Snickers and Milky Way
Reframing our perspective is a powerful thinking tool. ‘Sleeping on it’ is reframing. Reading books is reframing. Comparing novel things is reframing.
For a business owner, thinking of time of day, place in life, and what happened prior is reframing.
Bob Moesta notes “context creates value”. Time and place create more or less value. Birthday gifts have one value on birthdays and another value when it’s not.
But we miss this because of average lies. Average computes easily, is sometimes helpful, but is a crude tool. Sometimes we NEED this one thing RIGHT NOW!
Contrast Snickers and Milky Way. Graphically:
Commercially (2011):
Snickers is a chewy pick-me-up energy bar. Milky Way is a treat-yo-self deep breath of sweetness. The context creates value.
According to Bob Moesta, the context for eating Snickers is that I’m hungry and I want something filling, tasty, cheap, and fast. Applying average thinking, there’s not a constant demand. Find when customers consume a product reveals that product’s JTBD.
“Context creates value” fits well with Alchemy too. Channeling Rory Sutherland, it wasn’t that Snickers needed to be tastier, rather reframed. Alchemy is about solving problems with psychology rather than physics. Instead of making travel faster, make it more enjoyable with wifi, charge ports, booking flexibility, a table for tea, someplace for the kids to burn off energy, and so on. Faster is only better when the process sucks.
Consumers and customers have untapped wants. They’re hiding behind time, place, averages. They’re served by JTBD & Alchemy.
The Waiter's Pad 