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Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

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Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#11

Post by pwatsonwailes »

getnormality wrote: post #9
squirrel6 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all very true. I always try to push for customer interviews to be as much about formulating new hypotheses as they are about validating existing hypotheses.

I want to scream [1] every. single. time. a business wants to talk to me. Every second of the conversation is just the same thing, over and over: here are my boxes. Please put yourself in one of my boxes. There is no room for my feelings or free expression. It is inconvenient to the agenda of whoever created the survey. If companies are so desperate to know what customers want, how come no one, in the past 25 years o…

"how come no one, in the past 25 years of my life as a consumer, has ever had any time to ask me a single real question"

There's a lot of shit marketers, is my short answer.

Like, a lot.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#12

Post by pwatsonwailes »

JohnCClarke wrote: post #7

This example is always cited as different from the "demographics" approach. But it literally started by segmenting the buyers, and then focussing on a previously unrecognised demographic sector (car commuters). Clay Christensen is smart, and one of the many things he is smart about is marketing Clay Christensen.

Good segmentation is mostly not by demography nowadays. At best, demographics are a correlative element to something more fundamental, usually economic, behavioural or psychographic.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#13

Post by btilly »

The problem with general surveys is that you find out what people who don't buy your product think that they might like. Then they don't buy your improved product either.

A second problem is that we're unaware of what we responded to. That's one of the things that A/B testing reveals.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#14

Post by deaux »

getnormality wrote: post #9
squirrel6 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all very true. I always try to push for customer interviews to be as much about formulating new hypotheses as they are about validating existing hypotheses.

I want to scream [1] every. single. time. a business wants to talk to me. Every second of the conversation is just the same thing, over and over: here are my boxes. Please put yourself in one of my boxes. There is no room for my feelings or free expression. It is inconvenient to the agenda of whoever created the survey. If companies are so desperate to know what customers want, how come no one, in the past 25 years o…

Too many layers and competing interests. The person who ends up creating the survey realistically cares much more about going home 1 minute earlier or with 1% less neural energy spent. They've got their kids to manage when they get home.

Do you use any products from a one-person shop? They will be so much more likely to ask you real questions. Not guaranteed, of course, as some people are just clueless. Those usually don't last long as business owners though.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#15

Post by getnormality »

deaux wrote: post #14
getnormality wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to scream [1] every. single. time. a business wants to talk to me. Every second of the conversation is just the same thing, over and over: here are my boxes. Please put yourself in one of my boxes. There is no room for my feelings or free expression. It is inconvenient to the agenda of whoever created the survey. If companies are so desperate to know what customers want, how come no one, in the past 25 years o…

Too many layers and competing interests. The person who ends up creating the survey realistically cares much more about going home 1 minute earlier or with 1% less neural energy spent. They've got their kids to manage when they get home. Do you use any products from a one-person shop? They will be so much more likely to ask you real questions. Not guaranteed, of course, as some people are just clueless. Those usually…

That's precisely what I'm wondering about now.

Is it possible that all real product ideas come from the mind of a single person, understanding and interacting with other people as actual people? And corporations are some sort of Thing that takes humanity and squishes it into a Box, a Box with one very narrow goal: to freeze the product idea from the single person and mass-produce it, "scale it up" so that millions of people are aware of its existence and are able to use it?

I mean, Google didn't even invent Google Docs. Some random little startup did. Google just bought it, then made it discoverable and usable to millions.

Which is not a small thing, I guess. But I don't know what the marketing department is for. Other than putting Google Docs on billboards, maybe, or their digital equivalent.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#16

Post by pwatsonwailes »

getnormality wrote: post #15
deaux wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many layers and competing interests. The person who ends up creating the survey realistically cares much more about going home 1 minute earlier or with 1% less neural energy spent. They've got their kids to manage when they get home. Do you use any products from a one-person shop? They will be so much more likely to ask you real questions. Not guaranteed, of course, as some people are just clueless. Those usually…

That's precisely what I'm wondering about now. Is it possible that all real product ideas come from the mind of a single person, understanding and interacting with other people as actual people? And corporations are some sort of Thing that takes humanity and squishes it into a Box, a Box with one very narrow goal: to freeze the product idea from the single person and mass-produce it, "scale it up" so that millions of…

Doesn't need to be a single person, but yes, all good products come from someone or a (generally) small team, spotting something, and fixing it.

As for the marketing department - depends on definition, but assuming you mean (as it mostly is nowdays) comms, it's two things:

1. Making sure that potential future customers know you exist, so when they enter the market to buy, they know you're relevant and can purchase from you.

2. Making sure that when someone is in the market to buy now, that they're more likely to buy from you, because you have a compelling reason for people to pick you, and not the other brands in the space that they can think of.

Mostly 1, some of 2, if the marketing team is good. Ratios vary as to how much though by more than you'd think, depending on industry, customer lifecycle, brand maturity and so on.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#17

Post by deaux »

getnormality wrote: post #15
deaux wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many layers and competing interests. The person who ends up creating the survey realistically cares much more about going home 1 minute earlier or with 1% less neural energy spent. They've got their kids to manage when they get home. Do you use any products from a one-person shop? They will be so much more likely to ask you real questions. Not guaranteed, of course, as some people are just clueless. Those usually…

That's precisely what I'm wondering about now. Is it possible that all real product ideas come from the mind of a single person, understanding and interacting with other people as actual people? And corporations are some sort of Thing that takes humanity and squishes it into a Box, a Box with one very narrow goal: to freeze the product idea from the single person and mass-produce it, "scale it up" so that millions of…

I think it's very often repeated that the hardest thing about growing a business is keeping the culture, and it's simply impossible past a certain size unless you literally develop a cult of personality like Jobs or to a lesser extent Musk. Extremely few manage to do it. And when the culture goes, that's what you get: least effort. And the least effort is to do what you're saying, "just do more of the same, but bigger, or with a hint of chocolate".

At least in most of the modern world. I think this effect is a _little_ weaker in China. It definitely used to be much weaker in the West too, at some point in time. But individualism, cultural capture by big capital, yaddah yaddah.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#18

Post by pfdietz »

JohnCClarke wrote: post #7

This example is always cited as different from the "demographics" approach. But it literally started by segmenting the buyers, and then focussing on a previously unrecognised demographic sector (car commuters). Clay Christensen is smart, and one of the many things he is smart about is marketing Clay Christensen.

> Clay Christensen is smart

Not anymore. He died in 2020.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#19

Post by RankingMember »

This echoes my experience. I can't sit down at a computer and start doing a new thing with a browser with 15 tabs open from the day before and expect it to go well- it's like waking up and walking right into a room with 5 stereos playing 5 different songs at once and trying to practice guitar.

Re: Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

#20

Post by renato_shira »

pwatsonwailes wrote: post #6

The problem I tend to see is that companies say they're doing JTBD research, but they're actually just running attribute preference surveys (asking customers to rank features, from a list of things the company would like to build, rather than starting off by assuming you don't know what customers require). Listening to what people say they want (feature preferences) almost always diverges from what they actually want…

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