In an AI-driven world, are brands still too focused on demographics and personas instead of understanding the real “job” customers are hiring them to do?
One of the most satisfying parts of our jobs is when we’ve worked hard to come up with a brand campaign or promotional project, present it to our leadership or client with big smiles, and they like it. We realise that the atmosphere in the room is turning positive and proactive, body language is relaxing. We have done a good job! And we sigh with relief..phew! ’My job is safe! I can go shopping this weekend’!
This pressure to meet the expectations of the senior management is very high, even though everyone tells themselves that we are working to meet the expectations of the customer.
How are these two aims usually reconciled? We think of clever ways to push why we think our product is clever onto the customer. Senior people beam at you and imagine how many units will be sold.
This internal emphasis can even go into how the company is organized. Products, channels and functions are split into portfolios, each with their own KPIs, even if this means conflict in the channel. This goes into finer detail as each department then defines customer personas in a manner that makes sense to them and their roles but provides no meaning to a customer who is simply living their life.
A wonderfully entertaining example of this is when Microsoft launched Windows 7, they launched a campaign that:
- The legal department must have blessed it as safe,
- Product marketing must have said it was accurate,
- The brand team must have said it was on message,
- The diversity team must have said it was representative,
- The agency must have described it as polished,
- And the senior management must have felt it was strategically aligned…
….and so they launched this.
(Are you able to watch it to the end?!)
As you watch the video, you can literally unpack it into each meeting the team must have had with every department above, you can spot the box-ticking (“good job! We approve!”), and know in your heart that most never leave their office to meet with everyday users.
Over 800,000 people watched it, asking themselves, “Would four real human beings ever behave like this?” before Microsoft pulled the ad.
It illuminates the Hollywood adage:
“Trying to make a movie in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.”
In an AI world, this is only going to get worse: We can churn out amazing decks with Claude, with references from Perplexity, and fill them with verbiage from ChatGPT. More boxes ticked from each department.
How to twist it around towards the customer?
First: avoid nice and neat personas. I have lost count of the number of fashion brands who have confidently told me that their customer is “a woman aged between 25 and 45, who is independent and knows what she wants”. (What does that mean??).
The verbiage is accompanied by stock photos of women in (very) high heels carrying a mass of shopping bags. When I ask, “Who is definitely not your customer, that you wish to actively discourage from buying your products?”
No one has even considered the question. Why not? Because sales are always welcome. These supposedly ‘focused’ personas are not true identities (have you ever introduced yourself at a dinner party as one of them?). In short, they are a cheatcode for mutual backslapping in meetings to reassure all present that we must be customer-centric.
Second: Go deep into Jobs to be Done (JTBD), an approach to being customer-centric developed by Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard University. This simply states that people do not buy products or services. They ‘hire’ them to make progress in their specific circumstances. Hence instead of looking at demographics or personality traits, JTBD focuses on core functional, social, and emotional goals that users want to achieve.
Functional: The practical task or physical outcome your customer wants to get done.
Emotional: How the user wants to feel while doing the task or after it’s finished.
Social: How the user wants others to view them as a result of their choice.
The great thing about taking a JTBD approach is that:
- It’s stable over time. Customer needs change slowly even as technologies and product cycles become quicker.
- You can focus on more authentic innovation instead of thinking of technical features. You help create solutions for real struggles instead of guessing what the next features should be versus your competition.
- Perhaps most importantly, it 100% illuminates clearly who your competition is. This will not be companies fighting in the same feature set, but items or habits that customers might replace your product with.
After you’ve read this:
- Get on to your favourite AI
- Ask how the following brands have used JTBD to focus on the customer, hence gain and maintain competitive advantage, and increase sales
- Netflix, Spotify, IKEA (probably one of the best examples), Hilti, Rolls-Royce Aerospace.
Keep going: when you compare Kodak versus Instagram, Hilti versus generic tool manufacturers, and Rolls-Royce Aerospace versus traditional engine sales, you will see the power of the process.
I hope your pitches go well this week and that shopping beckons!
(Anand Vengurlekar is an award-winning Senior Lecturer in Innovation and Design Thinking at INSEAD, Bayes Business School, IE/FT, PWC, Korn Ferry, and others. He focuses on mentoring individuals & teams to be more innovative under stressful circumstances and high-pressure deadlines.)
