Let’s be honest: many brands get it wrong—they tend to chase categories, target ‘consumers’, and develop features without understanding “the why” driving choice. The Sound’s Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework flips the script by asking: what is the job someone is hiring your product or service to do?
Think about the last time you needed a pause in your day. Did you grab a coffee, have a snack, meditate, or scroll through social media? Each is a solution to the same motivation: wanting a quick reset. Competition isn’t limited to just the category—it extends to everything that satisfies that motivation in a given situation.
Defining The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) Framework
At its core, the Jobs To Be Done framework harnesses the power of human motivations and organizes them to prioritize what truly matters. It’s what a person hopes to achieve in a given situation by hiring a product, service, or brand. By focusing on the job rather than the category, brands uncover opportunities they might never have imagined.
Using JTBD, we can observe the unobservable. By joining two theories of motivation, we created a single framework to inspire action and drive growth for businesses. The result is our Motivation Framework. Read about how we applied this framework to the Beauty category, here.
One dimension of the framework focuses on whether a person’s motivations are driven by internal desires or external needs. The other dimension explores whether a person is looking to shake up the status quo or keep it. Stitching the two dimensions together, gives us distinct territories that reflect the complex array of human motivations. These dimensions are evergreen—persistent across categories and industries.
So What Is a Job?
Again, a job is what a person hopes to achieve in a given situation by hiring a product, service, or brand. It’s not a task. Not an occasion. Not a product. Not a persona. It’s the human motivation — the why behind the buy.
For example:
- Coffee: Hired to “Pause”, coffee competes with snacks; hired to “Energize”, coffee competes with energy drinks.
- Streaming service: Hired to “Escape and Cocoon” after a long day, streaming services compete with books or Reels.
- Running shoes: Hired to “Strive & Thrive,” running shoes compete with fitness trackers, yoga classes, and productivity apps that give a sense of progress.
Gaining a deeper understanding of the job reveals unexpected competitors—and opportunities your category-based approach might miss.
(Curious when people want to Escape and Cocoon?)
Why is the JTBD Framework So Important?
Brands build products based on what they think people want. The result? Missed opportunities, fleeting loyalty, and failed innovations.
The Sound’s Jobs To Be Done Framework helps to understand not just what people do, but why they do it. Knowing this helps brands:
- Discover growth opportunities: See all ways people satisfy a single motivation and identify whitespace.
- Increase relevance: Solve the actual job, not just a category need.
- Optimize your portfolio: Know which products are truly hired to fulfill critical jobs.
- Spot unexpected competitors: Your competition is anything that satisfies the same human need.
- Drive innovation with confidence: JTBD reveals which problems are real and which are imagined.
For insights teams, JTBD is a lens for smarter strategy, sharper product development, and better-targeted marketing campaigns.
A Step-by-Step Guide to JTBD
So how do you actually do a JTBD study? It starts with understanding real people in real moments—and using that to move from assumptions to actionable jobs grounded in human motivations. Here’s how we break it down step-by-step:
- Ground in existing knowledge across teams
· Leverage prior research and behavioral theories
· Collaborate to hypothesize and build a strong foundation aligning on business priorities, products, suspected motivations, and situational context to explore. - Create a bespoke survey
· Capture motivations, solutions, and situational context relevant to the project aperture
· Prompt respondents to recall real-life experiences - Employ advanced analytics
· Analyze data to uncover latent themes and distinct jobs
· Map relationships between jobs, products, and brands - Translate jobs to strategy
· Prioritize high-impact jobs
· Visualize and communicate insights to stakeholders
· Identify gaps and opportunities in your portfolio - Repeat for ongoing growth
· JTBD is a living framework
· Regular refreshes reveal new opportunities and trends
The Bottom Line
By understanding what people are really hiring your brand to do, you can:
- Identify white space for your brand to innovate within
- Streamline your brand portfolio to drive acquisition, share, and long-term retention
- Optimize how your brands are positioned in the portfolio
- Refine positioning against your real competition
So, next time your team asks, “How do we win?”— look beyond the category. Look at the job. Ready to discover the job your brand was hired to do? Let’s talk—reach out to Allison at allison@thesoundhq.com
Written By:
Allison Von Borstel
Allison is a strategic storyteller who has spent the past decade using quantitative and qualitative research methods to uncover human stories and truths that fuel strategy. Her strength is efficiently sifting through data and drawing out compelling narratives. Her background is rooted in economics, and she comes to The Sound after earning a graduate degree from the University of Chicago and working in data, policy, and diplomacy. When she's not driving growth for clients, she's teaching debate or climbing fake rocks.
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