Why every great value proposition starts with a great Brand Idea.
Let’s talk about value.
For years, “value” has been lauded as the way to win. From budget airlines to supermarket trolleys, ‘value’ means one thing: cheap. Thanks to the likes of Amazon, Walmart and McDonald’s, “value” has come to mean ‘bargain’, the thing you buy when you’ve got less than a fiver, when you’re lost in a sea of yellow stickers and 2-for-1 deals are shouting for your attention.
And yes, we’re not denying that a bargain does feel good. But only temporarily. True value – real, grown-up, capital-V Value – is not about cheap thrills. It’s about giving meaning to why we buy, what we buy and who we buy it from.
In business, value is neither cheap nor budget. It’s quite the opposite: growth, margin, competitive edge, commercial advantage. It’s the reason why someone chooses your brand over another. Yet all too often, brands struggle to articulate that value in ways that convert – because they’re missing the strategic clarity that makes selling easier and marketing more effective.
Making people value what you’re all about
Getting your audience to value what you do – and to do so in a way that makes them remember it, act on it and maybe, if you’re lucky, even spread the word -is one of the things we believe is the key to your business’ success.
When you can move out of the bargain-bin, promo-tastic zone, and into the space where you can actually sell what you do for what it’s truly worth – that’s what we mean by value. And it becomes the ultimate driver of price.
The most powerful thing your brand can do? Make people VALUE (ok, we’re going all-in shouty caps here) everything about you. If people understand the value of what you do – and I mean really get it, emotionally, viscerally, with a deep-down gut feeling – they’ll pay more, stay longer, and remember you better than the competition. (Even if your offering is 90% similar.) But how?
Enter: The Value Proposition
Let’s rewind to the 90’s. This is when a group of well-meaning McKinsey consultants coined the term “Value Proposition”. The paper which kicked the whole thing off was poetically titled, ‘A business is a value delivery system’. Their definition?
A clear, simple statement of the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that the company promises to deliver to customers.
In other words: “Here’s what we do, why it matters, and what’s in it for you.”
The tricky thing about Value Propositions
Ever since their notion of the ‘Value Proposition’ as a business strategy, it still remains a framework that is largely misunderstood. Yes, it should express the benefits you bring to your audience – rational, emotional, tangible, intangible. But the best Value Propositions have something far deeper at their core: belief.
Value is not logical, my friends. It is emotional. It’s the reason you might choose Keel over another agency (we hope). It’s the reason you choose iPhone over Android – or vice versa. It’s what justifies a price tag, wins hearts, and drives growth. It’s the answer to the ultimate buyer’s question: “What’s in it for me?”
The human brain stores this stuff in the hippocampus and amygdala – our emotional vaults. Where meaning lives. Where connections live. If you can connect what you do to how people feel, you’re locked in those vaults for good.
Perhaps defining the value of chocolate as joy (you know this one) or sports apparel as achievement (and this one) is one thing, but defining the value of data solutions, engineering consultancy services or industrial cooling? Trickier.
We don’t mean to have a dig at McKinsey’s big brains, but we see two major challenges with the Value Proposition. They’re either boring or floating in space.
- The Value Proposition lacks distinctiveness.
It sounds like everyone else. Swap the logos, whack it on another business and you’d barely notice.
- The Value Proposition sits in isolation.
When presented in isolation, a Value Proposition can feel flat. It might look good in a slide deck, but it won’t align your sales team, win customers or justify a premium price point.
A value proposition without a brand idea won’t drive growth
So how do you solve for this? How do you make your Value Proposition feel – well – valuable?
At Keel, we believe it’s through the power of the right Brand Idea. The power of an idea, beautifully articulated, that helps people want your business. And want yours and no one else. A single, powerful Brand Idea that gives your whole business what it needs to ignite and take off.
Think of it as an ignition switch. It lets you power up and drive everything you do, defining how your business shows up, for customers, employees, investors and the wider world. It sets you apart from the competition. It distills your unique point of view and the value you create into something people can believe in.
The best Brand Ideas frame your value in an emotionally powerful way
The right Brand Idea will let you build out your Value Proposition to more than an indistinct and isolated sentence. The right Brand Idea will give you a framing that enables you to define and express what you do and who you are and what you stand for in a deep, powerful and distinctive way.
And the right Brand Idea can be activated through everything you do – not only your Value Proposition, but your identity and design, your communications and actions, your culture and your people, your sales deck and your socials. It gives you something to sale against, price with confidence and scale more easily.
This is especially important in complex B2B environments, where products and services can be hard to differentiate and even harder to articulate. When you’re offering data centre architecture or precision cooling technology, ‘value’ can quickly become vague unless it’s rooted in a Brand Idea.
When value feels vague, sales slow down, marketing underperforms, and growth is less sustainable.
How a Brand Idea builds confidence across teams and markets
We’ve seen this time and time again.
Take Güntner, a global engineering brand who we helped move from a generic promise of excellence to a unifying idea grounded in clarity, purpose and organizational pride. Their Value Proposition didn’t change overnight – but its impact did. Because it was aligned to something deeper, something everyone could get behind, from boardroom to factory floor.
When your Value Proposition is built on a Brand Idea, it doesn’t just sound better, it becomes more:
- Consistent: because it’s expressed across every channel, touchpoint and team.
- Believable: because it’s connected to how you operate, not just what you say.
- Enduring: because it’s bigger than any one campaign or product cycle.
In turn, the brand becomes a vessel for value, creating immediate recognition, driving customer loyalty and long-term growth and building investor confidence.
Want to write a better value proposition?
So, there you have it.
If you want to sharpen your Value Proposition, start with a brilliantly articulated Brand Idea that captures what you really offer the world. Make it emotional. Make it distinctive. Then activate it through every expression of your business. Because when your Brand Idea is clear, your value becomes obvious. And when your value is obvious, everything gets easier – selling, marketing, pricing, recruitment, retention.
That’s the real power of brand – not just as a tool for visibility, but as something that is a true driver of value creation.
And that?
That changes everything.