We hire jobs to be done for three reasons: functional, emotional, and social. This is clear at the liquor store.
In college, we bought cheap beer. The function was to get buzzed and the social job was to have fun doing it. We might upgrade to Coors Light or even PBR which our favorite wing place always had on tap. Even the upgrade is social.
Liquors differ. They’re packaged more colorfully. The containers are shaped. Their origins matter. It’s more story. People like us drink things like this.
In his book, Pappyland, Wright Thompson discusses the bourbon’s brand:
“The reason Pappy’s office was built to look like Monticello, with the leafy grounds of the Stitzel-Weller plant made to feel like an oasis from modern life, was because he knew that bourbon drinkers were often motivated by nostalgia—It’s a drink made for contemplating, and what is usually being contemplated is the easy and often false memory of better days.”
If our core emotions fire on danger, food, and sex then bourbon serves anti-danger. Bourbon serves ‘southern comfort’. It feels like the good old days, with dad or grandpa. Bourbon ads are warm. It’s a drink to sip. We never drank bourbon in college.
Vodka sells sex. Rum sells fun. Gin sells sophistication. Tequila sells a little bit of everything.
“A bottle of bourbon,” Thompson writes, “is a coded way for so many unspoken ideas to be transmitted and understood.” Often jobs are coded, sometimes they’re an enigma. Sometimes not.
But to really understand bourbon’s job, we’d have to go deeper. What’s the context? If this were a documentary what would it look like and feel like? Who is there? What are they wearing and where did they come from?
The Waiter's Pad 