Mike, I want to thank you for articulating what many of us have struggled to explain for years. Your breakdown of Product Gravitation and your integration of JTBD with the Doblin framework are masterful. I was introduced to these ideas by Antony Ulwick over a decade ago, and they’ve significantly influenced how I approach transformation in both government and enterprise contexts.
That said, I would like to share a practical nuance that may be helpful to others applying JTBD in the field: While positioning offerings around the customer's job is powerful, in practice, we’ve found that going all-in on job-based marketing can risk losing discoverability, especially in SEO and procurement-driven sectors like government or large enterprises, where people search by familiar product or service categories, not job statements.
Our solution? Use JTBD internally to uncover and address true pain points, but articulate the offerings in the customer’s language, the language they use to search, budget, and procure. This has helped us maintain both strategic insight and tactical relevance. It's less about abandoning JTBD in messaging and more about bridging it thoughtfully into how customers make decisions.
Thanks again for a terrific post. Your work sharpens the edge for those of us working to make real, meaningful change.
I agree that using Job Statements or Outcome Statements directly in messaging doesn't work (possibly ever). It's one reason why I experiment with different formats, and also way human review and synthesis (or maybe using AI) is required to make them more consumable to different types of customers. Very good point.
Mike, I want to thank you for articulating what many of us have struggled to explain for years. Your breakdown of Product Gravitation and your integration of JTBD with the Doblin framework are masterful. I was introduced to these ideas by Antony Ulwick over a decade ago, and they’ve significantly influenced how I approach transformation in both government and enterprise contexts.
That said, I would like to share a practical nuance that may be helpful to others applying JTBD in the field: While positioning offerings around the customer's job is powerful, in practice, we’ve found that going all-in on job-based marketing can risk losing discoverability, especially in SEO and procurement-driven sectors like government or large enterprises, where people search by familiar product or service categories, not job statements.
Our solution? Use JTBD internally to uncover and address true pain points, but articulate the offerings in the customer’s language, the language they use to search, budget, and procure. This has helped us maintain both strategic insight and tactical relevance. It's less about abandoning JTBD in messaging and more about bridging it thoughtfully into how customers make decisions.
Thanks again for a terrific post. Your work sharpens the edge for those of us working to make real, meaningful change.
Raj Subramaniam
Founder, Align CX
Raj, thanks for your comment.
I agree that using Job Statements or Outcome Statements directly in messaging doesn't work (possibly ever). It's one reason why I experiment with different formats, and also way human review and synthesis (or maybe using AI) is required to make them more consumable to different types of customers. Very good point.