When introducing a new product, launching a digital service, or running a sales campaign, a compelling value proposition is key to driving growth. Without it, efforts to grow often fall flat. But what happens when companies realize their value proposition isn’t connecting? Many turn to emotion—because emotions sell. But how exactly can you design for emotion?
This article proposes a framework with a three-step approach to make value propositions more emotional and compelling. It builds on behavioral economics and Jobs-to-be-done theory.
Beat Walther, Yann Wermuth
Why Value Propositions Matter
Value Proposition Design has become a standard tool in new product development, marketing and sales. Rightly so. A value proposition clarifies what added value the offering promises to customers and defines why a customer should prefer a product over another one. A new product or service needs a unique proposition to find a viable space in the market. A stagnating brand or poorly performing service needs a revised proposition to relaunch it. A sales campaign needs a good value story for the sales force to execute successfully.
A good Value Proposition triggers emotions
Although the term value proposition has been invented as a strategic concept more than 30 years by Michael Lanning in an internal McKinsey staff paper, most value propositions we see in our practice are not doing what they should: Activate actions, drive purchase decisions or change attitudes.
What’s the route cause why value propositions often don’t work? Because they are too descriptive and functional and don’t trigger emotions.
We know from behavioral science that emotions are much more powerful in influencing decision making than purely functional product descriptions. Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahnemann developed the 2-system theory by which system 1 describes how we respond to the world in ways that we’re not conscious of while system 2 is the reasoning system with rational decision making.
Most of the time, humans are in system 1, thus do not follow rational cognitive processes, but perform routines and habits unconsciously. Kahnemann shows that in situations of fear and uncertainty, the perception of risk is distorted and errors happen in decision making. This is relevant for product choice and purchasing decisions. A new product is always a risky decision because the customer fears that it could not work as well as the current one.
Most value propositions are tailored purely to system 2. They are strictly functional, logic, playing only to the cognitive decision making system. They feel somewhat ok and make sense on paper, but they are not compelling and don’t resonate with customers.
Often, they are technology-focused without reference to the customer needs, written inside-out from the company’s perspective. Or they are written in a rather descriptive way, mentioning customer needs on a generic level, like easy to use, seamless or high quality.
On the other hand value propositions that are only tailored to system 1 might catch attention, but they don't provide enough rational power to overcome doubts and risk perceptions.
We propose therefore that value propositions should be tailored to both systems, starting with system 1, in order to emotionally connect, and play system 2 in a second step, in order to convince and create certainty. This is especially valid for B2B because it’s not an impersonal company that buys, but people working in this company.
Designing a value proposition for both systems
What are the design principles for creating an emotionally engaging value proposition? What emotions should it trigger in the first place? An how?
In our experience, a value proposition is a story that should trigger five emotional clicks in the mind and heart of a customer. Imagine a potential customer listening to this story an think about his or her reactions:
Click 1: I feel understood and answer with "yes, that's true". The target emotion is curiosity.
Click 2: I hear a problem that I have in my life or business and vividly feel the consequences this problem creates if not solved. The target emotion is: belonging and feeling understood
Click 3: I get a promise that is truly appealing, irresistible, so that I want to act. The target emotion is joy and excitement
Now, system 2 kicks in. So the value proposition story has to change. While still keeping system 1 on board, we need to play to system 2 with reasoning, giving evidence and data and so on.
Click 4: I want to believe that this promise will come true, i.e. the new product will deliver what it promises. But I have doubts (system 2). Show me why I can believe the promise. The target emotion is confidence and security, clearing up doubts.
Click 5: I know precisely what to do now, for example to pay attention and listen, to try it the first time or go on a website to register. The target emotion is.
Click | Company goal | Target emotion | System | How |
1 | Grab attention | Curiosity | 1 | Jobs-to-be-done |
2 | Show empathy | Belonging, being understood | 1 | Pain Points and drama |
3 | Get customer ready for solution | Excitement and joy | 1 | Promise |
4 | Clear doubts | Confidence, security | 2 | Reasons-to-be-lieve, product features |
5 | Convert | Get direction | 2 | Call to action |
A value proposition designed in this way will more likely move people to action and change their habits.
The design process for building more emotional value propositions that play to both our systems needs precision and rigor to get it right. It has to take insights from customer research into account and link the promise and the solution to the most relevant pain points customers have in their personal or professional lives. Generic promises just do not work. It’s not enough to brainstorm inside-out and write hypotheses on post-its when building a value proposition for a new product, a market introduction or a sales campaign. The likelihood of getting it right is extremely small if you have not heard from customers themselves what emotions and reasons they are going through.
We recommend a structured 3-step process and use a simple canvas to organize our thoughts. It follows Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) thinking, a powerful logic used in strategy, marketing and innovation to understand the customer perspective from a different angle. JTBD shifts the focus away from thinking about solutions (system 2) and features towards what customers want to achieve and how they feel about achieving it (pain points).
Step 1: Take the Jobs-to-be-done perspective
The purpose of this step is to identify relevant Jobs and extract key pain points or unmet needs, defined as metrics of imperfection to get the Job done. A Job is a goal that a person wants to achieve, and the steps towards this goal . People don’t want a drill, they want a hole in the wall, as Levitt once puts it.
Ideally you run primary, exploratory Jobs-to-be-done research. Or you look at all available customer research from the Jobs-to-be-done lens, filter out the most relevant Jobs and prioritize the most burning problems to get those Jobs done.
Step 2: Define the key elements of the Value Proposition story
There are five design elements which have to be understood and defined:
Customer: The target audience of the value proposition, mostly the key decision makers deciding about purchase or use of the product. A simple characterization is enough, no need to make complicated persona descriptions.
Jobs: The most relevant and specific goals that the customer group wants to achieve, in relation to the product. Tying the story to the most relevant Job is critical to create an immediate emotional connection. We often work with a Job Hierarchy, organizing Jobs in hierarchical form and focus on a concrete, specific Job, the Focus Job.
For example: For a cookware company providing pots, pans and other kitchen utensils, we focused on the Job To prepare a meal for my family. For a car manufacturer designing the seats for a new model, we focused the analysis on three Jobs: To enter the car, To drive off and To get out of the car.
Pain and Drama: Pain points are important, unfulfilled metrics that customers expect (or want to avoid), when trying to get a job done. For example, that there are no burnt spots when cleaning the pan, in the case of the cookware company. Or that my mobile phone is never get stuck between console and seat, in the care example. Pain points must be important to a majority of the customer group, but are not satisfactorily resolved for them. Raising them in the story should trigger emotions like anger, fear, annoyance, etc.
The drama is a technique to make the pain tangible by simply asking what will happen when the pain is not resolved. This activates system 2 as the drama has the power to bring unconscious feelings to the surface.
Promise: The promise connects the customer perspective with the product or company perspective. The promise must be superior to existing solutions and should propose a superiority benefit like faster, simpler, easier, safer, cheaper or more stable and an emotional component, often a higher-level Job. A good promise conveys joy or happiness and positivism that the pain points will be solved.
Reasons-to-believe: These are proof points outlining why the future customer should believe what is promised. Proof points can be a description of the solution like features or mode of actions, evidence data that the new solution works better than current solutions, or references like client testimonials or quotes.
Desired action / new habit: This is what the company wants from the customer. It is often linked to the business goals or the sales processes, e.g., trigger leads in B2B or order in the webshop in B2C.
Step 3: Create the story
Once these five design elements are understood and defined, all the elements of the value proposition story are available and we are ready for step 3. A concise, dramatic story will be created which is often an iterative copy-writing process. LLMs like ChatGPT can be very helpful tools to iterate until a strong story is crafted.
This value story will be the foundation for further communication like internal management presentation, sales meetings, marketing materials or even lead generation campaigns.
Case 1: Promethean
Background: A leading provider of IT hardware and software for schools develops a software to manage the classroom sessions. Potential customers are teachers and school administrators.
Initial Value Proposition: The initial promise was „to save time in preparation of a lesson“, assuming that teachers spend to much of their free time to prepare a lesson. The features included lesson planning functions, exercise templates for different subjects and many more. Concept tests prior to introduction showed lukewarm results and enthusiasm within the organization was low.
Emotionalized Value Proposition: The new promise was „1 click, and all eyes to the front“. Customer research revealed that gaining back attention of the students after a disruption is the key pain point of the teachers. Features paying into this proposition were attention-grabbing games, sound meter or videos.
Case 2: MyPension
Background: A private bank wants to develop a client advisor concept to motivate retirees to take their pension funds as a capital instead of a yearly pension. With the business objective to attract net new money under management.
Initial Value Proposition: The initial promise was „Don’t worry - we take care of your money“, assuming that retirees want to enjoy their free time gained after retirement. The concept offered a an advisory mandate whereby the client has nothing to do. Results six month after launch were disappointing.
New emotional Value Proposition: The new, more resonating promise was „You always new what do do with your money. Stick to it“. This proposition much more resonated with a customer segment who cared for self-determination and led to a significant net new money inflow, justifying to quadruple the client advisor team while securing a substantial profit margin.
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