Page 69 - HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing

CHRISTENSEN, COOK, AND HALL

Idea in Brief

Thirty thousand new consumer perform the “I-need-to-send-this-
products hit store shelves each from-here-to-there-with-perfect-
year. Ninety percent of them fail. certainty-as-fast-as-possible” job.
Why? We’re using misguided FedEx was so much more conven-
market-segmentation practices. ient, reliable, and reasonably
For instance, we slice markets priced than the alternatives—the
based on customer type and define U.S. Postal Service or couriers paid
the needs of representative cus- to sit on airlines—that business-
tomers in those segments. But people around the globe started
actual human beings don’t behave using “FedEx” as a verb.
like statistically average customers. A clear purpose brand acts as a
The consequences? We develop two-sided compass: One side
new and enhanced products that guides customers to the right
don’t meet real people’s needs.
products. The other guides
Here’s a better way: Instead of your designers, marketers, and
trying to understand the “typical” advertisers as they develop
customer, find out what jobs peo- and market new and improved
ple want to get done. Then develop products. The payoff? Products
purpose brands: products or ser- your customers consistently
vices consumers can “hire” to per- value—and brands that deliver
form those jobs. FedEx, for sustained profitable growth to
example, designed its service to your company.

done, as Ted Levitt said. When people find themselves needing to
get a job done, they essentially hire products to do that job for them.
The marketer’s task is therefore to understand what jobs periodi-
cally arise in customers’ lives for which they might hire products the
company could make. 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.
Since most new-product developers don’t think in those terms,
they’ve become much too good at creating products that don’t help
customers do the jobs they need to get done. Here’s an all-too-typical
example. In the mid-1990s, Scott Cook presided over the launch of a
software product called the Quicken Financial Planner, which helped

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