The Power of Framing: How Brands Influence Consumer Decisions

Is a glass half-full or half-empty? The amount of water is identical, but your answer changes everything. That’s the raw power of framing. Most brands spend their entire budget describing the water—the features, the specs, the price. The world’s most successful brands focus all their energy on controlling the perception of the glass.

This isn’t art school. This is the application of behavioural science as a commercial weapon.

The brutal truth is that if you don’t strategically frame your offer, your customer will do it for you, and they’ll almost always default to the least charitable frame. At CUT THRU, we don’t just build brands; we architect the context in which they are judged. We use evidence-based framing to make our clients’ value propositions not just understood, but undeniable.
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The Curse of Knowledge: Why Most Brands Get Framing Wrong

Brands fail at framing because they are trapped by the “curse of knowledge.” They are so intimately familiar with their own products that they can no longer see them from the customer’s perspective. They lead with what the product is (e.g., “a 5mm titanium drill bit”) instead of what it does for the customer (e.g., “the power to hang a family portrait in 30 seconds”).

This is a catastrophic error in a world of infinite choice. As the work of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman proves, human decisions are driven by heuristics and cognitive biases, not by rational analysis. When you present a customer with a list of specs, you are forcing them to do the hard analytical work. When you present them with a compelling frame, you are providing a mental shortcut to the right decision. Sloppy, unframed messaging doesn’t just fail to persuade; it actively creates friction and decision paralysis.
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The Perception Playbook: A Framework for Strategic Framing

Gut feel is great. But validated gut feel is god-tier. Our framework is a systematic, data-driven approach to finding the most powerful ethical frame for your offer, proven across unicorn startups and global brands.
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Frame #1: The Value Frame (Benefits, Not Specs)

The Psychology: Customers don’t buy products; they buy better versions of themselves. The value frame shifts the focus from the technical specifications of your product to the emotional or practical benefits the customer will receive.The Dark Tactic: Hyping a vague, unprovable benefit that sounds good but means nothing (“Experience the future of innovation!”).The Ethical Counter: Frame your product around a tangible, desirable outcome.For our client Paperform, a powerful SaaS tool, we don’t lead with “conditional logic and advanced integrations” (specs). We lead with “The power to create smart, beautiful solutions for your business, no code required” (a benefit). This frames the product not as a boring utility, but as an empowering tool for creativity and efficiency, which is the value the customer is actually buying.
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Frame #2: The Anchor Frame (Context is Everything)

The Psychology: The first piece of information a person receives (the anchor) disproportionately influences their perception of all subsequent information.The Dark Tactic: Creating a ridiculously inflated “was” price to make a discount seem massive, a tactic savvy consumers now see right through.The Ethical Counter: Anchor your price against a larger, more meaningful context.For Hyloh, a premium architectural hardware brand, their price point is justified by their quality. We anchor this price not against cheaper competitors, but against the overall budget of a high-end architectural project. In the context of a million-dollar build, the cost of their superior hardware is framed as a small, essential investment in the final aesthetic and functional quality, rather than a significant expense.
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Frame #3: The Urgency Frame (Authentic Scarcity)

The Psychology: As marketing scientist Byron Sharp notes, urgency and scarcity are powerful motivators because they tap into our innate fear of missing out (FOMO).The Dark Tactic: The fake “Only 3 left in stock!” counter on a product that you have thousands of in your warehouse. This is a lie that destroys long-term trust.The Ethical Counter: Frame urgency around a real, verifiable event.For Talent Recap, a global media brand, urgency is a natural part of their product. When a live finale is happening, the opportunity to vote is genuinely limited. A CTA like “The voting window closes in 5 minutes! Have your say now!” is a powerful and completely authentic urgency frame. It’s driven by the reality of the event, not an artificial marketing ploy.
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Frame #4: The Reframe (Turning a Negative into a Positive)

The Psychology: A reframe changes the meaning of a situation by changing the lens through which it is viewed, without changing the facts.The Dark Tactic: “Greenwashing”—reframing a fundamentally unsustainable product as “eco-friendly” by focusing on one minor positive attribute.The Ethical Counter: Reframe a negative situation to empower the customer.For our client Blossom, an investment app, market volatility can be perceived as a negative. Instead of ignoring it, we can help them reframe it. The message becomes: “Market dips can feel scary, but history shows they are often opportunities for long-term investors. Our platform helps you stay consistent with your goals.” This reframes a negative event into a positive affirmation of the user’s smart strategy.
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Frame #5: The Test Frame (Data over Dogma)

The Psychology: As Rory Sutherland says, “The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea.” You will never know which frame is most effective until you test it.The Dark Tactic: Trusting your gut feel and rolling out a campaign based on internal opinion alone.The Ethical Counter: Use double-blind split testing to find the winning frame.For Blossom, we could test two different frames for their core value proposition. Frame A: “Earn returns of up to 5.00% p.a.” (a logical, numbers-based frame). Frame B: “Grow your savings faster than your bank” (an emotional frame that anchors against a familiar alternative). Only a rigorous split test can tell us which frame truly resonates with the target audience and drives more sign-ups.
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Implementation Guide: An Ethical Framing Strategy

1. Audit Your Value Frames: Review your product pages. Are you leading with specs or benefits? Work to translate every feature into a tangible customer outcome, like we did for Paperform.
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2. Establish Your Anchor: What is the context that makes your price feel most valuable? Is it against a competitor, an alternative solution, or the long-term cost of inaction? Define it, as we did for Hyloh.
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3. Identify Authentic Urgency: What is genuinely scarce or time-limited about your offer? Is it a live event like for Talent Recap? A limited production run? A beta-testing cohort? Use these real constraints.
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4. Reframe Your Weaknesses: Identify potential customer objections or negative market events. Brainstorm how you can reframe these into a positive, empowering narrative, as we proposed for Blossom.
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5. Seek an Expert Opinion: Effective framing requires an outside perspective. You’re too close to your own “water” to see the “glass.” An objective audit from the best branding agency in Sydney can identify your most powerful frames.
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Common Framing Pitfalls to Avoid

• Overused Discounts: If you are constantly “50% off,” your brand is framed as cheap, and no one will ever pay your full price.
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• Fake Scarcity: A fake timer or stock counter is a transparent lie that will permanently damage your credibility.
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• Ignoring Context: A “budget-friendly” frame will fail with a luxury audience. A “premium craftsmanship” frame will fail with a bargain-hunting audience. Know your audience.
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• Skipping Tests: Never assume you know which frame will win. The data will almost always surprise you.
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The Future of Framing

The future of framing will be defined by hyper-personalisation. AI will enable brands to tailor the frame not just to a segment, but to an individual’s known psychological biases and communication style. The power to do this will be immense, but the ethical responsibility will be even greater. The brands that win will be those that use this technology not to manipulate, but to deliver the most relevant, clear, and compelling version of their value to every single customer.

Is your brand’s value getting lost in a bad frame? Partner with CUT THRU, the leading branding agency in Sydney and New York, to build an ethical, perception-shaping strategy that drives growth.
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About The Author

Jonathan Sankey is founder of CUT THRU, recognised for conversion-centred design and product-market fit testing. His evidence-based approach has driven growth for global brands and unicorn startups in Australia and America. A Netty Award winner (2023, 2024), he blends data with execution.

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