The USP is Dead. Long Live the SMIT.
Paul Sandy • May 15, 2025
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In marketing, we love a good acronym. But let’s be real—USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is starting to feel like one of those legacy systems we all pretend still has value because it’s “core to the business.” You know the type: old, clunky, and painfully out of sync with how people make decisions today.
Before we move on, let’s give the USP its due. Coined in the 1940s, the Unique Selling Proposition was a revolutionary idea at the time: define one compelling reason why someone should choose your product over the others. It was built for an era of mass advertising and simpler markets. But tech is anything but simple. Differentiation is brutally hard when everyone is chasing the same trends, shipping similar features, and shouting into the same digital void.
Once upon a time, shouting about what made your product different — faster, cheaper, more secure — was enough to win hearts and market share. But not anymore. People aren’t looking for a list of features. They’re looking for something to believe in. Something to feel. That’s where the SMIT comes in.
What’s a SMIT?
At Speak!, we build every brand strategy around a Single Most Important Truth. It isn’t a claim. It’s not a feature or a benefit. It’s a brand truth — a meaningful, distinctive quality that sits at the intersection of who you are and what your audience actually cares about.
Think of it as your brand’s emotional bullseye. It’s not about what you do. It’s about why it matters. It’s not about how customers feel about you. It’s about how you make them feel about themselves. (See our blog about Inverse Branding.)
Why SMIT Beats USP (Every Time)
Let’s say your product automates cloud infrastructure. Cool. So do a hundred others.
Your old-school USP might be: “The fastest infrastructure automation tool on the market.”
Your SMIT could be: “We give engineers their nights and weekends back.”
See the difference? One speaks to specs. The other speaks to humans.
And in a world where people are overwhelmed, skeptical, and allergic to jargon, the brands that break through are the ones that connect emotionally and make people feel seen.
The Science Backs It Up
According to Kantar, brands that are meaningful, different, and salient grow faster and command higher pricing power. These are brands that don’t just check boxes — they tell a story, show up with consistency, and stand for something bigger than the product.
A SMIT helps you do exactly that. It forces clarity. It forces focus. And when done right, it becomes the heartbeat of your entire brand strategy — from messaging to design to customer experience.
Finding Your SMIT
So how do you find your Single Most Important Truth? You dig. Deep.
Start by asking:
- What do we believe that no one else in our space is saying?
- What emotional need are we really fulfilling?
- What are our customers really buying (beyond the product)?
And then go further: What do your happiest customers say about you? What would they miss if you disappeared tomorrow? That’s where the truth lives.
SMIT in the Wild
- Slack didn’t win because it’s a messaging platform. Their SMIT? “Make work less work.”
- Stripe isn’t just a payments API. Their truth? “We help ambitious businesses grow faster.”
- Notion isn’t just docs and databases. Their rallying cry? “A new tool for a new way of thinking.”
None of these truths sound like USPs. And that’s the point.
Brand Strategy for the Feeling Economy
We’re in what some call the “feeling economy.” People aren’t buying on logic alone (they never really were). They’re buying based on what a brand feels like — its values, its personality, its point of view. This is especially true in tech, where products often sound the same and look the same.
So if your brand strategy still hinges on a USP, it might be time for an upgrade. Look past the features. Find the human truth. And build everything from there.
Because the brands people remember — the ones they choose — aren’t just useful. They’re meaningful.
Need help finding your SMIT. Let’s strike up a conversation.
Companies with groundbreaking tech, elegant architecture, and technical excellence regularly lose to competitors with inferior offerings but stronger brands. This isn't just bad luck — it's the natural outcome of a fundamental misunderstanding about what drives purchase decisions. The Differentiation Trap For decades, B2B marketers have obsessed over differentiation — the pursuit of objective, feature-based superiority. Product marketers scrutinize competitors, searching for that elusive technical advantage to highlight in comparison charts and sales presentations. But here's the uncomfortable truth: sustained differentiation is rare and fleeting. In mature categories with dozens or hundreds of competitors, most products do essentially the same thing. Any technical advantage you establish today will be copied tomorrow. Distinctiveness: The True Driver of Success While differentiation fades, distinctiveness endures. Let's look at three B2B tech companies that succeeded not through superior features, but through brand distinctiveness: Slack vs. Enterprise Messaging When Slack entered the enterprise messaging space, it faced established competitors with similar core functionality. Slack's success wasn't driven by unique features but by its distinct brand identity — playful, human, and focused on reducing "work about work." Their distinctive visual identity (with its consistent color palette and friendly illustrations), conversational tone, and memorable tagline ("Where work happens") created an emotional connection that technical specs couldn't match. What mattered wasn't that Slack could do things others couldn't—it was that Slack felt different. HubSpot vs. Marketing Automation HubSpot didn't win because its marketing automation tools were objectively superior to competitors. It won by creating a distinct brand centered around the concept of "inbound marketing"—a term they essentially invented and owned. Their orange branding, educational content strategy, and consistent message about helping businesses "grow better" made them instantly recognizable in a sea of sameness. HubSpot's distinctive approach created memory structures that triggered recall when prospects were ready to buy. Stripe vs. Payment Processing Payment processing is perhaps the most commoditized B2B technology category imaginable. Yet Stripe emerged victorious not through revolutionary features, but through a distinct brand identity built around developer experience. Their minimalist design, developer-friendly documentation, and consistent message about "infrastructure for the internet economy" made them immediately identifiable. While competitors talked about transaction fees and compliance, Stripe created a distinct identity that resonated with their technical audience. Strategies for Building a Distinct B2B Technology Brand Embrace a Signature Visual System — Develop a visual identity that stands out in your category. If everyone uses blue and corporate photography, consider bold colors and custom illustrations. Your visual system should be immediately recognizable even without your logo present. Find your SMIT — Identify the Single Most Important Truth (SMIT) about your brand. What do you do exceptionally well and what do your customers care deeply about? This is a crucial intersection of opportunity. Make this the heartbeat of your story. Own it. Be known for it. Own a Category Concept — HubSpot owned "inbound marketing." Drift owned "conversational marketing." Gong owned "revenue intelligence." Creating and owning a category concept gives your brand a distinctive place in prospects' minds. Develop a Consistent Voice — Your written and verbal communication should feel consistent and distinctive. Whether it's Mailchimp's cheerful helpfulness or IBM's authoritative expertise, a consistent voice builds recognition over time. Create Distinctive Brand Assets — Develop assets that trigger instant recognition: Salesforce's cloud logo, Twilio's red API curl brackets, or Zendesk's smiling Buddha. These distinctive elements become shortcuts to brand recall. Messaging and Visual Identity: Two Sides of the Same Coin Perhaps the most critical insight about brand distinctiveness is that messaging and visual identity must be developed in tandem , not in isolation. Too often, B2B companies treat these as separate workstreams: Marketing develops messaging based on product features Design creates visual identity based on aesthetic preferences This disconnected approach produces forgettable brands. Truly distinctive B2B technology brands understand that visual elements should reinforce messaging themes, and messaging should align with visual impressions. Consider Notion, whose minimalist visual design perfectly complements its message about reducing workspace clutter. Or GitHub, whose Octocat mascot reinforces its distinct developer-focused culture. The Shift from What to Who Ultimately, brand distinctiveness requires shifting focus from what your product does to who your company is — and perhaps more importantly how it makes your customers feel . Features can be copied, but a cohesive, authentic brand identity is much harder to replicate. In a world where technical differentiation is fleeting, distinctiveness is what sticks. The most successful B2B technology companies understand this fundamental truth: customers don't just buy better products — they buy into distinctive brands that resonate with their values, aspirations, and identity. Want to shift from feature-based differentiation to brand-based distinction? Let's chat.
Why Marketing is Often Too Slow to Support Sales Marketing and sales should operate as a dynamic duo, seamlessly collaborating to drive revenue and deliver a unified customer experience. However, in many B2B organizations, sales teams feel that marketing can't keep up with an ever-evolving market. This misalignment often leads to sales teams taking matters into their own hands—creating their own materials, crafting their own messaging, and improvising to close deals. The consequences? Inconsistent branding, inaccurate information, and a decidedly disjointed customer experience. Common Bottlenecks That Slow Marketing Down: Traditional Content Creation Workflows: Marketing teams often follow a rigid content approval process involving multiple stakeholders and revisions, causing delays. Marketing fears Bob Loblaw, sales mocks him. Siloed Data & Insights: Marketing doesn’t always have access to real-time sales insights, making it hard to create relevant materials quickly. Resource Constraints: Many marketing teams are stretched thin, juggling branding, demand generation, and internal communications while trying to support sales. Digital Asset Management (DAM) Inefficiencies: Sales reps struggle to find the latest materials buried somewhere in a clunky, archaic DAM solution that IT defends with relentless ferocity, ahem... Sharepoint. Lack of Prioritization for Sales Needs: Marketing teams often focus on long-term brand-building efforts, while sales teams need quick, tactical resources to close deals now. The result? Sales teams create their own decks, one-pagers, and outreach messages—often off-brand and filled with inaccurate or outdated information, leading to a fragmented prospect experience and eroding brand value. 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This data can be fed directly into marketi ng teams in real-time, allowing them to create the most relevant sales assets before reps even ask for them. 3. Intelligent Digital Asset Management (DAM) AI-powered DAM systems (e.g., Bynder, MediaValet) make it easier for sales teams to quickly find the right materials by using smart search, tagging, and recommendations. Instead of sifting through outdated files, AI s urfaces the most relevant, up-to-date content bas ed on deal stage, industry, or customer type. 4. AI-Powered Workflow Automation AI can automate marketing request workflows, prioritizing sales needs and reducing delays. Automated approval processes speed up content reviews, ensuring materials are quickly approved and deployed. Real-World Example: How Reachdesk & Gong Used AI to Align Sales & Marketing Reachdesk, a global direct mail and gifting platform, faced challenges aligning their sales and marketing teams, especially during a period of rapid international growth. To solve this, they implemented Gong’s AI-powered revenue intelligence platform , which provided real-time insights into both sales rep and customer behaviors. This allowed their global teams to stay aligned and work more efficiently. By integrating AI, Reachdesk achieved: Enhanced Team Alignment: AI provided insights that kept both sales and marketing on the same page, ensuring a unified approach to customer engagement. More Efficient Sales Processes: AI-driven analysis helped prioritize leads and optimize sales methodologies. Better Content & Messaging Consistency: Marketing could create materials that were immediately relevant to the challenges identified by sales. As a result, Reachdesk improved sales efficiency, marketing alignment, and overall customer experience , demonstrating how AI can bridge the gap between these traditionally siloed teams. AI is Powerful, But Leadership is Essential While AI plays a transformative role in bridging the sales-marketing gap, it is ultimately a tool , not a replacement for strategic leadership. The most successful implementations come from visionary leaders who understand how to integrate AI into their existing workflows and align it with their business goals. AI provides insights, automates processes, and accelerates execution, but t he human element remains critical. Marketing and sales leaders must set the vision, interpret AI-driven insights with strategic intent, and ensure that AI enhances—not replac es—customer relationships. A t Speak! Agency, we work with businesses to bring AI-powered efficiencies into their marketing and sales strategies, ensuring that these tools support the bigger picture —one driven by people, vision, and expertise. The Future: AI as the Gas For Marketing & Sales AI isn’t replacing marketing or sales—it’s making both teams more effective. By integrating AI-driven automation, insights, and asset management, companies can eliminate friction and ensure that sales reps have the tools they need before they even ask for them. With AI, marketing teams can work at the speed of sales, ensuring alignment, efficiency, and most importantly—a seamless customer experience. Next Up in This Series: Real-Time Content Creation: How AI Enables Speed & Relevance – Exploring how AI can generate high-quality sales enablement materials in record time. If your company has struggled with slow marketing response times, let us know— how are you solving it today?
Brand transformation is more than linguistic gymnastics — it's a multidimensional shift that requires both visual and verbal integration to be fully understood and executed. As branding professionals, we often find ourselves at the intersection of words and imagery, negotiating the complex relationship between what is said and what is seen. Beyond Words: The Dual Nature of Brand Understanding When we consider how brands evolve and transform, we must acknowledge that positioning and messaging alone cannot capture the full essence of a rebrand. That's because a brand also lives in the visual impact of its logo, the emotional response to its color palette, the tactile experience of its products, and the psychological associations formed through consistent imagery. These elements create meaning in ways that transcend verbal explanation. This integrated nature of brand understanding presents both challenges and opportunities for brand strategists and agencies. Those who rely solely on brand messaging frameworks often miss the deeper, more intuitive connections that visual elements forge with audiences. Conversely, those who neglect verbal precision may create beautiful but meaningless brand experiences. The Strategist's Dilemma This reality creates a fascinating paradox for brand strategists. On one hand, it's a blessing — those who master the integration of visual and verbal thinking possess a competitive advantage that purely analytical thinkers cannot match. They can navigate the subtleties of brand transformation with a more complete toolkit, sensing shifts in cultural meaning that might be invisible to others. On the other hand, it presents a curse — how do we communicate about something that partially exists beyond the realm of words? How do we justify decisions that are partly intuitive? How do we demonstrate value when some of the most important aspects of our work resist straightforward measurement or explanation? Embracing Integrated Thinking The most successful brand transformations occur when strategists embrace both modes of thinking: Understanding the rational and emotional components of brand perception Recognizing when to prioritize visual impact over verbal explanation (and vice versa) Developing frameworks that respect both analytical rigor and creative intuition Communicating in ways that engage both logical and visual processing Moving Forward As the branding landscape continues to evolve, the integration of visual and verbal thinking becomes not just advantageous but essential. The brands that resonate most deeply with audiences are those that achieve coherence across all dimensions of experience. By acknowledging the limitations of purely linguistic approaches and embracing the full spectrum of how meaning is created, brand strategists can navigate transformation more effectively—even if they sometimes struggle to put into words exactly why something works. The Speak! Approach: Integration in Action At Speak!, we've built our entire agency model around the principle that visual identity and messaging strategy must be conceived and developed in concert — never in isolation. This integrated approach isn't just a philosophical stance; it's the foundation of our process and the key to our success in transforming brands. Rather than having verbal and visual specialists only intersect when work is handed off, we are cross-disciplinary teams where messaging strategists and visual designers work side by side from day one. Our brand strategy function (that's me) leads stakeholder interviews and workshops but our art director is always on the call and not just as a passive listener. Engaged. Asking hard questions. Poking holes. This ensures that every strategic decision considers both dimensions simultaneously. The benefits of our integrated approach are evident in the results we deliver: Greater Coherence : When messaging and visuals grow from the same strategic foundation, they naturally reinforce each other, creating a brand experience that feels seamless and purposeful. Deeper Resonance : Brands that speak to both the rational mind (through clear messaging) and the intuitive mind (through visual impact) create more powerful and lasting impressions with audiences. Faster Alignment : Our clients spend less time reconciling conflicting approaches from different specialists and more time refining a unified strategic direction. Unexpected Solutions : The creative tension between verbal and visual thinking often leads to breakthrough ideas that neither approach would have discovered independently. Our clients often tell us that this integrated process not only delivers superior results but also provides them with a new lens through which to understand their own brands. By experiencing the power of visual-verbal synergy in action, they gain insights that transform not just their brand assets but their entire approach to brand management.
