In November 2004, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired The Persuaders, a new episode of Frontline, a public affairs television program. A 90-minute documentary, The Persuaders spotlighted the world of marketing strategy, its influence on the purchase and sale of products and services over the years as well as how it impacts the ways in which consumers view themselves and the world around them.
At the beginning of its second chapter (available for viewing online here), the documentary explores a major shift in marketing strategy that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Presented as a review of an important transition in the history of marketing strategy, this section of The Persuaders, just over 7 minutes worth of its second chapter, is actually an intriguing story of disruptive innovation and jobs to be done.
Prior to the late 1980s, companies sought to differentiate their products in branding and in advertising by emphasizing "real, tangible differences. Using what Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide articulates as "-er words, companies and their agencies emphasized the specific ways in which their products were better than the competition "whiter, brighter, cleaner, stronger for example.
In the documentary, the narrator then explains that such comparisons began to decrease in value to consumers and Roberts adds "everything works now. You know, French Fries taste crisp. Coffees hot. You know, beer tastes goodall these things now are table stakes.
Reacting to this new reality of the early 1990s, marketing strategy began to shift. Marketers turned to the study of cults, trying to figure out how to create "cultish connections between consumers and products. Marketers found that people "[join cults or brands] for exactly the same reasonsthey need to belong , and they want to make meaning. The documentary states that in this new "brand order, marketing became "pseudo-spiritual, focused on the "meaning of brands. Companies began to put pressure on their advertising agencies to create "emotional and spiritual bonds with consumers, bonds that would fulfill unsatisfied consumer desires for identity, for community. Consider one of the masters of creating emotional connections...
Viewed through the twin-lenses of disruptive innovation and jobs to be done, a fascinating subtext emerges. For decades, marketing strategy was designed to address the most basic task-oriented needs of target consumers functional jobs. Consumers would hire products to get basic, functional jobs done. One brand of soap would make you 'cleaner' than another brand, one brand of laundry detergent would make clothes 'brighter' than another brand, one brand of toothpaste would make teeth 'whiter' than another brand and so on.
Over time, however, products became good enough from a functional jobs standpoint - consumers began to tire of advertising touting one products performance over another when in their eyes, both products would accomplish a functional job just fine. Consumers now began to look for products to deliver good enough performance on other job dimensions emotional and social. At this point, advertising emphasizing functional job performance would simply overshoot while consumer desire for emotional and social job performance remained underserved.
Marketing strategy now shifted - it was all about how a product made you feel about yourself (emotional) or how the product influenced how others looked at you (social). As evidence, the documentary references General Motors development of the Saturn brand. A car corporation developed with no haggle pricing and no-pressure sales environments, Saturn was so successful at creating a community feel for its products and brand that it was able to host a Homecoming in 1994 - 30,000 Saturn car owners and their family members spent their "vacations visiting its plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee to meet other Saturn owners as well as Saturn employees. The company turned the visit into a highly successful advertising campaign and variants (see below).
Consider companies like Apple, BMW, WWE, Harley Davidson, and Nike. Consider products like the Volkswagen Beetle, the Motorola RAZR, and the Apple iPod. When customers reach for their wallets before they know why, its often because a company or a product delivers at least good enough functional job performance while nailing customer emotional and/or social jobs. This is what advertising companies began to discover in the early 1990s and what many of the most successful brands accomplish today.
A careful understanding of customer jobs to be done is the first step. A careful allocation of resources to nail the most important or differentiating jobs is the second.