The Punk PM #48

Hey there, punk!

I love the new Lovable ad. Not necessarily the messaging itself (I've had a few things to say about that on Bluesky) but the way it articulates their why. We talked about it a few weeks ago on The Inside Track Podcast, and I haven't been able to shake it since.

Because the more I think about it, the more I think brand and product are becoming the same thing. And in an AI world where features can be copied overnight, the way your product helps people shape their identity is a far more powerful moat than anything on your roadmap.

Let's dig into it.

Quote of the Week 🙊

Insight 🦉

Most product teams think about brand as a marketing problem. A logo. A tone of voice. A colour palette. But that's the surface. Brand, at its core, is the job you help your customer get done and the trust they have that you'll get it done better than anyone else.

That's a product problem. But most product teams aren't treating it like one.

Here's the thing about Jobs to be Done: it's usually applied tactically. What does this feature help users accomplish? What's the job of this onboarding flow? Useful questions. But zoom out and the same logic applies to the whole business. When your brand and your customer's job are so tightly linked that reaching for you becomes instinctive, that's when you've built something genuinely hard to compete with.

Lovable's new ad gets this. They're not talking about model capability or speed or how clean the interface is. They're saying: we exist to tear down the barriers between a creative person and a successful business. That's not a features pitch. That's a why. And Simon Sinek's been right about this for years—people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Replit and Bolt are selling a different story. A perfectly reasonable one about performance and functionality, but those things are table stakes in a market where the tools are converging fast. Lovable are building a purpose brand. Something much harder to copy than a feature set. Because it's not really about the product at all. It's about how the person using it sees themselves.

That's the moat. Identity, not infrastructure.

Most product teams are so focused on what they're building that they never stop to ask whether the customer understands why they exist. Not what the product does. Why it matters. To whom. On what terms.

Get that right and trust follows. Get trust right and the switching costs take care of themselves.

Action 🚀

Nex week, write down the why behind your product in one sentence. Not what it does. Not how it works. Why it exists, and for whom.

Then ask yourself honestly: would your customers recognise that answer?

The gap between those two things is your product's brand problem.

Inspiration 💡

The Human Imperative: Why Brand Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AI – Yvonne Maher makes a straightforward but easily forgotten point: AI can handle the tasks, but only people can build the relationships. As the tools converge, the brands that win will be the ones that show their values consistently. Read more

Using Jobs to Be Done to Strengthen Brand Positioning – SIVO Insights on applying JTBD beyond product and into brand strategy. When you shift from "here's what we do" to "here's what you're trying to achieve," everything from messaging to positioning gets sharper. Read more

The Key to Behaviour Change Is Identity Change – Nir Eyal on why the most durable habits start with how you see yourself, not what you do. The link here is hard to miss: if a product aligns with the identity you're trying to build, then it's always going to beat the one that just talks about features. Read more

Signing Off ✍️

If this resonates with you, hit reply and let me know. And if you think a friend or colleague would enjoy The Punk PM, feel free to share it with them!

Play it your way,

Toby