What's the Job of a Milkshake?
Let's find the Job-to-be-Done
Let's find the Job-to-be-Done is a regular series of short blogs and podcasts designed to have some interactive fun while determining what the right job is for the many products we see in the market. There is no 100% right answer, because it will depend on who is trying to provide a solution and what their capabilities are. If you all make this interactive - with your questions and suggestions - this could be a great learning experience for the lurkers.
The question has been asked, "What is the Job of a Milkshake?" Clay Christensen hypothesized that it had to do with keeping your hand busy while commuting to work in the morning to relieve boredom, or something like that.
Let’s get this out of the way first: a Job-to-be-Done is something that a customer/consumer has, not something that a product has. Therefore, the focal point of any study has to be on the end user and it also has to be solution-agnostic. Starting with a product (like a milkshake) severely constrains your opportunity for innovation…and competing products are all milkshakes. It simply doesn’t work that way. Cherry-pick stories all you want. But I’ll ask you to provide the receipts on how your example was enabled by a method that created sustained, long-term growth rates, or how it informed the next level of innovation. I’ll also ask “how did the brand continually disrupt industry after industry?” I'll wait.
What IS the Job?
Well, there are multiple jobs that a milkshake could enable, along with a bazillion other products. If you zero in on a specific end user, it becomes a bit simpler. Tony Ulwick - of Strategyn - suggests that for the morning commuter (the end user) who opts to purchase a milkshake they are Getting Breakfast on-the-go. Clearly, milkshakes are not the only product that could enable that job. Also, milkshakes can be a solution for other jobs, depending on the end user. This is where Clay Christensen’s approach gets stuck because he treats them as segments. If you’re trying to innovate, you need to focus on the market, and the market is always a group of end users who are trying to get a job done. The article I liked to above explains.
Clay only addresses a handful of potential pain points, e.g., alleviate boredom. This is because he focused on a solution. In fact there could be scores of metrics that are measured differently by different groups of end users because they are not all in the same situation. The key is to know what all of them are regardless of whether they are current pain points, and also to define the market appropriately.
A milkshake - regardless of how thin you make the straw (to make it last longer), or how many chunks you put in it (to alleviate boredom) - is not a solution for the entire market of commuters who want to get breakfast on-the-go. If you don’t know all of the success measures, you will never find these different groups, or serve them adequately. The market does not equal a situation. There is no such thing as market of one.
👆👆 Milkshakes are not a market. Situations are not a segment. 👆👆 👈👀
There are a lot of excellent arguments that have been debated with regard to Milkshake Marketing, pro and con. I have no interest in rehashing those here. Also, it was a partially made up story that was never implemented by the “client.” Don’t believe me, read Clay’s last book.
“It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them they’ve been fooled” ~ Mark Twain
This is the real world. When the end user is a morning commuter, my pick for the Job-to-be-Done is Getting Breakfast on-the-go. Now it's your turn.
Please comment below and consider the following...
Who are the end users that are consuming milkshakes besides just morning commuters?
What are the different situations that a commuter could find themselves in?
Who are the other end users of milkshakes? What is their JTBD (single)? What situations do they find themselves in (many)?
Who are the traditional competitors (sorry, no hints) to milkshakes? Do they change with the situation?
Who are the non-traditional Competitors, why?
What constraints can you think of?
What are some of the performance metrics for getting the job done successfully?
What is the Job you think we should focus on, why?
We’ll get into some other real end users and jobs once this gets rolling. I thought it would be best to start off with a classic case
Oh man, I'd like to discuss this with you.
I’m gonna take another shot at understanding the milkshake job, after discussions with Michael Boysen in this very thread.
The question on “situations that a commuter could find themselves in” has to be related to the job in question. I take ‘situation’ as synonymous with Christensen’s “circumstance”. Boysen notes that the situation should be important for the job, as well, in an earlier reply in this thread!
If we use ‘breakfast on the go” as the job… then the circumstance/situation must partly create the job in the first place and allow the solution to work under it.
This job can only arise, if the person did not make or get (enough) breakfast at home. Either they don’t want to, or are unable to make (enough) breakfast. They must also consider milkshake or fast-food as ‘breakfast’ material. Either from good marketing or cultural norms. They could be influenced by allergies, or have religious or dietary prohibitions. They must also be in the category of ‘breakfast eaters’ so that there is a job in the first place. The person must also be on the move, as commuters are. Lifestyle could influence the job, like health concerns or identity markers such as “being on the go”. A breakfast in Italy/France is (just) a cup of coffee. The commuter is under different time-pressures, and depending which the choice of solution can change. Financial situations can affect the choice of solution as can social status. I might want to show that my breakfast is of a certain class, to my peers. Then making my own breakfast could be antithetical to that goal, or I could be broke and need to make it at home.
If any of these contexts change, then the whole job could disappear/appear for any person. And the fast-food chain we analyse milkshake for, could become irrelevant for the job. Other competitors might appear as valid choices in some of the circumstances.
For the other milkshake drinkers, we might start by concluding that focusing on using the product would constrain the strategic and expansive mindset needed to properly segment the market and find fitting solutions. This conflicts with “outcome based” segmentation as the linked article discusses.
Let’s do “teenagers”, anyway. They have JTBD: “eat something with friends.”
Besides the functional “eating” they definitely have the social dimension as a goal. Also the milkshake could signal some kind of inclusion or distancing from other social groups; grownups don’t drink milkshakes and kids want ice cream.
Situations that affect both the job and the solutions used, are definitely life-stage related. The end users are defined by life-stage ‘young adults’. If their financial situation changes, then so will their solution choice. Social norms, such as relating to dairy products, might influence the milkshake choice. Eg, it might trend with ‘lactose sensitivity’ in young demographics. If the ‘with friends’ part of the job is emphasized then maybe even a restaurant might be switched for a pinball venue that serves drinks only.
If these situations change, then the milkshake seller might lose that particular customer. They might also want to innovate to face them; a non-dairy milkshake (fake-shake, maybe) or non-lactose. Or special price at times when most teenagers would show up. Maybe some marketing to become the ‘in place’ to hang out.
Traditional competitors would be soda. But technically the ‘eat’ part could be replaced with ‘consume’, and coffee and cigarettes could then be non-traditional competitors.
The performance metrics are proxies for the needs expressed in the circumstance. The commuters are in some situation where they move. They are sitting down and have probably one arm busy. Maybe they need to free both arms at some point.
For commuters, I suggest the metrics:
Time until I get hungry again
Time it takes to get the breakfast
Minimize guilt from eating unhealthy
Enable easy consumption while constrained hands
Not make a mess that requires cleaning afterwards
I want it to show (off) where I got my breakfast from (sometimes)
Fairly high calorie-per-dollar, so I stay full longer
I don’t want to need to pee so quickly after breakfast
My breakfast should give me part of vitamins etc that I need in a day
Minimize the amount of garbage left afterwards
The job I would focus on after having re-done the exercise, is definitely ‘get breakfast on the go’, but I would definitely split it up according to many circumstances. And figure out which split would want something different from my menu, or which competitor they might choose - if any or if they would just not buy.