The Rapid Demise of the Purpose Brand Derived from Jobs-to-be-Done
When catchy phrases are hijacked by the wrong people
“Thirty thousand new consumer products are launched each year. But over 90% of them fail…”1
This is the opening to Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure, a 2005 article written by Clay Christensen, Scott Cook and Taddy Hall. In it, they recognize what a market really is by suggesting that modern marketers measure markets around “the drill” and not “the hole.” If you haven’t read this before, I’ve left a link in the footnote. You should, because while industries are tied to the drill, the market is actually tied to the hole.
“If a marketer can understand the job, design a product and associated experiences in purchase and use to do that job, and deliver it in a way that reinforces its intended use, then when customers find themselves needing to get that job done, they will hire that product.”
…I’m not going to get into the marketer / innovator debate today. 👆
Building Brands That Customers Will Hire
What is a purpose brand? Allow Clay Christensen to answer that..
“Sometimes, the discovery that one needs to get a job done is conscious, rational, and explicit. At other times, the job is so much a part of a routine that customers aren’t really consciously aware of it. Either way, if consumers are lucky, when they discover the job they need to do, a branded product will exist that is perfectly and unambiguously suited to do it. We call the brand of a product that is tightly associated with the job for which it is meant to be hired a purpose brand.”
What he’s suggesting is that if you can align your branding (and I don’t necessarily mean the name of your company) to your offering, it will connect directly with the underlying objectives of customers who you are trying to attract. It’s common sense!
Here is an example2 that was floating around the Interwebs around that time that explains why this is such a powerful marketing concept:
Consider the brand help™. It exists to help consumers solve simple medical problems. Instead of sifting through rows and rows of brands like Acetaminophen, and the various sizes and dosages, a purpose brand - along with some aggressive merchandising - makes it simpler for the person entering a pharmacy to solve their problem.
Help…I have a headache
It addresses the underlying reason a consumer enters the pharmacy, and answers the question “What can I purchase to relieve my headache?”
Building Brands That Virtue Signal
You will get no argument from me that running an efficient business can also mean using less of the worlds precious resources. Beyond that, I’m not getting into politics. In today’s environment, most successful companies are promoting their desire to make the world a better place…so they don’t get cancelled. But, that is not what makes them successful.
When I see the large consultancies come out with their points of view around purpose, they seem to have little regard for the research and theories that precede them. Allow me to give you a few examples:
“Today, consumers are no longer investing their time, money and attention in brands that just sell quality products at fair prices. New Accenture Strategy research finds that they are making carefully considered choices to buy from companies that stand for a purpose they personally identify with that reflects their values and beliefs.”3
“It’s no longer enough for brands to deliver great products and experiences. Instead, consumers are demanding for brands to be more proactive and conscious in delivering value to society as a whole.”4
I can develop an extensive list of companies that conform to these aspirational values, that simply failed in the market. This research is built on the wrong questions. In a sea of similar solutions, there are groups that will desire differentiated experiences, and others that will check that you aren’t cutting down rain forests, hiring child labor, and you have an employee culture they agree with. But as many people as there are that rail against Amazon for various reasons, they’re still buying from them, for the most part.
Is turning purpose inward really what makes successful brands? Clay Christensen - who established the concept - didn’t seem to think so. At a minimum, he did not include that thinking in his research that reinvigorated Theodore Levitt’s concept of the quarter-inch hole.
Where’s The Reset Button?
Over 90% of new products are still failing each year. I will argue that marketers quickly hijacked the purpose brand name to stuff their inside-out thinking into a new catch-phrase without understanding the true power of what was actually intended.
Clay didn’t have it all right, but he was on to something that the marketing world just hasn’t figured out yet. Unfortunately, in many large organizations the Marketing function holds the purse strings of the innovation teams.
The last time I checked this out 👇, marketing was a part of revenue development, but not really a part of innovation, where hidden market opportunities are revealed. So why do we rely on them for product innovation and business model research?
Marketing is focused on existing products and services, and their feedback - at best - is sustaining. It should really be a team focused solely on innovation that informs the down stream functions about market definition and customer needs. Those bits of knowledge will enable the product teams and marketers to target - with laser focus - the real reason customers might purchase your product…their Job-to-be-Done!
There is nothing more powerful than a consumer’s underlying purpose when they purchase your product. If you can figure out what that purpose is, develop products for it, and message to it, you’ll stand a much better chance of winning in the market.