Media Perspective: Let's get emotional with our advertising and forget the USP.

Advertising's most important invention, its most significant contribution to the broader world of marketing and communications thinking is probably the USP, the idea of a single, simple, focused message about a product or brand repeated until it's driven into people's heads.

It's the core idea about advertising that's infected business and culture at large, and every politician, non-government organisation, parish council and school action committee seems intent on devising their own simple, focused message. Which is a shame, really, because the belief that this is how advertising works is horribly and deeply wrong.

I'd always suspected this myself, in a vague and inchoate way, but had never worked out why, until I saw Paul Feldwick speak at a conference a few years back. What he said then, about the emotional, non-language-driven side of advertising, made more sense to me than any of the other theories I'd ever heard. It chimed completely with my experiences in a way that the received wisdom and common sense of advertising never had.

And now, through the good offices of the Thinkbox website, the scales can be removed from your own eyes, because Mr Feldwick's magnificent essay at icanhaz.com/feldwick lays out the whole argument with an elegance and force I couldn't possibly summarise here. So I shall wait while you put down your copy of Campaign and go and read it.

OK. ...