What can brands learn from Listerine? The brand dominates the mouthwash category that it created decades ago, largely because it focuses very clearly on a Job to be Done.
Look at Listerine packaging and you’ll see it right away: “Kills Germs.” It makes this claim throughout its consumer communications. Other benefits — improved oral health, fresher breath — come out too, but the brand always leads with Kills Germs.
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Listerine actually started out as a floor cleaner. Really. Then it was a dandruff cure. Then a way to fight the common cold. Then a way to freshen breath (the company invented the term “halitosis” to medicalize things). Now a way to promote oral health (it also invented the phrase my kids learned from their dentist: “Brush, Floss, Rinse”). But, throughout, it’s led with “Kills Germs.”
Brands — whether they’re B2C or B2B — win when buyers associate them with clear Jobs to be Done.
Clayton Christensen, the famed Harvard Business School Professor known for coining the term “disruptive innovation,” believed that one of his most enduring legacies would be an idea he first put forward in his 2003 book The Innovator’s Solution: don’t sell products and services to customers, but rather try to help people address their jobs-to-be-done. This seemingly simple idea has profound implications for re-framing industries. As I saw in years of consulting with Christensen to companies giant and small, it can revolutionize how firms compete.
What are the clear Jobs to be Done that your brand stands for? As with “Kills Germs,” they should be your North Star.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Steve Wunker, Author of JOBS TO BE DONE: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation
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