One of the best ways to get to the body of your copy is with a promise. But how do you go about building a promising prospect?

This is where the investigation comes in. It pays to get to know your product inside and out so you can discover what it does best. You’ve heard it all before…”features vs. benefits” “features vs. benefits”. Here’s how it works… you study the product or service from every angle imaginable making a list of the products best features, once you have that in place you can start turning them into real, tangible benefits for the customer .

Here’s a classic example of this at work…

It begins with a young Forrest E. Mars growing up in his father’s house. Mars’s father was a candy maker. And a pretty good one at it, in fact, he had some pretty big shoes to fill if he was going to be like his father. You see, Forrest’s dad had a small home-based business that grew and grew. He invented and sold some of the world’s most famous chocolate bars…names like Snickers, Mars Bars, and Milky Ways.

Forrest’s dad no longer wanted to build the business, but Forrest, a recent graduate of Yale University, did. So what did he do? He sold his part of the business to his dad and moved to Europe. While in Europe, he joined a group of candy makers.

In the course of his time there during World War II, he came across something revolutionary; a breakthrough that he claimed would forever change the chocolate business and the outcome of the war. In fact, he believed that it would completely revolutionize the birthday parties of millions and millions of children.

What Forrest had discovered was a small ball of chocolate…chocolate I might add that was encased in a caramel coating. Where did you discover this little gem? He was hidden in the field kits of soldiers fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Why? Due to these small chocolate balls giving the soldiers a quick burst of energy and being encased in a hard candy shell, it would not melt under adverse conditions.

Now we all know that this revolutionary chocolate is the M&M.

Fast forward to 1941… Forrest is back in the United States and is seeking a patent for his own formula for the candy. It was not long before the United States was committed to World War II. And guess what ended up in our soldiers’ field rations? You guessed it, M&M’s. In fact, the soldiers were harnessed so that when they came home from the service, the M&Ms would go with them. The sweets were a huge hit with the general public.

But it doesn’t stop there…

M&M’s sales were about to launch into the stratosphere.

It was 1945, and television was making its way into mainstream America. Forrest knew that if he wanted to grow his M&M empire, the place to market them was on television, so he hired a copywriter named Rosser Reeves. Reeves, was already extremely successful. He had a steady hand on the nation’s pulse and was well aware of the power of this new medium. He was also the managing editor and vice president of his own advertising agency in New York. Now this is where the story gets really interesting so pay close attention. When Reeves met with Forrest Mars to talk about this relatively new sweet sensation, he approached him like he did all the copy chores…he listened and took lots of notes like he was a freshman copy pup.

While Forest talked, Reeves wrote and then said something and they were done. Here’s how Rooser Reeves told the story: “He’s the one who said it. He told me the whole story and then I pressed him and he said, ‘Well, the thing is, they just melt in your mouth, but they don’t.” melt in your hands.'”

That was it, it was all Reeves needed.

Four years later, the Mars Company was selling an average of one million pounds of M&Ms per week. M&M candy has a rich and glorious history. Since then, they have gone into space as part of the space shuttle flights. They have been the official sweets of the Olympic Games. Business Week magazine has even declared them to be the best-selling sweets in the world.

In 1999, Forest Mars died at the ripe age of 95. He left behind quite a legacy…a $4 billion fortune. And a candy company that bills more than 20,000 million dollars a year and employs 30,000 people worldwide.

But what about Rosser Reeves? Oh, he had a great career, actually, the Don Draper character on the TV series; Mad Men is modeled after Reeves.

He’s the guy who came up with the “Unique Selling Proposition” or “USP.”

And of course this all comes together and takes us back to the beginning because if you want to FIND THE PROMISE, YOU NEED TO FIND THE USP.

There is a fabulous and RARE writing book that Reeves wrote called “Facts in Advertising” in which he talks about the USP and wrote a formula that you can use to write any effective Promise Lead.

Reeves divided his formula into three parts.

Reeves, being the son of a minister, felt that all advertising had to be honest. If the product didn’t do what you said it would, then he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. So the first part involves starting with the product. But the product had to be good enough to sell itself.

Reeves had another reason for starting the product… this is the second part of the formula. Anything the product or service does must be totally original…something Unique that the competitor’s product doesn’t or can’t do. This is the fundamental key to developing a USP. The Pledge you make has to be different in every way from anything your prospect has ever heard before.

Finally, and this is the part that is usually left out of most campaigns. Leave it out and your Promise will fall on deaf ears. Each promise should zero in like a laser beam on your prospect’s core desires. You have to address a really strong desire.

Desire cannot be manufactured. It cannot be shaken. It already has to be there. It may be dormant and asleep, but it has to exist at the emotional epicenter of your prospect. You can awaken it but you cannot create it.