This technical note is designed to introduce the Creative Brief, a document that plays a crucial role in the process of converting marketing strategy into implementation. Many creatives believe that briefs are generally poorly written, which then leads to poor advertising messages. This note will help strategists better understand the criticality of developing well-crafted, carefully considered, and expertly vetted creative briefs that increase the chance of superior implementation and, ultimately, impact. While this note focuses on a Creative Brief, there are many similar documents (e.g., project briefs and technology briefs) that serve the same bridging purpose. As a result, the insight from the note can be useful in trying to create any document that helps convert strategy into action.
In 2005, Walmart, the world's largest retailer, launched a sustainability initiative aimed at reducing waste and making the company more environmentally and socially conscious. By 2015, the company had made progress in multiple dimensions: energy efficiency in its stores and its supply chain, lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions, safer products for customers and manufacturers, and better treatment of its workers. The company promoted the idea that its size gave it significant influence in the economy and that if it took steps to operate more sustainably, and demanded its suppliers do the same, this would have an impact on its own bottom line and make the world a better place for everyone. Students can explore whether Walmart is making these changes to improve its battered public image, improve its bottom line, or because it is the right thing to do.
In March 2012, Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, Ltd. (Hon Hai) announced its investment in the Sharp Corporation (Sharp). The deal was structured in two parts: the first had Hon Hai investing in Sharp, and the second involved Hon Hai founder and chairman and CEO Terry Guo personally purchasing a stake in Sharp's unprofitable Sakai manufacturing plant. This case explores the dynamics of the deal and specifically focuses on valuation of the investment in the Sakai plant as well as the structure of the deal. It presents a vehicle by which to consider net present value (NPV) calculations and corporate deal structuring.
Boston-based fast-casual chain, b.good, was founded on the idea of healthy food, sourced locally, and prepared in-store. They'd worked to build a value-based business, and worked hard to cultivate a sense of family--among employees, customers and suppliers. In 2015, they had entered a period of substantial growth, with the company doubling in size over the past 12 months, and plans to double again over the coming twelve months. The management felt this purpose and sense of family had served them well, but were worried that growth would water down these key ingredients to their success. As they enter 2016, they are particularly focused on ensuring that they get the "people" systems right.
thyssenkrupp Steel Europe, a major European steel company, operates a so-called push-pickling line (PPL) in Bochum, Germany. The PPL produces a particular type of steel strips that are sold to B2B customers, mainly in the automotive industry. In spring 2014, a senior vice president of thyssenkrupp Steel's production operations and one of his production managers notice that over the span of ten years the production facility regularly did not meet its planned production volumes. They set out to determine the drivers for the deviations from planned production figures with the ultimate goal to improve the production planning process at the Bochum PPL. Students will step into the shoes of Markus Schulze-a production manager at thyssenkrupp Steel-as he searches for performance drivers at the Bochum PPL and analyzes recent production data to build a forecasting model for production planning.
A 2-party negotiation role play between a search engine startup, YOUReka, and Quantron, a supplier of the subassembly boards used at YOUReka's data centers. At issue is a possible breach of contract. Roles include Role for Quantron (#916035) and Role for YOUReka (#916036).
The strategic and tactical problems of managing the operations function in a service environment can be examined through the context of the Walt Disney Company (DIS) opening Shanghai Disneyland. The company and its investors were excited about the Shanghai opening for a good reason: demographics. The resort would be located in the Pudong district of Shanghai, easily the wealthiest of all of China's districts. A massive 330 million people lived with a three-hour driving radius of the resort site, compared with 19.6 million who lived within the same radius at DIS's most profitable park, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Still, risks remained. Construction complications had delayed the opening almost a year longer than expected and cost overruns and alterations had increased the final price tag of the project. The Chinese economy had also hit a rough patch following the Chinese stock market slump in the summer of 2015. With the world watching, could the classic Disney theme park experience be delivered with the right cultural balance to appeal to its largely Chinese customers? Could DIS get it right?
Janalakshmi Financial Services (JFS), an Indian microfinance institution, had grown rapidly by providing financial products to its main customer base, the urban poor. However, the company was facing several challenges. JFS's productivity was declining, and it was experiencing a high and above-market-average attrition rate in its sale force-i.e., the loan officers. In addition, the division of duties for origination and collection by the two types of salespeople-customer-relations executives for sales (CRES) and for collection (CREC)-was perceived as a problem for the company's social mission of serving the urban poor, as the salesperson-customer relationship had become transactional. Because the primary form of customer contact was through the loan officers, JFS needed to find a solution for improving the existing sales compensation system in order to establish a performance-focused culture and to lower the employee attrition rate. In addition, it wanted to explore the possibility of streamlining the duties of JFS's sales staff to eliminate any overlapping duties between the two different types of loan officers (CRES and CREC), and sought to align employees with the firm's values and social mission of serving the urban poor. The case study illustrates the challenges that organizations face when constructing a new compensation system to achieve multiple outcomes. Although the case focuses on salespeople, it relates to general employees and, thus, can be used in courses in general management or HR policies. Also, because of its industry-specific contents (micro finance), the case can be used in courses related to financial inclusion in developing countries.
Paul had opposed the Fed for decades and had offered several bills to dismantle it, dating back to 1983. As with all of his previous attempts, the 2009 bill died in committee. Although few members of Congress shared Paul's desire to eliminate the Fed, the central bank's unprecedented interventions during the 2007-2009 financial crisis provoked new sources of resistance. At a minimum, many more Americans were curious about the inner workings of the Fed, whose activities and decisions were frequently wrapped in secrecy. From its earliest days, the Fed's supporters had insisted that monetary policy had to be separated from electoral politics to prevent the manipulation of the money supply and interest rates for short-term political gain. Increasingly, however, critics questioned whether the costs of Federal Reserve independence and secrecy might outweigh the benefits. By late 2009, mounting concerns in Congress had breathed new life into one of Representative Paul's milder proposals for containing the Fed. Though his ultimate goal was to "end the Fed," Paul had also repeatedly proposed a full audit of the institution. By November 19, 2009, his latest audit bill had attracted 313 cosponsors, a record level of support, and the House Financial Services Committee was scheduled to vote that very day on whether to append a version of the proposal to a major financial reform bill that was then taking shape in Congress. If the audit provision became law, it would represent a notable change in policy, providing an unprecedented window on Fed activities and raising significant new questions about the nature of central bank independence in America.
On the afternoon of June 21, 1982, the Florida Senate prepared to vote on whether to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, which stated that "Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Supporters believed the ERA was essential to winning equal rights for women. Opponents claimed that the proposed amendment would dangerously expand federal power over the states, remove needed protections for women, and undermine the American family. When Congress had sent the ERA to the states for ratification, in March 1972, it had done so through a joint resolution stipulating that state legislatures had to ratify it within seven years. As the deadline neared, however, only 35 of the requisite 38 states had voted to ratify the amendment, four of which later voted to rescind ratification, though ERA supporters questioned the constitutionality of rescission. In October 1978, Congress extended the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982, a move that ERA opponents denounced as unconstitutional. Over the next several years, one more state voted to rescind, and no new states ratified. In 1982, ERA supporters made a final push for ratification. That June, the governor of Florida, an ERA supporter, called the state legislature into special session to consider, among other issues, approval of the ERA. If Florida ratified, supporters hoped that Illinois and either Oklahoma or North Carolina would quickly follow. On June 21, thousands of demonstrators, both for and against the amendment, converged on the state capitol in Tallahassee. That morning, the Florida House voted in favor of the ERA, 60 to 58. Now it was up to the Florida Senate to decide whether to ratify the amendment or to kill it.
In January 1965, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the United States, launched a campaign of civil disobedience in Selma, Alabama, to bring national attention to disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. On Sunday, March 7, as part of this campaign, 400 mostly black protesters, not including King, tried to march across the Pettus Bridge, just outside Selma, only to be stopped by state troopers and local lawmen, who attacked them with tear gas and clubs. That night, all three national television networks broadcast film of the assault. The broadcasts sparked outrage against the attackers and sympathy protests across the country. King announced that he would lead a renewed march over the bridge on Tuesday, March 9. By early Tuesday morning, however, King had learned that President Lyndon Johnson, whose help he needed to win federal voting rights legislation, did not want him to march, and that a federal judge had issued a restraining order against the march until a hearing could be held. King thought his supporters' passions were so strong that he might not be able to cancel the march even if he wanted to, yet the modern civil rights movement had never before defied a federal court order. President Johnson's representatives told King that he might avoid violating the judge's order if he marched to the bridge and then turned around before crossing it. King did not say what he would do, however, and few of his supporters knew about the turnaround possibility. Several hours later, with television cameras recording the unfolding events, King led 2000 marchers to the bridge, where state troopers and lawmen waited. Should he try to turn the march around, which his followers might not accept, or try to cross the bridge, contrary to the president's wishes and a federal restraining order?
When the Titanic tragically sank on April 15, 1912, potentially life-saving help was delayed as a result of failures in radio communication. In part as a result, Congress moved swiftly to regulate radio, passing the Radio Act of 1912 four months later. Although at this stage radio was still used principally for point-to-point, Morse code communications, the radio scene changed drastically in the early 1920s with the rise of broadcasting, as new private stations began to deliver music and voice programs to a listening public. By 1927, more than 700 stations were battling over 96 available frequencies. This crowding of the broadcast spectrum substantially diminished the quality of radio listening. In fact, the airwaves were so full of interference that many citizens complained that it was often impossible to tune into any station clearly. In January 1926, both houses of Congress began considering sweeping bills to tackle the problem of interference and the question of how to allocate frequencies for broadcasting. Lawmakers vigorously debated a broad set of issues, ranging from questions of ownership and regulatory authority to the protection of free speech and the prevention of monopoly. A bill endorsed by both the House and Senate emerged a little over a year later, after the interference problem was said to have grown worse, and it finally arrived on the desk of President Calvin Coolidge on February 23, 1927. The bill would create a Federal Radio Commission with the power to license radio stations for two years at a time. President Coolidge had endorsed radio reform in his most recent annual message to Congress but had requested that all regulatory power be granted to the secretary of commerce, not to a commission. Now, with Congress having opted for a commission, he had to decide if the bill before him charted an acceptable path for American radio regulation.
On Election Day in 1918, Massachusetts voters would have to decide not only on their preferred candidates for governor and U.S. Senator, but also whether or not to approve 19 proposed amendments to the state constitution. By far the most controversial of these would establish a state process of initiative and referendum. The initiative would empower private citizens to write both laws and constitutional amendments, and pass them, even over the opposition of a majority of the state legislature. The referendum would allow voters to rescind laws that the legislature had passed. Behind this proposed amendment lay nearly three decades of agitation, both in the state and nationally, for "direct democracy" in America. The initiative and referendum-or "I&R" for short-had become a key demand of progressivism, the diverse movement for economic, social, and political reform that swept the nation for nearly two decades after 1900. By 1918, 19 states, mostly in the West, and hundreds of counties and municipalities, including a number of cities in Massachusetts, had adopted some form of I&R. Opposition to a statewide I&R provision in Massachusetts, however, remained fierce. Opponents claimed it would threaten the rights of minorities, give undue influence to small but well organized interest groups, and place needless burdens on voters. Proponents urged the people to empower themselves and take back control of the state from the "invisible government" of party bosses and corporate lobbyists. Now, with the election approaching, Massachusetts voters would have to decide.
In December 1877, an all-white grand jury in Patrick County, Virginia, indicted two black teenagers, Lee and Burwell Reynolds, for killing a white man. After a series of trials, an all-white trial jury convicted Lee of second-degree murder and sentenced him to prison. A separate all-white jury could not reach a verdict on Burwell, and he was returned to jail to await another trial. During the proceedings, the defendants' attorneys had protested to the county judge that their clients could not get fair trials from all-white juries. They also complained that although black men were allowed on juries by Virginia law, no blacks were even in the jury pools. The lawyers asked that special jury pools be created for their clients, but the judge denied their request. Finally, the lawyers petitioned a federal judge in the area, Alexander Rives, to move the trials to his court. In December 1878, Judge Rives agreed to the petition and had the Reynolds brothers removed from state to federal custody. Not long afterward, he charged two federal grand juries, both interracial, to investigate whether Virginia state courts had excluded blacks from juries. This, he argued, would be a violation of both the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (1868) and the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875. In February and March 1879, the grand juries indicted 14 Virginia county judges, among them the judge in the Reynolds trials, for keeping the jury pools they supervised all white.
Americans elected Abraham Lincoln as the nation's first Republican president in November of 1860. Northern political leaders had formed the Republican Party only a few years before, in large measure to combat the spread of slavery. Southerners had long been wary of Northern hostility toward their "peculiar institution," and Lincoln's 1860 victory proved to be the last straw in this sectional rivalry that had deeply influenced American culture and politics since the earliest days of the republic. By the time of Lincoln's inauguration five months later, in March 1861, seven Southern states had announced their decision to secede from the Union. Lincoln rejected secession as unlawful and pledged that his government would continue to exercise its authority, as best it could, in the rebellious states. A crisis in South Carolina, the first state to secede, tested Lincoln's mettle in the opening days of his presidency. Federal troops still held Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, but their supplies were running low. Lincoln would either have to evacuate the fort or risk war by sending provisions. The new president understood the weight of the choice he faced: nothing less than the survival of the Union was at stake.
By the mid-1830s, the U.S. Government and the State of Georgia had for years been pushing the Cherokees to turn all of their territory over to white settlers and move west, yet it appeared that most Cherokees wanted to keep their ancestral homeland. In October 1835, the Cherokee General Council had named a committee of leaders to work out a mutually agreeable solution with the federal government in Washington. At about the same time, however, U.S. Indian Commissioner John Schermerhorn had called a meeting at New Echota, Georgia with a separate committee of Cherokees who he believed would be more willing to "remove" the entire tribe to the West. This separate committee ultimately agreed to the Treaty of New Echota on December 29, 1835. Under the treaty, the Cherokees would cede all of their eastern territory in exchange for $4.5 million, land in the West, and other sundry benefits. U.S. President Andrew Jackson, who had battled Native American tribes during much of his former military career, was eager to oust the Cherokees from the eastern states. However, several members of the Senate criticized the Treaty of New Echota as a "phantom treaty," claiming that it was signed by an illegitimate council without the consent of the Cherokee people. Approving the treaty, they insisted, would be a grave wrong against the Cherokee Nation and its official government, which the United States had long recognized. On May 18, 1836, the U.S. Senate finally put the Treaty of New Echota to a vote. If ratified, the treaty would bind all Cherokees to the decisions of the committee at New Echota, and the Cherokee Nation would have to leave its native land.