UMPOD

Early in my career Jerry, the marketing director at my company, came to me and said we need to develop a UMPOD for an upcoming new product launch.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll get right on it.”

There was only one problem. I had no idea what Jerry was talking about.

UMPOD…what exactly was that? I had never heard the term before. Since this was in the early 90’s I couldn’t Google it nor could I relate it to some new product extension of on iPod because they were still 6-7 years away from hitting the market for the first time.

So with nowhere to turn I just decide to forge ahead as best I could. But I didn’t give up trying to figure out what this UMPOD thing was. Over the next few days I tried to slip the UMPOD reference into discussions with my marketing counterparts to see what they could tell me.

“You know,” I said to one of our brand managers, “Jerry has asked me to develop copy for a new UMPOD. I really have some good ideas and I can’t wait to get started.”

“Yeah, he really likes those UMPODs,” was the response.

As the day went on I received similar responses from others on the marketing team to my UMPOD references. This was getting me nowhere.

Stay calm I said to tell myself. I could sense clouds of doubt starting to creep towards me. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t going to be able to figure out this UMPOD thing, but perhaps I could develop a different approach for Jerry. I knew he wanted this for that new product launch and I knew the product had a newer, patented technology that comparable products didn’t have. Why don’t I start by writing about that? And I also remembered that we had just finished some field testing on this product and we had data that showed how it outperformed competitive products. I just needed to find that data to see what products it had tested against.

I found the results from the field testing and it confirmed that our new product would have some points of difference when it hit the market. So I put my copywriting hat on and started to formulate some good sell copy that would promote that distinction and establish a good value proposition for the product that could be integrated into all collateral and advertising touch points.

So maybe I hadn’t cracked the case of the UMPOD, but I at least felt good that I had developed a good value proposition story for the launch that called out some good points of difference. In lieu of that UMPOD, I at least had something to give to Jerry.

Since we were still a few years away from email correspondence, I walked to Jerry’s corner office the next day and handed him a copy of what I had developed.

He took my offering in his hand and swiveled his chair around to face towards the window as he began to read it. I had written about a page, but it seemed to take forever for him to get through it. This didn’t feel good, I thought. I looked towards his office door and wondered if I could bolt through it before he turned his chair back towards me. I don’t’ know...it was about nine to ten feet away. If only it was casual Friday and I had my running shoes on…

As I continued to contemplate my next move, Jerry spun back towards me and flicked the paper on top of this desk.

Always a fast thinker, the word “Sooo” came out of my mouth half spoken as a statement and half as a question.

Jerry paused. Then he spoke.

I was looking to get a good UMPOD out of you. But instead I get this?

“Jerry, uh…let me …,” I started to mutter not knowing where I was going.

“This is not good,” he interrupted, “it’s …actually…one of the best UMPODs I ever seen. You know, I see so many brands out there without a good one it’s just unbelievable. Why anyone would launch a product without one, well that’s just Brand NonSense. Good job.”


...oh by the way...if you haven't yet figured out what UMPOD stands for, its 'Unique and Meaningful Point of Difference.' And its something every product or service should have to differentiate it from competitors. And as Jerry said some years ago...if you don't have one--its Brand NonSense.