USP goes down the pan).

Your product may not be unique, but it can still appeal to customers

The recipe for Coca-Cola is a good example of a USP. If you want the taste of Coke, you have to buy Coke. That’s a unique benefit, and one that’s easy to communicate (‘Coke is it’, ‘The real thing’, etc) and compelling for customers. However, there are many ‘generic’ colas that people also like and buy.

Similarly, UK entrepreneur Clive Sinclair understood in the late 1970s that home computers would not become truly popular until they were available at the right price point. By designing a machine (the ZX80) that could retail for under £100, he gave his product an unbeatable USP.

Very few firms have a ‘killer’ USP that can drive their whole marketing effort. But that doesn’t stop them using the USPs they do have, however ill-advisedly. I once worked for a firm that was over 200 years old. This point was much trumpeted in marketing and PR, since it positioned the company as an important part of local history – which, of course, it was. But although being long established is easy to communicate, it offers very little benefit to customers and therefore no reason to switch.

Other companies bend over backwards to achieve a USP just for the sake of it, setting up tiny ponds in which they can be the biggest fish. Don’t fall into this trap. If you have to scratch around for your USP, it’s unlikely to be effective. For example, I could position myself (I think) as ‘the only copywriter in Norwich with both publishing and agency experience’, but my clients couldn’t care less about that. ‘Experience, professional, reliable’ is clearer, more compelling and offers more benefit, even though it’s pretty generic and far from unique.

So what should you do if you haven’t got a strong USP? It comes back to the three points above:

• Communicate benefits. Work out (or ask!) what customers really value about what you do, and build your marketing around that. Don’t worry if it’s not unique – very few companies have a genuinely unique offer.
• Make it clear. Just clearly and simply convey the value you offer. So much marketing falls at the first fence by trying too hard to be unique – or different, clever, quirky, whatever – and neglecting the audience in the process. Why not stand out with some straight-talking copy, strong branding and elegant design?
• Compel the audience. Give people a reason to switch to you with a special offer, fixed-price package, free consultation or some other variation on the standard offering in your market. 

Not being unique isn’t necessarily a barrier to success, but failing to connect with your audience certainly is.

The power of words in that situation simply can’t be overstated. There really is something almost magical about writing. It makes ideas real, generates commitment and focuses energy. Just by putting thoughts down on paper, we can shape our futures. It’s easy to see how this benefits the entrepreneur as they plan or develop a business.

Good copywriting helps to make ideas real

Although most entrepreneurs generally feel positive and confident about their ideas, they sometimes find it hard to do them justice on the page. Working from a fresh perspective – the outsider’s perspective – the copywriter can make sure that their client’s marketing pitches the offering to the right audience, with the right tone and the right emphasis. 

Sometimes, the appropriate ‘level’ for the message may be far ‘above’ that envisaged by the entrepreneur. Often, when they see what I’ve written, my clients say ‘I could never have written that,’ or ‘I don’t recognise myself’. This type of feedback confirms that the entrepreneur may simply be too close to his or her product or business (whether emotionally or intellectually) to communicate its selling points effectively. If the business is a one-person startup, it’s easy to see why.

Talking an idea through with a good copywriter (one who asks questions) is a great way to road-test a new idea. ‘If we translated this idea into marketing messages,’ the entrepreneur is asking, ‘Would it fly? Would the proposition be consistent, compelling and capable of converting interest into actual sales?’

Here, the discipline of copywriting can act as a useful reality check. The flip side of confidence is over-confidence, and entrepreneurs are prone to many delusions and self-deceptions, brilliantly documented in this post. But the copywriter cannot spin straw into gold; to make convincing copy, they can’t work with unclear, inconsistent or self-contradictory ideas. As part of the briefing process, they can help the entrepreneur to iron out these knots and kinks in their thinking – provided they’re ready to put some tough questions to the person who pays their bill.

The first and foremost benefit of a product or service is meeting a need. Don’t underestimate the power of stating this to a reader. It’s particularly important online, where people are impatiently searching and seeking to confirm that they’ve found the right thing. If your product solves a problem, make sure people know it.

Then we come to ‘hard’, concrete benefits. These usually boil down to one of three things: save time, save money or (for businesses) make money. They have tangible effects that can be measured – they’re bigger, faster or cheaper. A kettle that boils water faster than competing products offers this type of quantifiable benefit.

However, people are also interested in ‘softer’ emotional benefits such as convenience, fun, style, fashion or the sense of having made a sound buying choice. For example, when you buy jeans or trainers, you’re looking for more than the optimum cost-benefit ratio – you want to buy into a brand that feels cool and appropriate for your age and style.

Fred Perry offers customers benefits including product quality, cultural resonance and fashionability

‘Quality’ might appear in both lists, since its definition is so fluid. For example, it might apply to something as concrete as ‘build quality’ in engineering – the durability, tolerance and precision of the components used to make something. But in more subjective areas of judgement, such as graphic design, one person’s concept of ‘quality’ may be very far from another’s, and affected by a range of personal or cultural factors.

We might say, broadly, that ‘hard’ benefits are more important in business-to-business (B2B) marketing, while ‘soft’ benefits appeal to the consumer (B2C). But even if you’re marketing to a business, the buying decision will always be taken by a human. And that human has emotions. So if you know who they are (either as a specific individual, or in terms of their likely profile) you can appeal to those emotions. The need to feel that the right decision has been made is particularly strong in B2B buyers – hence the saying ‘no-one got fired for buying IBM’.

You may have heard of the marketing formula AIDA, which stands for ‘attention, interest, desire, action’. These are the four stages through which a piece of marketing should (supposedly) guide its audience en route to a sale. If we look at it again, we can see that benefits are behind every one. Simple, strong benefits in a headline or slogan attract attention, while interest is generated by adding more detail. Desire is aroused when benefits are made real in the reader’s mind, and action is elicited by giving a persuasive push to the promise of a benefit.

Whatever thought structure you use, the end result needs to be copywriting that speaks directly to your customers’ needs, desires and hopes by offering something of benefit to them. If it doesn’t, it won’t bring much benefit to you.

Learn to drive

That’s right – just those three words. It seems almost too simple to be true, but if we unpack it we can see that this little sentence accomplishes four very important functions:

• It clearly defines the product (driving tuition).
• It communicates a key benefit of the product (you’ll learn to drive).
• It sets out a strong call to action, commanding the reader to act (learn to drive!)
• Through its basic, generic phrasing, it confirms BSM’s market positioning – the market leader, default option or natural choice.

Notice how this slogan respects its readers. Nobly declining to spin or sugarcoat its message, it gives customers some credit as thinkers and choosers, setting out the stall and letting them decide. Its simple, solid language makes counterparts like ‘For the road ahead’ (AA’s corporate tagline) sound pretentious and patronising. (Most effective slogans are simple, but not all simple slogans are effective.)

That magisterial BSM slogan in full

But is it really copywriting? After all, it’s ‘just’ a simple, everyday phrase. There’s nothing really there – no technique, no clever choice of words, no sophisticated appeal to the emotions, no carefully judged tone of voice. Was it even deliberately created? Did, perhaps, the designer just insert it as a placeholder until the real slogan was created?

It doesn’t matter. Great ideas are where you find them. ‘Yesterday’ came to Paul McCartney in a dream. And if this phrase did come from a copywriter, it was an exceptionally intelligent, brave and independent one. Someone who wasn’t afraid to put forward the right solution – not the one that made them look clever, sophisticated or hardworking. For their part, BSM deserve praise for setting aside corporate pride and brand insecurity so they could communicate with customers in the most direct way possible.

Achieving this kind of simplicity isn’t simple – nor is it easy, quick or straightforward. Pablo Picasso said, ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’ Often, our first ideas are convoluted and confused as we try too hard to make something special, original or arresting. Then, over time and through many revisions, we discard what isn’t needed to arrive at the essential. When the answer comes, it can seem ridiculously simple. But that’s how we know it’s right.

Unfortunately, this just isn’t the case. If it was, we’d all be buying random goods against our will because we’d seen them advertised on buses or the internet, emerging later from our trance with yet another unwanted pair of shoes.

If we’re honest, we all know from our own experience that momentary distraction doesn’t translate into a purchase. But somehow, when it comes to writing our marketing materials, wishful thinking or delusion sets in and we fall into the trap of trying to get attention.

Not really anything to do with clothes

A few months ago I walked past a clothes shop, outside which was a model skeleton sitting at a table and a sign saying ‘clothes to die for’. It raises a smile, which is nice, but would it actually make you want to buy clothes? The slogan links the skeleton and the clothes, but only through a play on words; there is no real connection. So it functions as an attention-grabber, but nothing more.

What really draws the reader in? In a word, benefits: the good things that will happen as a result of buying what you’re selling. Even something as lame as ‘look hot this summer’ would be better than the skeleton, because it communicates a benefit, however generic.

A product as sensually rich as clothes will sell itself – the product should have been out on the street in place of the skeleton. But it’s tougher when your subject can’t be touched or even seen – because it’s a service, for example. Many print ads for B2B services get stuck at this point. Feeling that they should include some kind of visual content, the advertisers lose the plot completely, opting for jokey, obscure or downright irrelevant picture/headline combinations that say nothing about what’s being sold.

It would be far better for them to choose a headline that communicates a key benefit and use images purely as illustration or decoration – if at all. A strong benefit, simply expressed, will always sell better than an attention-grabbing stunt. It might not be arresting, but it will attract the right kind of readers – those who are interested in buying.

It may also be worth considering a simple positioning statement – ‘IT support services’ or ‘Facilities management’ at the top/beginning of the ad. This orients the reader and tells them what the ad’s about, while freeing you up from having to use such clunky language in your main headline.

Rather than trying to ‘convert’ readers, remember you can only sell to people who are interested. There’s no point grabbing irrelevant attention that can’t be converted into sales. If you believe that willing customers are out there, your task is simply to reach them with the right message.

Imagine a conversation between the company and the customer. They are talking over a table, and on the table is the product being sold. It’s a fairly one-sided conversation – the company is doing the talking, and the customer is listening. When the company has finished talking, the customer will decide whether or not to buy. This is what happens when customer encounters marketing copy.

Now imagine a line stretching from the company through the product and on to the customer. This is shown below (apologies for the terrible, terrible icons):

The self-sell continuum, from company to customer

• Purely selfish copy is all about the company: how long it’s been trading, who runs it, where it’s located, its principles and vision. Unless these points can be translated into benefits (a particular location, for example, could help customers access the product) they’ve got no place in marketing copy. This is the stuff that goes in ‘About us’ on websites, so people can easily avoid it. Some company facts do constitute indirect reasons to buy – being a market leader, for example, is compelling – but most don’t.
• Slightly less selfish is stuff on the business/product boundary – how a product was developed, the thinking behind it and so on. This might add some value, but it’s background at best.
• Material on the product itself is good, but remember that a straightforward factual description will only sell to those who are already very clear about what they want and why. However, this content is ready to be re-expressed as customer benefits in order to sell harder.
• Copy about the interface between product and customer concerns how the product can be bought, how and when it’s used, what it does and so on. This is where customer benefits begin to enter the picture, particularly if the text explains why the various attribute are good.
• Finally, and most powerfully, we come to copy that focuses purely on the customer. This content starts with customer concerns and goes on to explain how the product will help them, in words they’ll understand. Effective copywriting spends most of its time here.

Companies who produce their own copy often start with themselves and the product. That’s perfectly understandable for people who are closely involved, but it highlights the importance of getting a fresh perspective on the text. As a newcomer and an outsider, the copywriter’s job is to move the emphasis to the customer by (politely) asking questions such as:

• How does that help me as a customer?
• How does that affect my decision to buy, or not to buy?
• As a potential customer, why should I be interested?

Any points that are too company- or product-focused should be recast in terms of things the customer wants, or failing that deleted. The end result should be text that talks directly to the customer’s own priorities, linking them clearly to the product. To confirm that this is so, compare the number of times you’ve said ‘you’ as opposed to ‘we’ or ‘us’. There should be at least twice as many mentions of the customer as of the company.

Marketing may be a one-way communication, but as with any other conversation, acknowledging the other person’s point of view is more likely to get positive results.