Yellow Mouse Cars, The Flintstones and Unique Selling Propositions

Twenty years ago, my girlfriend and I vacationed in sunny Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We had a wonderful time, and saw some amazing tourist attractions. But believe it or not, it's not the traditional tourist attractions like "Ocean World" or "The Museum of Science and Discovery and Imax Theater" I think about when I recall our trip to Fort Lauderdale.

It's the amazing Unique Selling Propositions (USP's) of some of the businesses we encountered down there.

Yellow Mouse Cars

For example, I remember my girlfriend and I were driving on crowded University Drive in Plantation FL, when I saw the oddest thing. It was a little yellow car with big black mouse ears on the roof, and a big black tail on the back of the vehicle. It even had black whiskers painted on the front of the car. It looked like a big yellow toy mouse on wheels - something you'd see at Disney World. I had never seen anything like that on the road before anywhere. I was staring at that thing like I was a little kid. I simply couldn't take my eyes off that car.

Anyway, it turns out that little yellow mouse car belonged to one of the most successful pest control companies in the state of Florida - a company called Truly Nolen. I found out later, they had a whole fleet of those yellow mouse cars.

The Flintstones

I thought about that yellow mouse car all day long - at least until it was time for my girlfriend and I to eat dinner. Another tourist we met along the way had recommended a restaurant in Sunrise, FL called "The Caves". It was supposed to have pretty decent steaks and seafood. I thought it had a pretty cool name too. Anyway, when we got there, I was surprised, once again. All the servers were dressed up like cave men and women, in leopard-print outfits like the Flintstones. They were even carrying those big oversized clubs. I was half- expecting someone to yell, "Yabba-Dabba Do!"

But wait, it gets even better. When our waitress seated us, it wasn't at a table in a public area of the restaurant. No, we were seated at a table in our own private, candlelit little cave - I kid you not! And on the menu, they had fried pterodactyl. How Flintstones is that? Now that's what I call a unique dining experience. Oh, and the food wasn't bad either. For the record, we decided to pass on the fried pterodactyl. We both ordered the steak.

Anyway, after dinner we had made plans to go to the nearby drive-in to see the new "Batman" movie. We were about a mile away from the drive-in when traffic began to get backed up. We began to get nervous because it was getting close to the starting time for the movie. But after a few minutes, the traffic started moving again. Anyway, we finally got to the entrance of the drive-in, and I couldn't believe my eyes. There were so many cars, people and security, it looked like a Michael Jackson concert.

And you should have seen the size of the parking lot. It was so unearthly huge, Steven Spielberg could have used it as a movie set for "Jurassic Park" - unbelievable!

By the way, the name of the drive-in was the "Thunderbird Drive-In," and as we later discovered, it's billed as "the world's largest drive-in movie theater."

The Power of Unique Selling Propositions

So what's the point to all these stories? The point is twenty years later, I still remember those three amazing businesses vividly - like it was yesterday.

And not only do I still remember them, over the last twenty years, I've told countless numbers of people about them. I've sent those companies so many new customers, they should be paying me residuals.

And I'm still telling people about them through articles like this one - all because of their amazingly memorable USP's.

I've written about this topic before, and I'm going to continue to write about it. Because I think that it's vitally important for businesses to develop an effective USP. Developing an effective USP is probably the single most important thing that you can do to create a "buzz" about your business, and ensure long-term success.

Here's what master copywriter, Michel Fortin had to say about a USP in his article How to Hook (More) Copywriting Prospects:

"Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity — with­out need­ing to state it outright.

Just by being 10% dif­fer­ent, unique, orig­i­nal, or spe­cial is enough to make you stand out like a sore thumb in an over­crowded, hyper­com­pet­i­tive marketplace."

You Don't Have to Reinvent the Wheel

I wholeheartedly agree with Michel. Even though the aforementioned USP examples I gave you were at the extreme end of the spectrum, it's really not necessary for you to go to those extremes, or reinvent the wheel to have a memorable and effective USP.

For example, a dentist in the city where I live, realizing that more and more dentists are refusing to accept medicaid insurance, because of slow payments has smartly positioned himself as the dentist who still accepts medicaid. He doesn't worry about Medicaid's slow payment history, because he knows he's going to get paid eventually. He looks at those particular accounts receivable as money in the bank.

A few days ago, I received a menu in the mail from a new chinese restaurant. We have a ton of chinese restaurants in this city. But what stood out about this restaurant is that they positioned themselves as a "Chinese Fish Fry" - offering a fried fish menu that includes porgies, catfish and red snapper. They also have traditional chinese food as well.

I happen to love fried fish, so that menu went right to the top of my menu stack. Yes, Unique Selling Propositions work!

What Can You Do Differently?

Those last two examples that I cited are both local businesses that decided to do things just a little bit differently. They made their businesses stand out, without reinventing the wheel.

What about you? What can you do differently to make your business stand out in the crowd - to beat the competition and bring in more business? Do you have your thinking cap on?

Remember, "Just by being 10% dif­fer­ent, unique, orig­i­nal, or spe­cial is enough to make you stand out like a sore thumb in an over­crowded, hyper­com­pet­i­tive marketplace."