He gradually evolved the principle of USP, or the unique selling proposition. Reeves had an uncanny ability to determine the essence of a product and then make it seem dramatically different from its competitors (when in fact the difference was often negligible). At the heart of USP was finding one feature about the product that was allegedly unique and pummeling the public with it. “The prince of hard sell,” he was called. Advertising without illusion, his campaigns might have been called. They were simple and repetitive: If the claims were not always true, they were never exactly untrue,
...more
