Page 70 - HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing

MARKETING MALPRACTICE
Idea in Practice

To establish, sustain, and extend sume cleanly with one hand.
your purpose brands. Understanding this job inspired
Observe Consumers in Action several product-improvement
ideas. One example: Move the
By observing and interviewing peo- shake-dispensing machine to
ple as they’re using products, iden- the front of the counter and sell
tify jobs they want to get done. customers a prepaid swipe card,
Then think of new or enhanced of- so they could dispense shakes
ferings that could do the job better. themselves and avoid the slow
drive-through lane.
Example: A fast-food restaurant
wanted to improve milk shake Link Products to Jobs Through
sales. A researcher watched Advertising
customers buying shakes, noting Use advertising to clarify the nature
that 40% of shakes were pur- of the job your product performs
chased by hurried customers and to give the product a name
early in the morning and carried that reinforces awareness of its pur-
out to customers’ cars. Inter- pose. Savvy ads can even help con-
views revealed that most cus- sumers identify needs they weren’t
tomers bought shakes to do a consciously aware of before.
similar job: make their commute
more interesting, stave off Example: Unilever’s Asian oper-
hunger until lunchtime, and give ations designed a microwavable
them something they could con- soup tailored to the job of

customers create a retirement plan. It flopped. Though it captured
over 90% of retail sales in its product category, annual revenue never
surpassed $2 million, and it was eventually pulled from the market.
What happened? Was the $49 price too high? Did the product
need to be easier to use? Maybe. A more likely explanation, however,
is that while the demographics suggested that lots of families
needed a financial plan, constructing one actually wasn’t a job that
most people were looking to do. The fact that they should have a fi-
nancial plan, or even that they said they should have a plan, didn’t
matter. In hindsight, the fact that the design team had had trouble
finding enough “planners” to fill a focus group should have tipped

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