There is a street performer named Will. He collected about $100 an hour playing guitar in public.
Not because he was the best guitarist on the block. There are thousands of extraordinary guitarists in the world who will never make $100 an hour doing anything. Will’s music was good. That is not why people stopped.
They stopped because of his sign.
While every other performer had a cup and a cardboard sign asking for money, Will’s sign said something different: “If you’re homeless or need help, take as much as you need from the case.”
One sign. And suddenly people were not just tipping a guitarist. They were participating in something that made them feel generous, connected, and a little bit better about the world they were walking through. They were experiencing hope. Affiliation. A moment of self-transcendence on a Tuesday afternoon.
That is the whole lesson. Right there.
Most businesses are the performer with the cup. Will figured out something else entirely.
Elements of Value Marketing — What It Is and Why Most Businesses Have Never Heard of It
In the 1960s, a researcher named Theodore Levitt coined the term marketing myopia — a nearsighted focus on selling products and services rather than seeing what consumers actually value. Decades later, Bain and Company set out to quantify exactly what that means.
They identified 30 distinct elements of value — the things people actually buy for, consciously or not. These elements fall into four levels, building on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: functional at the base, emotional above that, life-changing above that, and social impact at the top.
Most businesses compete almost entirely at the functional level. Quality. Saves time. Reduces cost. Reduces risk. These are table stakes. They are the minimum required to be taken seriously. They are not the reason anyone becomes a loyal customer. They are not the reason anyone pays a premium. And they are definitely not the reason anyone tells their friends.
The brands with the most loyal customers and the least price sensitivity — Apple, Amazon, the ones that seem to grow regardless of what is happening in the market — they are competing at levels most businesses have never even thought about.
Marketing myopia is the diagnosis. The elements of value are the prescription.
Here is where the 180 degree turn happens for most people.
They have spent their entire business life talking about what they do. The features. The process. The credentials. The years of experience. And somewhere in the back of their mind they have always known that this is not quite right — that this is not actually why people choose them, or stay with them, or refer others to them.
The elements of value framework makes it visible. It gives language to the thing that was always there but never named.
Your customer is not buying your product or service. They are buying what your product or service makes possible. The functional stuff gets you considered. The emotional and life-changing levels are where you actually get chosen — and kept.
Will was not selling music. He was selling the feeling of being someone who gives. He was selling belonging. He was selling hope. The guitar was just the vehicle.
What is the vehicle in your business? And more importantly — what are people actually buying when they work with you?
The Bain research is clear: the more elements of value a brand genuinely delivers, the stronger the customer relationship and the faster the revenue growth. Companies that score well on four or more elements — think Apple, Amazon, Samsung — consistently outperform the ones that compete only on functional value.
But here is what the research cannot tell you: which elements are yours. That requires doing the work — looking honestly at your business from the outside in, understanding what your best customers actually experience, and finding the specific places where you deliver value that your competitors do not even know they are missing.
That is not something you figure out by reading a blog post. It is an exercise. And it is one of the most clarifying things a business can do.
Next week we will talk about what happens when you get this right — and why price stops being the conversation entirely.
This is one of the exercises I work through inThe Framework with every client before we touch a word of messaging. If you want to do it properly — not just understand it — that is a different conversation. Reach out and let’s talk. Let’s talk → www.rickwenner.co