Brand Benefits Ladder by Møde Template

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When to Use this Template

The Brand Benefits Ladder is a model that allows you to link the brand's offer with its emotional and psychological role in the consumer's / employee's life, thereby reducing the risk of creating communication, not about the product in the public space. With the help of the ladder, brand managers and strategic agencies can find the correct, logical, functional benefits arising from the features of a product or service and, based on them, work out vivid emotional benefits that the consumer could later associate with a specific brand. Such a close relationship between the elements of the brand platform helps to significantly increase the value of the brand's offer for its Target Audience and allows it to move from building purely rational loyalty (when your consumer/employee evaluates information and facts carefully) to emotional loyalty (when your target audience sees additional subjective value in the brand's promises).

What is the Template About

The template developed by the Møde team allows:

to formulate tangible benefits that contribute to solving specific problems or tasks on the basis of the points of differentiation, namely the tangible characteristics of the product/service that distinguish it from what competitors offer. To check them for compliance with the current key functional needs of the consumer/employee of the brand to ensure its relevance to the target audience
to formalize the emotional consequence caused by the use or possession of the brand, which cannot be measured, but can be felt, on the basis of the formulated functional needs. To check the key emotion for compliance with the current key emotional needs of the consumer/employee of the brand to ensure its relevance to the target audience
to compare several approaches to the formation of brand benefits in the Brand Ladder format and choose the most optimal one based on information about the target audience. This is ensured by taking into account the key functional and emotional needs of the audience, its motivation, and insight (to fill the brand ladder, all of these or only available audience data can be used)

In addition, this template is a part of the educational intensive course on building an Employer brand of the company (it appears as a part of the third day, completely dedicated to creating an Employer Brand Platform).

How to Use this Template

Within this framework, individual work is combined with teamwork - so we can ensure that the views of all team members are heard and properly considered.

Ask the participants or their representative responsible for collecting and storing all brand information to enter all available data about the target audience and about the brand in the blue zones at the top, bottom, and within the ladder to rely on them when completing tasks.

Ask the participants to move within the template FROM THE BOTTOM UP, starting with the formation of attributes (points of differentiation) and moving up the steps:

1. Ask the participants to jointly form 3 groups of similar/related brand differentiation points — characteristics and benefits that consumers /employees clearly associate with this brand and that distinguish the brand from its competitors.

Tip 1: This exercise provides for a certain variability of execution:

participants or their representative, responsible for collecting and storing all brand information, can previously (before forming groups) place at the bottom the characteristics and benefits known to them, which consumers/employees already clearly associate with the brand, thanks to which they positively evaluate it and believe that this brand stands out for them in the product category. This option is especially preferable when repositioning an existing brand.
participants can, in the framework of the workshop, during a free discussion, highlight the distinctive features of the brand, which in the future (when launching a product), in their general opinion, will distinguish the brand from other players in the market and will be remembered by its target audience. This option is especially preferable when creating a new brand.

For ease of execution, a special zone is allocated at the bottom of the framework for preliminary collection or generation in the format of a free brainstorm of all possible points of differentiation.

Tip 2: A group of differentiation points allocated by participants may consist of a point if it is difficult to synthesize it with others.

2. Ask the participants to split into three teams (by writing their name on one of the 3 arrows indicating the direction of movement within the vertical streams).

In the team:

2.1) Ask the participants to personally write down what functional benefits the formed group of attributes gives to a consumer/employee.

Tip 1: It is important that participants record each functional benefit on a separate sticker.

Tip 2: When generating benefits, it would be better if participants took into account what their colleagues were writing and tried not to copy the options already proposed.

2.2) Ask the participants to vote for the 3 functional benefits that most accurately meet the functional needs of the target audience, and then transfer the voting leader stickers to the frame with the red border above.

2.3) Ask the participants to personally record what emotional benefits the selected functional benefits give to a consumer/employee.

Tip 1: It is important that participants record every possible emotional benefit on a separate sticker.

Tip 2: When generating benefits, it would be better if participants took into account what their colleagues were writing and tried not to copy the options already proposed.

2.4) Ask the participants to vote for 1 emotional benefit that most accurately meets the emotional needs of the target audience, and then move the voting leader sticker to the frame with the red border above.

Tip: If there are several leader stickers, it is important to collectively choose the most key of them, or synthesize several options into one if they are largely similar to each other.

3. Combine the teams all together:

3.1) Ask each of the teams to present the result of their work to the other teams.

Tip: During the presentation of one of the teams, it is important for the participants of other teams to check whether the benefits chosen by colleagues are a response to the emotional and functional needs of the target audience of the brand.

3.2) Ask the participants in the choice area above all streams to vote individually for the most optimal benefits ladder - the one that contains the most relevant benefits for the target audience. Its benefits will be the final benefits in further work on the formation of the brand.

Tip: If there are several leader ladders, it is important to collectively choose the most priority of them.

Mode team

Product@Møde

We are Møde. We specialize in strategic facilitation of decentralized teams. We know how important it is for teams to work in close collaboration with each other. We know how difficult it is to achieve this goal when people in a team are geographically far from each other. We are focused on ensuring your team creates solutions that will inspire them at each stage of implementation. Our key task is the performance of your team in full collaboration and synchronization with each other.