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With businesses struggling and with marketing efforts toned down for the foreseeable future during the COVID-19 crisis, it’s hard to build a brand. But you can still support your brand’s reputation through thoughtful leadership and treating people right. And since the reputation of your brand—not to mention your personal leadership and the culture of your company—hinges on how you operate during difficult times, best practices in corporate communications have never been more important. Make sure you let all concerned know how deeply you empathize with their personal challenges and show genuine gratitude for their contributions. If you’re forced to cut salaries or break other employee commitments, a sincere apology can go a long way. However, being an inspirational leader is about more than grand gestures or rousing speeches. Think way outside the box to find creative ways to join your team in their day-to-day efforts. Encourage your people to stay connected, stay healthy, and have fun. The need for open and transparent communication, of course, is just as vital with customers and partners as it is with employees. Be honest in every interaction. If products are going to be delayed, let customers know right away. The business world needs leaders who work side by side with their people, who share tough news with compassion and empathy, and who make transparency their top priority.

In April 2018, the owner of Express Bike Works (EBW), an Indian start-up that provided automated motorcycle washing, among other services, was planning to expand his business to various locations in South India, such as Udupi, Chennai, and Bangalore. He needed to decide whether to expand through self-owned stores or franchise stores and wondered how to select appropriate store locations. His objective was to come up with an expansion strategy that would maximize his payoff.

Holding a massive beer festival brought the Chinese city of Qingdao and Tsingtao Beer Co. Ltd., China’s most famous beer brand, direct economic benefits and public awareness. However, through the Qingdao International Beer Festival—a natural advertising opportunity—foreign beers benefited as well. To date, Chinese beer brands held less than half of the high-end Chinese beer market. China levied no tariffs on beer imports, which increased the market competition. Were the objectives of Tsingtao Beer and the local government fully aligned with regard to the annual festival? Was the beer festival helping one more than it helped the other? Did it help Tsingtao Beer’s competitors? Should the Qingdao International Beer Festival work to recapture or emphasize some of its own cultural uniqueness?

Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20E009.

In mid-2018, the president and chief executive officer of Siemens Canada was examining his options in executing Vision 2020+, a growth plan developed by the company's headquarters in Germany. One of the cornerstones of the plan was digitalization, both internally, among the company's sprawling manufacturing operations, and externally, among the company's industrial customers. How could Siemens Canada, as a North American subsidiary of a large multinational enterprise, add value to the global plan? And to do so, what skills and competencies would Siemens Canada need to acquire locally?

Following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the US government set out to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement, threatening to revoke it if a new favourable deal was not reached with Canada and Mexico. Among other demands, the United States wanted to increase its access to Canada’s protected dairy markets and was calling for the Canadian dairy supply management system to be dismantled. But the health of the Canadian dairy industry depended on supply management. In negotiating the new agreement, Chrystia Freeland, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Canada, needed to consider the balance of domestic interests in supply management with Canada’s international trade priorities.

This note introduces how supply and demand frameworks can be applied to understand distortions in the economy.

In mid 2019, Mobiuspace, a Chinese Internet company, faced a new challenge. As a result of declining revenues from domestic mobile Internet markets, overseas markets offered new opportunities. In 2009, Snaptube, a short video aggregation and distribution platform that Mobiuspace offered as its main product, seized the opportunity to grow in emerging markets by creating localized and personalized video content. Despite the company’s initial success with its expansion strategy, Mobiuspace’s chief executive officer still needed to figure out how to achieve sustainable profitability and long term growth. In particular, he had to enhance users’ engagement and diversify the company’s sources of revenue. How would he achieve all of his objectives?

Pamela Jeffery, founder and chief executive officer of The Pamela Jeffery Group and the Canadian Board Diversity Council (CBDC), had worked diligently for nine years to improve diversity at the board level. While the CBDC aimed at improving diversity in general at the board level, its key focus was to improve the representation of women on corporate boards in Canada. Jeffery and the CBDC methodically carried out plans to involve stakeholders, establish processes, and deliver progress on their goals. Yet they faced a new set of challenges in 2019: while Canadian boards now included more women overall, and most board directors felt that their boards were diverse enough, men and women were still not equally represented at the board level. Jeffery’s challenge was to determine what the next steps could be in what seemed like a long journey of transformation at the board level.

In April 2019, the chief executive officer of Dubai-based Diamond Developers, reflected on his company’s progress in developing a business model based on sustainable living. In December 2015, The Sustainable City in Dubai had welcomed its first residents. The project had become a success story, both commercially and in terms of building a vibrant community of 3,000 residents from 60 countries, who were living a lifestyle characterized by social, environmental, and economic sustainability. After this initial and significant success, the chief executive officer wondered how to replicate the concept, both locally and internationally, to grow the company and to maximize the company's contribution to sustainability and to the fight against climate change.

In March 2016, the associate finance director at Bevaco China (Bevaco), an American multinational firm in China, faced a tough decision. Over the past four years, she had worked diligently to shift her focus from managing work to leading people. She was assigned to work in a joint venture between Bevaco and Mask, a leading Chinese private enterprise, where she faced numerous challenges. A year later, she moved back to Bevaco and worked with a charismatic and visionary leader, who inspired her to further develop her leadership as she built a 50-member team. However, as the associate finance director was enjoying her progress in leadership development, the leader resigned and the team’s work was to be outsourced. Amid this upheaval, she received an offer to work in a globalizing high-tech Chinese firm with the opportunity to work overseas. Was she ready for this opportunity? Could she overcome the challenge of a new company and lead others in a global context?

In July 2019, the owner of Basmati House Supermart (BHS), a grocery store, entered into a six-month agreement to become a partner outlet of a large online grocery retailer in India. During the first two months, BHS acquired many new customers and also increased its customers’ monthly purchase. However, the steep discounts and promotions used to attract customers to the business drove down the margins, while the customer churn rate increased. The store owner was particularly concerned about the continued use of discounts to attract new consumers, which could potentially transform his own loyal customer base into deal-seeking, less loyal, and online-promotion-driven buyers, thereby leaving BHS terminally dependent on the large online retailer to maintain its sales. The owner wondered whether he should renew his contract with the online retailer in January 2020, and if he did not, what his best course of action would be.

VaycayNation was a German start-up operating an online travel and booking portal. Despite its recent growth, the firm still had low brand awareness in the German market. As a remedy, the chief executive officer planned to invest in a major television advertising campaign to attract more visitors to the company’s website and thus improve its customer awareness. He wanted to build the campaign based on a solid understanding of how executional campaign elements related to the firm’s website traffic. He asked his newly hired team member to use her analytical skills to prepare the data, structure her analysis, and interpret the results in order to provide clear guidance for him and the company.

Established in 2014 by a group of five friends in the Czech Republic, Behavio Labs was a consumer behaviour analytics company that launched the popular product Minute. The Minute digital application accurately measured respondent views and expanded employee engagement to help companies make the right decisions when launching new products, or to improve employee working conditions. By 2018, Behavio Labs had achieved considerable success in the Czech Republic with this product, but it wanted to expand globally. The company developed built-in scalability in the fully digital Minute product for international application. To determine which markets to enter, the founders planned to evaluate 29 countries across Europe, as well as the United States. It had to develop criteria to assess the most suitable countries for market entry, identify the most attractive customer segments in these countries based on revenue potential, develop a strategy for entry, and determine the typology of potential partnerships.

Windmill Microlending, was established in 2004 by a group of community activists who saw the need to help Canadian newcomers restart their careers. The organization offered microloans to help pay the costs of reaccreditation and training. The organization’s first chief executive officer was hired in February 2017, and by September 2017, she had formulated a new vision for the organization that would address three goals: growing the number of clients and the number of loans, increasing clients’ success and their job placements, and maintaining the loan repayment rate. She also needed to address whether Windmill Microlending should expand into other cities and provinces and how to diversify the organization’s funding sources and revenue streams to generate more operating revenue and loan capital to support the required growth. She needed to present her vision and strategy at the next board meeting and ensure the board was onside.

Serge Belamant was the founder and chief executive officer of Net1 UEPS Technologies (Net1), a US$600-million company that had a contract with the South Africa government to pay social grants to the poor. The contract was controversial from the start and was under scrutiny through multiple legal challenges and three different investigations, including by the US Securities Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice. When Belamant discovered a paper describing a conspiracy theory alleging that he and Net1 were involved in a form of corruption known as state capture, he believed he could be the victim of a disinformation campaign and wondered what to do.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20M066.

Spreadsheet for product 9B20A027.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20M066.

Presentation for product 8B20A036.