Beyond Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing

Clayton Christensen popularized the notion of Jobs-To-Be-Done with his now famous Milkshake story. The concept is pretty simply yet quite powerful and effective in segmenting a market. Which, by the way is the main reason why new products fail. Most Product Managers launch products for customer segments that are identified based on attributes, such as age, income, and so on. This misses the mark more often than not. With the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework, the market segmentation is based on the “job” that the customer is trying to achieve, instead of on attributes. You may call it contextual-oriented segmentation vs attributes-oriented segmentation.

One of Clayton’s colleagues went and talked to the customers that were buying milkshakes and asked them a different question than the usual attributes-related questions like “do you like the flavour”, etc. His question was

what job are you trying to hire this milkshake for?

Their research shows that there were two customer segments. The first were those customers who bought milkshakes early in the morning so that they could have something to do while commuting to work. The milkshake proved to be a good alternative to coffee, bagels or donuts or whatever else you could eat or drink while driving to work. It wasn’t so much that the milkshake served as a breakfast replacement but it gave the customer about 20 minutes worth of doing something while driving, to make the time pass by faster. The second customer segment were parents who came in to buy milkshakes for their children, in the evening. The parent would “hire” the milkshake to act like a sort of desert-reward to close off the day.

As a parent who used to have a long commute to work, I can certainly identify with both segments. I’ve heard of the Milkshake story a few years ago and since then I’ve chewed on it, both from the perspective of the customer and of the Product Manager. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework misses out on the real profound motivation behind a customer’s decision to purchase a product. And this is not insignificant because after all, this is what Marketing is all about — figuring out what drives the customer to buy.

I’d like to put forth an alternative to the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework, one that accounts for the real deep-seated human motivation that drives people to action.

Instead of asking “what job are you trying to accomplish”, I believe a more effective question would be

who do you want to become?

At first, one may think that this is too much of an existential matter to be explored as part of a marketing campaign. Perhaps a philosophical debate, sure. But a marketing campaign?

Well, let’s think about that for a minute.

What is a marketing campaign, if not a research into the depths of the human mind and heart? Remember, the fundamental problem we’re trying to crack is “what drives the customer to buy our product”? I believe the customer motivation to buy spans three dimensions.

The first dimension is the desire to possess material wealth — to “have”. Whether it’s a car, a phone, a house, shoes, a watch or even a milkshake. The lowest, I dare say most superficial, motivation, is to own the product. Product Managers can certainly speak to this motivation in their marketing campaigns, and most do in fact. Think of any traditional marketing message. You gotta have this product. It’s good for you. It has these and these features, etc. Just like in the original marketing campaign for the milkshakes. They just kept adding features, hoping customers would like the new features enough to buy more milkshakes. It didn’t work. And it usually doesn’t work.

Why? Simply because humans are much more complex than that and have deeper needs than just amassing material wealth.

The second dimension, one significantly higher than “having”, is “doing”. This appeals to our human need of experiencing life, instead of just collecting wealth. Experiences are far more interesting to us humans than possessions. That’s why the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework makes a lot of sense at the experience level. It’s far better to ask the customer about the kind of experience they’re trying to enjoy, rather than just asking about the kind of product features they would like to own. And that’s why framing the market segmentation around the concept of “job” fits perfectly in an experience-driven economy.

I believe we’re moving to a new kind of economy though, one where experience is just the foundation for something more. That brings me to the third dimension of the motivation to buy. We’ve seen the “having” dimension and the “doing” dimension. Let’s now talk about the “being” dimension. I believe that the highest level of motivation is reached when we tap into our self-concept. Who we are and more importantly, who we want to become. Our identity of ourselves, of where we fit in the world is the source of all other motivations in our life. But perhaps, even stronger than that is our desire to perfect ourselves, and to become even better, to become even more. To become our ideal self. That’s why the question “who do you want to become” is so particularly powerful. It opens our mind to this third dimension, where we look at ourselves with fresh, objective eyes, and we literally ask our own self, “hey, what’s your dream, who do you really want to be tomorrow?”

Let’s go back to the Milkshake story and let’s take it up a notch, let’s go to the third dimension of the customer motivation to buy.

The first segment, the morning commuters, how do they see themselves, and who do they want to become? They would probably see themselves as hard workers, professionals, on their way to make a living, on their way to put into practice what they did best. And perhaps they would want to become even more professional, even better at what they did. Perhaps they would want to solve the current problem they’re working on at the office, faster, better, more efficiently. Maybe they’d want to become a better problem solver. Maybe they wanted to become a manager instead of an engineer.

What about the second segment? The father that came in with their child would probably want to be an even better parent and same for the mothers. They would probably want to become the kind of parent that their children would be proud of.

So how would this translate into Product Innovation?

The customer question is now ready to be turned into an innovation question:

how can I as a company help my customers become who they want to become?

In the first case, for the professionals, how would a restaurant chain go about helping them become better professionals? Well, how about this. What if they changed the milkshake cup design into one that appealed to professionals more? Perhaps something more “professional-looking”? Sounds obvious now that we’ve come this far. But think about a cup that appealed to different types of professionals. Sort of like the LinkedIn of cups if you know what I mean. I bet you most milkshake cups were designed like the Facebook of milkshakes. And yeah professionals are on Facebook, but they rather spend time on LinkedIn for career-related discussions and updates. What if the cup was so great that perhaps it was re-usable? Or partially re-usable? Like throw-away the inside but keep the container, or something along those lines? Why? Well because this sounds like a recurring event, every morning, same time, right? So might as well turn it into a sort of partnership between the restaurant and the customer, by accompanying them along in their career development path. Perhaps the cup could include some inspirational quotes that would make them think, that would give them a boost to tackle the day at the office. In terms of pricing models, perhaps this segment would prefer a subscription type of business model. Where they would subscribe to the “Milshake service” and they would only pay once a month or so. If we want to take it further, perhaps the restaurant would have a separate VIP line for its “VIP Professional Members”.

How would all of that make the customer feel? Would it make them feel more like a professional? Less? No effect? I would suggest that the customer would feel more like a professional thus meeting their highest level of motivation, that of becoming more of a professional.

What about the parents? What if the restaurant included different ingredients that were on the side and that would have to be mixed into the milkshake by playing a game. A game that required at least two players, the parent and the child. That way, the milkshake would literally facilitate quality time between the parent and the child. Maybe there could also be a parent-equivalent milkshake with a cup design that would somehow fit into the child’s milkshake. A design that would perhaps make the game even more interesting. Perhaps that design could also include “awesome parent” loyalty points that could be redeemed for trips to an amusement park or to a museum or other places parents and children could spend time together.

The bottom line is that diving deep into the self-concept of the customer will yield a higher return on marketing investment than any other method of segmentation. Give this a shot next time you’re about to launch a new product to the market. Ask “who does my customer want to become” and let the amazing power of that question unfold before your eyes as you pour out different ways you could help your customer become who they dream of becoming.

In short, your dream of a successful product launch will come true if and only if you will make your customer’s personal dreams come true.

Enjoy and happy product launch!