Hi Reader,

In 1994, McDonald's hired a Harvard professor to help them sell more milkshakes.

This man went to Harvard. And ended up in a McDonald's parking lot with a clipboard watching people drink milkshakes. For eighteen hours. I just want to know if he put that on his LinkedIn.

He did figure something out though. In the past they'd tried better flavors, thicker consistency, lower price: everything. Nothing moved.

So this dude Clayton Christensen just watched. Counted. Asked questions.

Turns out 40% of milkshakes sold before 8:30am. Solo commuters. Drove off alone.

So he asked them: why the milkshake?

Nobody said "because I wanted a milkshake." They said: my commute is boring, I need something to do with my free hand while I drive, a banana is gone in three minutes and makes a mess.

The competition wasn't Wendy's Frosty. It was bananas, bagels, and the crushing monotony of the morning commute.

Nobody saw that coming. Least of all the people who'd spent two years making a better milkshake.

Here's what this has to do with your creative strategy.

Most apps have moved past briefing features. Good.

Features are boring and everyone knows it - no one uses "500 exercises" or "200 levels".

The smarter teams are running benefits and aspirations now:

A book app: "Become the most interesting person in the room."

A fitness app: "Transform into the strongest version of yourself."

A meditation app: "More calm in your morning."

Sounds good. Aspirational. Human.

Also completely interchangeable.

Any competitor in any of those categories could run those lines tomorrow and nobody would notice. There's no specific person in them. No specific moment.

No specific lived experience.

No specific reason someone actually buys.

This is what Christensen figured out in that parking lot.

He called it Jobs To Be Done. Which is honestly such a Harvard thing to do: spend a day watching people drink milkshakes, figure out something every cashier already knew, give it a name, write a book about it, get on every business podcast.

Respect honestly.

BUT the idea is genuinely useful if you're thinking about creative strategy - and about coming up with new angles without going crazy.

Stop describing what your product is. Start describing what 'job' the user is hiring the product to do.

Like. People don't download a language app to "learn a language." That's way too vague to mean anything. They hire it to do a specific job that goes far deeper than language learning.

Like this.

That's not a language learning job. That's a relationship-and-connection job.

That's not a language learning job. That's a build-my-legacy job.

That's not a language learning job. That's a travel-confidently job.

Same app. Three completely different jobs. Three ads that look nothing like each other.

Anyway, if you feel like you're running out of creative angles, perhaps you've been describing your product when you should have been describing the jobs your customer is hiring your product to do on a Tuesday morning.

The angles are there. There are so many of them. You just haven't asked the right question yet.

Anyway: if you spend $50k+/month on paid and want to work with a team obsessive about finding the actual jobs your product is being hired to do, hit reply with "JOBS" and we'll talk.

Or don't. I'm sure "more calm in your morning" will start converting eventually.

Later,

Shamanth

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