How to Identify a UCP (УЦП; compelling value proposition)

1. Why did I need this tool?

In digital marketing, just like in its “ancestor”, a lot depends on the specialist’s background. Especially if it’s not your first profession. I studied philosophy, spent 10 years in IT, and I ran into a problem: a USP — a unique selling proposition (УТП; unique selling proposition) burns out fast if you don’t have a UCP — a compelling value proposition (УЦП; compelling value proposition).

Marketing has plenty of tools for working with uniqueness: a brand, a product, a service. SWOT analyses, 4C & 4P marketing frameworks, plus their upgrades into 7P and 8C, and so on.
At some point I bumped into a decision-making technique that psychologists and coaches often use in their content — “Descartes’ Square” (a 4-question framework for exploring consequences).

Note: this article was made before the new brand style appeared, so the images use slightly different colours and fonts.

2. Where the method shows its strength

It’s logical — strictly speaking, it belongs to a “niche” in the same way logic belongs to any niche.
Logic is about thinking: validity, correctness, truth, falsity, abstraction.
Logic doesn’t belong to psychology. It’s a scientific instrument. With a scientific approach, you observe and use the achievements of civilisation as a whole. That approach gives you more objectivity inside the subjective.

In the book Conscious Capitalism, Raj Sisodia gives examples of how companies, while shaping their UCP, reached for timeless human ideals — and became even more valuable in their niche. Even material benefit is “rewarded” by abstract values. By itself, detached from society and culture, it has little value.

When I work on a brand’s UCP through “Descartes’ Square”, I pull out pragmatic (material) values and idealistic values. That creates an “abstraction cloud” that helps you reach both the consumer’s rational calculations and their deeper, long-term values.

The strength of the method is in finding the abstraction first, then turning that abstraction into concrete decisions.

3. The key function of the method:

The simplest, brightest example is jeans.

Their practical, pragmatic function is to keep you warm and protected. More precisely: to create comfort by acting as a barrier against the outside world.
If our needs ended with pure practicality, there would be no colours, no cuts, no brands. Blue, black, grey, light blue, white, even red and green. Buttons or zips. Slim fit or regular fit. None of it would exist.

Inside a strictly practical task, we found non-material values that we’re willing to pay for.

Finding those values and abstractions is a crucial stage of promotion, and that’s the method’s core function.

4. How the method works

In logic, among other things, there are two concepts:

Subject — what we’re talking about. The topic of the statement.
Predicate — what we say about the subject.

Take the same jeans:
Subject — jeans. Predicate — regular fit.

Logic is abstraction, so we can swap them: make the predicate the subject, and the subject the predicate.
Subject — regular fit
Predicate — jeans.

In the first case we discussed jeans, and the predication was their cut. That implies there can be other predications — slim fit, regular fit.
You can also switch the category of predication and discuss colour.
You can also add colour as another predication category.

In the second case we discuss regular fit, and the fact it’s realised in jeans.
If you think about it, you can add plenty of other things into that predication. Jeans won’t be the only option.

This matters because it helps you correctly set the identities between the abstract wording of the question and its application to a brand. What is “this”, and what does “will happen” refer to?

“This” can be your blog, your book, your service.
“Happens” can be reading your blog or book, buying your service. It can be a personal conversation with you, or with a salesperson in your store.

Depending on how you set these identities, your angle shifts — zoomed out, zoomed in. A product can’t be separated from a brand, and a brand spreads itself across its products and services. You can uncover values on a global level, and you can do it locally (applied to one specific object inside the brand).

The method is built on this exact kind of abstraction gymnastics.

5. Applying the method

It works best in a single session. Start and finish in one sitting.
Every time I ran sessions like this, the person stayed “on”, stayed focused, and dug out the deepest layers of value inside their brand.

5. 1. The simplest question is always the first: “What will happen if this happens?”

Decision-makers usually understand and can imagine what will happen to a person if they interact with the brand, buy the product, or order the service.
At least, they can produce plenty of imagination around it, fast.

5. 2. The second question causes a light freeze: “What will happen if this does NOT happen?”

A person can quietly swap the question because of the availability heuristic (described by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow).

You risk answering the previous question, with a simple “NOT” glued onto it.

Like this: if your product is a ham sandwich, you know what happens if a person buys it. They feel full.
So you’ll want to answer the second question as a direct negation: “they won’t feel full”.

The core meaning of “will be” and “will happen” overlaps. The connotations differ a bit, still they behave like synonyms. A tautology makes it visible: “What will happen if this does NOT happen?”
The goal of the second question is to make you imagine what will be going on if the person buys nothing from your brand. Hint — they will buy something else somewhere else.
This question points to cross-category competition (indirect), and within-category competition (direct).

Back to jeans: if a person doesn’t buy jeans, what happens? They probably won’t abandon the task jeans solve. They’ll either buy jeans anyway, from someone else. Or they’ll buy something else — say, sweatpants or trousers.

5.3. Be ready to sink on the third question: “What will NOT happen if this happens?”

The difficulty is that you need to imagine events, emotions, feelings that the person will not get because they bought the product or service from your brand.

In the jeans example: they won’t tear in three months, they won’t fade after the third wash, they won’t ruin other clothes in the washing machine drum.
You can start with obvious things. A chain of obvious things can lead you toward advantages that don’t sit on the surface.

Give yourself a plan: at least five answers that are essentially different.

5.4 A second wind usually opens on the fourth question: “What will NOT happen if this does NOT happen?”

In interviews people often start speaking almost like slogans. Very often, actual slogans. This is where the compelling value proposition shows itself, and the power of the session format becomes visible. The first three stages run a kind of “triangulation” of your brand’s UCP position through the consumer’s interaction with products and/or services.
The fourth question acts like a vector. It pulls the thought toward the point of exclusivity, value, mission.
Because the question is really about what will never happen to a person if they buy your product or service — if they interact with the brand.

What will never, under any conditions, happen if a person doesn’t buy your jeans.

6. What helps in interviewing

The method mostly leans on focused interview techniques.
It’s built around introspection. You ask questions that return a person into a situation or create a situation for them.
Word order matters. Yes/no questions are poison here. In their answer, a person reflects and synthesises meaning. They don’t just agree or disagree with what you asked.

The book The Focused Interview helps here. Authors: R. Merton, M. Fiske, P. Kendall.

Sometimes you can buy it as an ebook (Ozon; major Russian e-commerce marketplace).

The book gives fairly detailed frameworks for introspective questions.
It’s designed for evaluating propaganda, films in particular.
Still, if you want a foundational kind of self-education, it’s worth reading.

A simpler option is to watch interviews you enjoy.
For example: vDud (Yuri Dud’s YouTube interview show; he’s designated a “foreign agent” by Russia’s Ministry of Justice). His interviews hook you through personalities, and through how he asks questions with a focused-interview structure.
Here’s a characteristic episode with Tsekalo (Alexander Tsekalo; Russian producer/TV personality).

Look at the timecodes — the questions Yuri asked are basically written out there.

Notice how the questions are built: the interviewee has to tell a story, share a view, describe a situation, pull up a memory. A yes/no answer doesn’t fit.

Here’s the strongest part, in my view:

When Dud asks about Nord-Ost (2002 Moscow theatre hostage crisis) in this way, Tsekalo’s throat tightens.
That’s his PTSD. One question sends Alexander straight into memory. We hear a first-person story: images, lived experience, personal detail.
That’s introspection.