February 12, 2026
Now Hiring: Milkshakes, Not Demographics
Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)
Internet splits: ‘hire a milkshake’ genius or just fancy demographics
TLDR: Christensen says products succeed when customers “hire” them to do a job, not when marketers chase age or income charts. Comments erupt: fans cheer the milkshake lesson, skeptics call it rebranded demographics, and pros slam lazy surveys and praise real-world testing—why this matters for making stuff people actually want.
Harvard’s Clayton Christensen is back in the spotlight with his famous “jobs-to-be-done” idea—customers don’t just buy products; they hire them to do a job. In the milkshake story, commuters weren’t craving chocolate—they wanted a long-lasting, easy breakfast for the drive. The crowd loves the simplicity, but the comments section turns into a street fight about whether this is brilliant insight or slick packaging of old ideas.
One user vents that it’s “sad” product teams need this explained, citing a Microsoft Teams background-setting fiasco as proof that many apps ignore the job customers actually need. Another argues companies pretend to do jobs-to-be-done (JTBD), then run boring feature polls that never solve the real problem.
Cue the skeptics: “Isn’t the milkshake story just demographics in disguise?” one commenter says, noting the supposed breakthrough was really about car commuters—still a segment. The spiciest jab? Christensen is great at “marketing Christensen.”
A veteran warns that general surveys capture what non-buyers say they want—and then those folks don’t buy anyway. Instead, A/B testing (simple experiments comparing two versions) often reveals what people actually do. Meanwhile, jokers riff that they’re “hiring milkshakes as interns for the morning commute,” turning marketing philosophy into meme-fuel. The milkshake discourse? Thick, chunky, and absolutely frothy
Key Points
- •Clayton Christensen argues traditional segmentation by product category or demographics often fails to guide successful new products.
- •He cites that roughly 30,000 new consumer products launch annually, with many failing.
- •He advocates the “jobs-to-be-done” approach, focusing on the causal reasons customers “hire” products.
- •Christensen distinguishes a product’s function from its job, emphasizing observation of customers in context.
- •A fast-food chain’s milkshake case shows attribute-based surveys didn’t improve sales, prompting a shift to analyzing the job via in-store observation.