STRATEGY & INNOVATION ARTICLES

A recent headline in the online magazine Slate read, “The mind-boggling growth of Hulu.” Mind-boggling? Really? If you’re a frequent reader of Strategy & Innovation or the InnoBlog, you’ll know that at Innosight we have been following the online video site Hulu for some time, so an article on its growth is not particularly shocking.

Many observers have commented on the success of Hulu, referencing the user-friendliness of the interface, the leadership of the company, and the diversity of the content. One aspect of Hulu that tends not to be discussed, however, is that part of its success owes to the fact that consumers were already aware of the need for a product that offers readily available television content. Consumers — exhausted from work or bored on weekends — were well aware of their own job-to-be-done of unwinding by watching TV they want, when they want. Indeed, from this perspective, Hulu’s success doesn’t seem mind-boggling at all.

One of Innosight’s core innovation principles is that companies succeed when they innovate to help a customer get an important, unsatisfied job done. This article builds on this principle by introducing an additional dimension of the JOBS^TM process — awareness. To most marketing executives, “awareness” means product awareness. Product awareness, however, is only the beginning of the consumer-purchase funnel (see Figure 1 below).

Product awareness only makes consumers aware of the solution. In and of itself, this type of awareness is insufficient to gain consideration from consumers; they must also be aware of both their own jobs-to-be-done and of the solution’s ability to satisfy those jobs. Then, if consumers believe that this solution satisfies their important jobs, they may decide to purchase it. Finally, they become repeat customers if they find in everyday practice that these jobs are actually very important and that they are in fact satisfied by this solution.
 

Figure 1: Consumer-Purchase Funnel

This article focuses on the consideration portion of the purchase funnel, highlighting the significance of job awareness and job-solution connection awareness. In the case of Hulu, both forms of awareness were already high, without much if any effort on the part of the company. For other companies less blessed — or less skilled at finding and tapping into high-awareness jobs-to-be-done — an understanding of these two factors can help to predict the success of new products and determine the best approach to marketing strategy.
 

Job awareness

Naturally, Hulu’s success has depended on its ability to satisfy consumers’ important jobs. But just as critical is how aware consumers are of having these particular jobs. Consider how long people have been searching for a good solution to the job, “Give me access to all the TV content I want, when I want it.” Betamax, VCRs, Laserdisc, DVRs, Blockbuster, BitTorrent, DVDs, Kazaa, and Netflix are just some of the technologies and companies that have stepped up to the plate on this job. Consumer awareness of the importance of this job has been high for decades.

Psychologists might say that this key job has “high saliency,” meaning that it is at the forefront of people’s minds. A job with high saliency or awareness may be one that people often think about, complain about, and seek solutions for. A job with low saliency or awareness may be equally important, but just less “on your mind” because, for instance, people adopt compensating behaviors for jobs, or simply because people are not often in the circumstances in which they think about that particular job.

Job awareness is a notable concept for marketers because, while the customer job-to-be-done must be both highly important and unsatisfied, customers must also be aware of the job in order to realize the value of the offering. In contrast to the Hulu example, where job awareness is typically high for the job “Give me access to all the TV content I want, when I want it,” consider the following example of what can happen when consumers are not aware of the job at hand.

The New York Times ran a story a few months ago about Dr. Val Curtis, an anthropologist in Burkina Faso who launched an advertising campaign to encourage the then-uncustomary practice of hand-washing with soap after using the bathroom. Many public health activists had unsuccessfully tried to educate the Burkinabe public about germs, promoting soap as a solution to the job of “Protect myself from germs” in an effort to reduce the prevalence of serious diseases.

What Dr. Curtis determined was that the job of “Protect myself from germs” was simply not salient to the Burkinabe. “We could talk about germs until we were blue in the face, and it didn’t change behaviors,” Dr. Curtis told the New York Times. The problem just wasn’t something they thought about on a regular basis; it wasn’t on their radar screens.

On the other hand, a high-awareness job that the Burkinabe did have was around what one anthropologist called the “yuck factor.” This job wasn’t about germs; the Burkinabe used soap whenever they felt their hands were dirty. Thus, “Help me feel de-contaminated after engaging in an unclean activity” was a salient job for the Burkinabe that came into play after a visit to the dirty city, for example, or after cooking with grease.

Dr. Curtis and her team were successful in getting the Burkinabe to use soap when the team switched from advertising that emphasized the solution — soap — to advertising that connected bathroom use to the already high-awareness job of “Help me feel de-contaminated after engaging in an unclean activity.” These new advertisements barely mentioned soap. Instead, they promoted bathroom use as something “yucky,” something in need of de-contamination. Post-bathroom soap use in Burkina Faso has risen 41 percent as a result.
 

Job-solution connection awareness

Job awareness was clearly key in the success of the campaign, but just as important was the Burkinabe’s awareness of soap’s ability to satisfy the job “Help me feel de-contaminated after engaging in an unclean activity.” In both the Hulu and soap examples, the awareness of the connection between the job and solution was very high. Hulu is an obvious way to “Give me access to all the TV content I want, when I want it,” and soap is a self-evident way to “Help me feel de-contaminated after engaging in an unclean activity.” Job-solution connection awareness refers to how clearly connected the solution is to the job, the prima facie obviousness with which a particular solution satisfies a job from the consumer’s point of view.

Hulu and soap are both products with high job-solution connection awareness. In general, many sustaining innovations have fairly high job-solution connection awareness: a new model of vacuum cleaner is obviously for picking up dirt; improvements in computer batteries let you last longer without plugging in.

On the other hand, many new-to-the-world offerings have lower job-solution connection awareness. The obvious ability of the product to achieve important jobs may be evident to the company and product designers, but less clear to consumers.

Consider the job, “Help me save more money,” which most consumers are acutely aware of, especially in these difficult economic times. One type of product that is helpful for this goal are smart energy meters such as TED and Clipsal’s Cent-a-meter, which help households become more energy-efficient, lowering monthly bills. While these product are effective solutions for this job, the connection between the job and these products may not be immediately evident to the average consumer who sees such a meter on a store shelf — that is, unless the right marketing is employed.
 

Marketing implications

The notions of job awareness and job-solution connection awareness imply different marketing strategies. As we see it, there are four scenarios based on job awareness and job-solution connection awareness, as illustrated in the Awareness Assessment Matrix (Figure 2, below). Success in each of these four situations will accordingly require different marketing strategies based on which element of awareness is not at sufficient levels.
 

Figure 2: Awareness Assessment Matrix

Homeless Solution: Low Job Awareness/Low Job-Solution Connection Awareness

The situation of low job awareness and low job-solution connection awareness commonly, although certainly not always, arises when a company with R&D-driven innovation develops a new technology whose usage or benefits are not yet evident — think of E-Ink, for example. E-Ink ended up being used in the display for Amazon’s Kindle, but at the outset it was not obvious to the designers or to potential customers what the technology would be used for.

In cases like E-Ink, the job that the product was designed to address may have very low job awareness among consumers, or it may be entirely unclear to consumers which jobs, if any, the new product fulfills. Consumers will thus have a difficult time connecting the solution to any of their jobs. The task at hand is to determine what relevant jobs the solution addresses that consumers are already highly aware of, and then to focus marketing around connecting those jobs to the solution.

For instance, a class of consumer electronics produced by Ambient Devices gives off lights of different intensity and color based on external conditions. Like E-Ink, this technology was developed without a distinct customer job-to-be-done in mind. However, Ambient Devices created and marketed a product called the Ambient Umbrella with a handle that lights up when rain is imminent, so that consumers know to grab their umbrella before they leave the house. Ambient Devices thus identified and targeted an important and unsatisfied consumer job of knowing when to take one’s umbrella and connected their solution to that job.
 

Under the Radar: Low Job Awareness/High Job-Solution Connection Awareness

Sometimes, a job itself flies under the radar, but a great solution that addresses that job is out there. In this case of low job awareness and high job-solution connection awareness, a company — through market research or intuition — may have reason to believe that consumers would find the job important and unsatisfied, if only they were aware of it.

One strategy for such cases involves focusing advertising on the job itself to increase consumers’ awareness of the job. For example, before they could flourish, identity theft protection programs had to raise consumer awareness of the job “Protect my financial identity” through marketing campaigns that instilled in consumers the fear of having their credit card accounts hijacked. The researchers in Burkina Faso employed an effective but different strategy to increase soap usage; they marketed to link the solution to a different job that consumers were already highly aware of, namely, “Help me feel de-contaminated after engaging in an unclean activity.”
 

It Just Clicked: High Job Awareness/High Job-Solution Connection Awareness

If a product is released into a market where people are visibly frustrated that an important job they have is not getting done, and if that product clearly addresses this high-awareness job, we might say that the solution “just clicked” with consumers. Hulu is one example of a fortunate situation where consumer awareness was high for the job-to-be-done as well as for the connection between the solution and the job. Given a history of clunky online video sites, consumers were ready and waiting for a better one.

In general, marketing needs are lightest here. Another example is JetBlue, which gained its initial foothold market mostly by word-of-mouth. In an industry with a notoriously low bar for customer satisfaction, JetBlue offered 36 channels of DirectTV, unlimited brand name snacks, and the most legroom in coach, clearly satisfying the high-awareness job “Have a better flying experience while still paying low prices.”
 

Waiting for Eureka: High Job Awareness/Low Job-Solution Connection Awareness

The scenario of high job awareness and low job-solution connection awareness often occurs for new classes of products, or when consumers find a new or unintended use for an existing product. The ability of the solution to satisfy the job may simply not be evident at first glance. Consumers may not clearly understand how the solution can satisfy the high-awareness job, so marketing must fill that gap of understanding.

In the case of Clipsal’s smart energy meter, consumers know that they want to save money, but they may not have previously thought of an energy meter as being able to meet that goal. Walking past such a device in a store, consumers may not intuitively make the connection between the energy meter and personal savings. That’s why the role of marketing here is to highlight that connection between the high-awareness job and the solution. In Clipsal’s case, they are doing just that, by naming the product “Cent-a-meter” and messaging, “SAVE up to 20% off your power bills.”

Marketing can serve to facilitate the “aha” moments where consumers make the connection between their job and a solution. Recently, one of our colleagues bought a car for the first time, and was offered an upgrade to keyless entry. She turned this down, reasoning that turning a key in a lock was no more difficult than pressing a button. A month after purchase, while searching for her car in the parking lot, she realized that a main benefit of keyless entry is actually the ability to help you find your car in a crowded lot, and that such a benefit was well worth paying for. Unfortunately for the dealer, this “aha” moment came too late for the purchase. When companies rely on consumers to realize the benefits of their product on their own, they often miss out on sales opportunities.

Even if consumers are already aware of one effective application of a product, drawing connections between the solution and other jobs can open up disruptive new markets and increase sales. For example, PAM cooking spray was originally used to prevent baked food from sticking to pans, but in more recent campaigns PAM has advertised new and different uses for its product, including spraying the tops of food items like potatoes to make them crispier. By helping consumers see non-obvious connections to compelling jobs, companies can increase sales among existing consumers in non-consuming circumstances.
 

Final thoughts

The concepts of job awareness and job-solution connection awareness and the tool of the Awareness Assessment Matrix provide companies with the ability to predict what type of marketing strategy will be most effective given their product’s awareness profile. Not all companies are as fortunate as Hulu, with such high job awareness and job-solution connection awareness. But, by understanding the awareness profiles of their products, companies can adopt the appropriate marketing strategy to promote “mind-boggling success” of their own.