Advice to Peloton: Shine a Light on Struggle and Progress
In case you haven’t heard, Peloton keeps producing ads that get LOTS of attention — much of it negative. On January 27, 2019, an Arizonan with the Twitter handle Clue Heywood attained Twitter immortality through a hysterical, epic thread satirizing and utterly skewering Peloton’s penchant for “aspirational” advertising — in other words, affluent, ridiculously fit people riding their $2,245 stationary bikes in magazine-worthy multimillion-dollar homes. More recently, Peloton released a 30-second holiday commercial entitled “The Gift That Gives Back”. If Peloton merely wanted to garner attention through this ad, it certainly succeeded, given the subsequent outrage and parody that has ensued.
I’m not going to address the ad’s sexist or body-shaming undertones here, but I absolutely don’t want to diminish them — many others are covering those angles and will do it better than I. My purpose here is to offer perspective through a useful framework for understanding and influencing consumer behavior — Jobs To Be Done theory.
In the 2016 book, Competing Against Luck — The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, Dr. Clayton M. Christensen and his co-authors define a job to be done as “the progress that a person is trying to make in a particular circumstance.” Bob Moesta, CEO of the ReWired Group and a co-founder of the theory of Jobs To Be Done, has recently slightly modified this definition for his teaching purposes to read “the progress that a person is trying to make in a struggling circumstance.” One of Bob’s mantras that I find incredibly useful is “the struggling moment is the seed of all innovation.” People “hire” products to do a job for them and “fire” them when they do not do it well. Jobs have functional, social, and emotional components.
Tone deafness, cheesy music (sorry Tal Bachman, it’s really not your fault), and fear eyebrows aside, “The Gift That Gives Back” fails because the viewer cannot clearly identify with a struggling moment, nor can they clearly discern the progress the woman is seeking. The 30-second spot doesn’t tell a clear and compelling story of how a person moves from an old way to a new way and is changed in some fashion.
Many commentators and critics have already pointed out that while the fictional “Grace from Boston” claims that this gift has changed her, we have no visible evidence. Grace is not only fit at the outset of the ad, but she’s excited to receive the bike. That’s the only functional, social, and emotional baseline we have for her. The only perceptible struggling moment is at :14 when she’s in bed saying “6:00 AM. Yay” with an eye-roll. Getting out of bed to exercise is actually a major struggling moment that I identify with, but the ad just doesn’t nail that moment.
Some commentators have made good observations citing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that people don’t just buy a Peloton to lose weight — they may want to feel better, gain more motivation, and perhaps ultimately be more self-actualized. The problem is that we just don’t see enough evidence of Grace’s desired progress. If you are already a Peloton user, you may see yourself in Grace’s context and project your own struggles and/or desired progress onto it. As such, not everyone has a negative view of the ad. However, other than the proverbial “any publicity is good publicity”, the ad could be more effective in causing people to switch to Peloton from whatever they are currently hiring to make progress — walking, Soul Cycle, traditional exercise bike — or doing nothing at all.
What might be added to Grace’s context to tell a better story? Grace enters her home at :10 with the appearance of a busy professional woman. She’s clearly fit. We know from the first frame that she has a young child. Perhaps Grace has had a stressful past year at work, and she’s juggling considerable professional responsibility with being a mother. Let’s take the story even further — perhaps she has a difficult boss, who’s making her feel like she’s not good enough at her job. She’s bringing work home in the evening and then feels like she’s not doing a good enough job as a mother or wife. (Maybe that’s why she has the fear eyebrows!) For that 30–40 minutes she’s on the Peloton — particularly when the instructor calls out her name at :20 — she’s owning it, she’s in control, and she’s being the best she can be. This form of social and emotional progress, coupled with the fact that she’s maintaining her fitness and getting health benefits of regular exercise, drives transformative change for her.
I’m not a marketing professional, and I perceive it as being challenging to tell a compelling story in thirty seconds. However, when you expect the viewer to fully infer what are the struggling moments and desired progress for which the product may offer a solution, you aren’t reaching as many people as you could. A Peloton spokesperson on CNBC expressed “disappointment” for the “misinterpretation” of the ad, stating “our holiday spot was created to celebrate that fitness and wellness journey.” Rather than blaming the viewer for “misinterpreting” the message, Peloton should show a journey characterized by struggle and progress.
Going beyond “The Gift That Gives Back”, I think Peloton can expand its audience. Let’s revisit the criticism of Peloton being an up-market brand catering to individuals who seem to live in either Architectural Digest or a Pottery Barn store. It’s certainly fine to carve out a niche as a luxury brand. But Peloton has an opportunity as a disruptor in the fitness industry, against more physical location-centric brands such as CrossFit and Soul Cycle that are clearly drawing upon social and emotional components of an individual’s Job to be Done. As of this writing, Peloton offers 0% financing over 39 months for the bike for $58 per month. The monthly subscription costs $39 per month, meaning that you can have an immersive, social workout experience in the comfort of your home for the cost of 3–4 Soul Cycle classes.
I suggest that Peloton tell a different story. Picture a middle-class couple at their modest kitchen table:
Man: Honey, these monthly workout fees are killing us!
Woman: And since we had the baby, we can’t seem to get our exercise routine on track. The gym’s only 10 minutes away…but even then, it’s such a hassle to get there. We’ve got to get our exercise in somehow.
Man: Your sister’s been raving about that Peloton she bought. I just don’t know if we can afford it…
Woman: (doing some calculations) You know what, the math actually works out if we drop the gym membership…
Flash forward — Man gets off the bike, takes baby from wife who starts her workout…
Flash forward again — Family doing something active together
What might the job to be done be here? Perhaps “When time and money are precious, help me stay on a regular exercise routine, so that I’m at my best at work and at home.” This vignette shows a clear struggling moment, as well as progress, and I suspect it might resonate with many people.
Instead of generating parodies and backlash, Peloton could be more successful in crafting messages that resonate with a wider range of people and expand their market share by better communicating how their compelling products meet various jobs to be done. Jeremy Owens of MarketWatch notes that in Peloton’s IPO filing, “it is described as a technology company, a media company, a retail company, and apparel company and a ‘social connection company that enables our community to support one another’”. In a letter to prospective investors, the CEO stated, “Peloton sells happiness.”
As such, I think that Peloton actually has a pretty good understanding of consumers Jobs to be Done, given their appeal at a functional, social, and emotional level. They just miss the mark in this ad. Of course, their product is simply out of reach for many, but Peloton could make a credible play to folks who have more modest means than those typically featured.
Just a bit of free advice inspired by Dr. Christensen and his colleagues. But if you do find it helpful, Peloton, feel free to send a bike over. I have plenty of struggling moments and a lot of progress to make!
I’m on Twitter: @JayGerhart
If you’d like to learn more about Jobs To Be Done, you can view a recent talk I gave about it here, courtesy of the fine folks at Skookum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsP0-m9QgQY&list=PLuOQj7cjNa5Jf46HIk1LugHUS2kBa8IWV&index=24
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/media/peloton-ad-ryan-reynolds.html
https://www.commpro.biz/how-concepts-from-psychology-could-have-avoided-pelotons-problem/
https://themulticulturalmarketer.com/2019/02/16/maslow-should-have-been-a-marketer-for-peloton/
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/12/08/outrage-machine-strips-gears-over-peloton-ad/
