Just Add Water

Know the Job You Do Can Create Instant Change

by Jeremy Nulik

My clearest memory that involves instant coffee took place during the Reagan administration at a small town church. Rather than brewing a fresh pot, nice old ladies offered cups of the water dressed in brown. I can still remember the sounds of the plastic spoons brushing the Styrofoam as they prepared it, and the musty scent of almost-coffee that had arisen.

I had not given the stuff a thought since that day. That is, until last week, when listening to a podcast called The Pitch featuring Sudden Coffee, a company that claims “instant coffee like no other.” The show format is a glimpse into a pitch from founders to investors. This episode, however, was compelling because it is likely one of the most apparent examples of an insight that is frequently missing in marketing: knowing the job – the real job – your product or service performs.

Spoiler alert: Sudden Coffee did not have sudden success on the program. The cofounders, one of whom is an award-winning barista and coffee nerd, claimed that home coffee brewers don’t really know what they are doing when preparing coffee. And this next-level instant product would gather monthly subscribers because it took the guess work out of making a great cup of coffee. Just add water.

Here’s the problem: Only a couple of the investors drank coffee so the “live demo” was a bit of a flop. The founders only discussed the attributes of the coffee itself. The investors quickly lit upon the hole in their presentation. They did not have any compelling reason to care about the coffee. Selling this product as instant coffee, only, like, better, was not going to force open the wallets of investors. And it was not going to inspire subscribers at the same cost they would pay for a tall cup at Starbucks.

A lot of founders with conviction are much like the Sudden Coffee guys. You become fixated on explaining the features and benefits of a product. The chances are that these founders are much like you. And a good place to start to separate out what is most compelling about your idea, product or service is by connecting it to what job it performs.

Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and author, most famously lit upon this concept of “jobs to be done” in Competing Against Luck. He believes that if companies could organize themselves based on the jobs that need to be done, then they could more effectively provide experiences that enhance the customer experience. This is the beginning of creating real differentiation, a chance for integration with other companies and a foundation for marketing and communications.

When it comes to instant coffee, the church ladies likely used it to have something simple to provide comfort to the people at a gathering. They hired the coffee to perform that job. Other things that do that would be donuts, juice, sandwiches, music. But they decided to hire instant coffee because it was simple to make, plentiful and kept people energized.

For Sudden Coffee, they are not yet clear on what the job they perform. But I suspect that it is deeper than a “better instant coffee.” From what I heard toward the end of the program, it would be something like, “With Sudden Coffee, you can live in a collar community and still have a morning like a hipster.” That is a platform on which you could create compelling messaging, and it allows for integration with other brands that do a similar job.

People are not buying what you think you are selling. They are buying the job that you do for them. They are hiring your product or your service for that job. To begin to illicit this kind of thinking in your organization, you can ask yourself: What job am I being hired to complete? When our customers buy our product or service, what outcomes are they seeking for themselves?

To get the real answers requires anthropology and research. But this is a beginning. And even the beginning will start to give you new ways to make instant changes to your communications platform. Just add water.

Jeremy Nulik (jeremy@bigwidesky.com) is evangelist prime at bigwidesky, a human business consultancy, in St. Louis, Mo.