Following its re-emergence from bankruptcy protection in 2014, the marketing team at Kodak has been charged with tripling brand value with consumers, with little marketing budget. The case focuses on the strategies used by senior Kodak marketers Steven Overman and Dany Atkins to leverage the brand's heritage for innovation and creativity with existing and new audiences. With few resources other than heritage, Overman and Atkins have focused on making Kodak 'cool' through partnerships with a range of brands targeting younger users while also reinforcing the brand's historic links with the motion picture industry and benefitting from the so-called 'analog revival'. The case explores issues of cultural branding, focusing on how relevance can be built through connections to crowd cultures, communities and other brands to build a platform for growth and revitalization.
The case traces the birth of 1436, a new luxury brand specialized in cashmere garments. It describes how this venture emerged organically out of a combination of manufacturing and retail expertise with the ambition of creating the first pure Chinese luxury brand. The brand name was inspired by the measurement of superfine baby cashmere fibre (14 micrometers in diameter and 36 millimeters in length). It is estimated that only 2 out of 1,000 grams of cashmere measure up to the standard of 1436. Describing the brand evolution over its first 8 years of existence, the case allows for an exploration of the challenges associated with creating a luxury brand and reconciling several strategic imperatives: the need to build a strong and desirable brand identity, grow the business but also protect the brand integrity and exclusivity. The case also provides an opportunity to discuss the benefits and challenges associated with being 1) a luxury brand "made in China" and 2) a category specialist (cashmere). As Jane Wang, 1436's founder and CEO, looks to the future, she has to decide what to do to establish 1436 as a recognized luxury brand on a global scale.
The case traces the birth of Shang Xia, a joint venture between the Hermès Group and Chinese designer Jiang Qiong Er. Launched in 2009 in Shanghai, the new brand's core mission is to revive and promote China's 5,000-year-old cultural heritage and leverage Chinese craftsmanship to design contemporary products. Describing the brand evolution over its first eight years of existence, the case allows for an exploration of the challenges associated with creating a luxury brand and reconciling several strategic imperatives: the need to build a strong, desirable, and prestigious brand identity and grow a profitable and sustainable business. The case also provides an opportunity to discuss the benefits and challenges associated with 1) building a luxury brand from scratch and 2) being a luxury brand "made in China" with global ambitions.
C.W. Dixey & Son is about to be re-launched as a luxury eyewear brand after a fifty-year absence from the marketplace. This case focuses on reviving a dormant brand with a 200-year plus heritage of innovation, craft excellence, and luxury. Drawing on extensive historical research, brand owner Dr. Simon Palmer believes that the brand's authenticity is perfect for wealthy customers looking for refinement and inconspicuous luxury in an age of ostentatious logo-centric branding. Drawing upon the brand's extensive associations with previous users, most notably Sir Winston Churchill, Palmer is ready to re-launch the brand into a crowded market full of well-resourced luxury brand names with high brand awareness. Palmer needs to consider a range of positioning driven decisions in order to ensure C.W. Dixey & Son is re-launched successfully.
Founded in 1999 in the Boston area, Sentient Jet had become a leading private aviation company in the United States. Its success was built on the introduction of a groundbreaking membership program that offered business travelers the flexibility and convenience of flying on private aircraft for their personal and business needs at an outstanding and unparalleled value. Sentient functioned differently and more efficiently than traditional charter companies; it used an open fleet model, renting jets from a pool of certified charter companies. Thanks to its innovative business model and proprietary technology platform, the firm was providing its clients with all the benefits of owning a fleet of aircraft with none of the associated costs and commitments. Its fares were typically 20% to 30% lower than those of its competitors. In a nutshell, Sentient Jet had invented the Uber of private jets before Uber even existed. With over 15 years of experience, the company was serving more than 5,000 cardholders, and Andrew Collins, president of Sentient Jet, was considering various strategies to double the company's size in the next few years.
Founded in 1984 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, La Martina has grown from a high-end polo equipment company into a global fashion brand with operations in 56 countries. Polo, which is not only a sport but also a way of life, is at the core of the brand DNA. Polo is a unique sport with a long history and strong culture that the brand intends to protect, preserve, and share with as many people as possible. The world of polo has traditionally conjured up images of exclusivity, sophistication, and elegance, attracting a wealthy crowd of royals, movie stars, and successful business entrepreneurs. It has naturally developed into a suitable environment for luxury brand sponsorship, co-branding, and partnership opportunities. At the same time, polo is a "niche" sport with limited expansion opportunities. Could La Martina continue to grow within the polo world boundaries? Should La Martina diversify into other sports? What impact would a departure from its polo roots have on the brand identity and authenticity? As a global fashion retailer, La Martina was also confronted with a new set of challenges driven by changes in technology, e-commerce, social media, consumer preferences, and shopping behaviors. In 2015, in a fast-paced, globalized, and ultra-competitive environment, La Martina needed to reconsider its business model and decide on its next strategic move.
Jimmy Choo is a British luxury accessories brand, specializing in shoes, handbags, accessories, and fragrances. Founded in 1996 in London by couture shoe designer Jimmy Choo and Vogue accessories editor Tamara Mellon OBE, the brand enjoyed immediate success and rapidly acquired a sophisticated clientele. The brand's reputation as a celebrity favorite helped fuel its rapid international expansion and in the early 2010s Jimmy Choo had a store network encompassing 150+ stores in 30+ countries and was present in the most prestigious department and specialty stores worldwide, except for mainland China. Appointed as Chief Executive Officer in July 2012, Pierre Denis, an experienced executive from LVMH, developed a new vision for the brand and made the entry into the Chinese market one of his top priorities. The case describes how Jimmy Choo's leadership team analyzed the Chinese luxury market and designed an entry strategy into China. The case explores the challenges and opportunities for foreign luxury brands like Jimmy Choo to launch in China and contemplates different marketing mix possibilities.
Mauboussin is a French jewelry brand founded in 1827 in Paris. In the 1920's, the company earned a huge notoriety for capturing the aesthetic and emotional dimension of the Art Deco movement in its design and gained a world-wide reputation for innovation and expertise in the realm of colored stones. Known as the designer for royalty and Hollywood stars, Mauboussin was a legendary jeweler but became complacent and lost its clients. Taken over in 2001 by a new leadership team, Mauboussin engaged in a radically different strategy and abandoned its ultra-prestigious and exclusive positioning to embrace a more accessible and affordable approach. The brand experienced several years of phenomenal commercial success in France, Europe and Japan and in 2008, Mauboussin entered the US market, where the brand did not meet the expected success. It eventually closed its flagship store in NYC in 2014. Mauboussin's leadership is nonetheless eager to learn from this experience to re-launch successfully in the US.
Stella McCartney launched her own fashion house under her name in a partnership with the luxury conglomerate Kering as a 50/50 joint venture in 2001. A lifelong vegetarian, Stella McCartney does not use any leather or fur in her collections, which include women's ready-to-wear, handbags, shoes, lingerie, eyewear, fragrance, and a kids line. Stella McCartney's achievement in fashion and social awareness has been recognized on many occasions, and her commitment to sustainability is present throughout all her collections and numerous environmental and charitable initiatives. As climate change is becoming a more pressing issue, companies are pressured to embrace a more sustainable approach to their business. With fashion and luxury industries progressively rising to this challenge, what does it mean for Stella McCartney's brand's ethos to be a responsible, honest, and modern company? Is it possible that Stella McCartney's environmentally friendly positioning will not be as differentiating as before as more fashion and luxury brands are becoming environmentally conscious and starting to develop sustainable initiatives? Similarly, how are Stella McCartney's partnerships to develop ethical fashion items impacting the brand's luxury positioning and appeal?
In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion blog The Blonde Salad, and Riccardo Pozzoli, her co-founder and business partner, had to decide how to best monetize her blog as well as her shoe line called the "Chiara Ferragni Collection". A year earlier, Ferragni and Pozzoli had already made a decision to transform her blog into an online lifestyle magazine and to build its positioning as a high-end brand. It meant that The Blonde Salad envisaged to only cooperate with a limited number of luxury fashion advertisers, inevitably reducing the blog's revenues. Ferragni and Pozzoli considered changing the revenue-generating model by incorporating an online market place within The Blonde Salad, but which strategy and timeline would she need to achieve her aim? Should Ferragni's shoe line, a separate company with a different ownership structure, be merged with The Blonde Salad or was it desirable to keep the two apart?
Monte-Carlo Weddings, established by Frank Damgaard in 2005, is the most respectable and exclusive wedding planning business in the South of France. Frank has organized the largest, most expensive and luxurious weddings in Europe, serving celebrities, CEOs, and other high-net-worth individuals from around the world. After 10 years in operation, constantly innovating and pushing the bar higher, Frank is wondering what is next for him and his company. Could he further elevate a wedding experience and exceed his demanding clients' expectations? Is it possible or even desirable to grow his high-touch, fully customized service provider business? How can he leverage his brand, reputation, and success in the French Riviera to build a larger business and stronger brand? What should he do next? Is he ready for another change?
Miranda Cresswell, marketing director, and Greg Marsh, founder and CEO of onefinestay, were grappling with branding and positioning dilemmas. onefinestay offered high-end home rentals to travelers who sought a more authentic and local experience than a typical upscale hotel might provide. onefinestay's brand had been "hacked" together quickly during the company's early years. After five years of rapid growth, Marsh brought Cresswell on board to do a comprehensive analysis of the company's brand and its positioning in the marketplace. Cresswell had spent several months gathering data and insights, and was starting to experiment with use case scenarios that took a crack at segmenting the company's customers. The preliminary results were interesting, but raised more questions than they answered, and Cresswell wondered if this was the best way to segment the market. While segmenting in this way was intriguing, it led to a branding challenge-as a start-up, it was difficult for onefinestay to have the resources to support multiple brand messages in the marketplace and different segments wanted different things from their travel experience. She pondered whether there were other ways to group customers that would allow for a more universal positioning for the brand or whether the company needed to focus on one or two segments to serve. Positioning the fledgling brand was a challenge. Who was the company competing against and how could it carve out a unique value proposition that would appeal to travelers and be differentiated from what was offered by other hospitality options? Was its current moniker "the unhotel" working for or against it?
Growing an exclusive brand by moving down market can be tricky: It risks tarnishing the brand among core customers. New research shows that under certain conditions, however, downward extensions can actually intensify a brand's prestige. It all depends on how the noncore consumers are framed--whether they are presented as part of the core community ("brand immigrants"), a situation that tends to diminish the brand's image, or whether they are positioned as "brand tourists"--consumers who admire the brand without seeking to be part of the core community. The research findings suggest several strategies for companies who want to extend a brand without alienating core consumers.
Gaston Acurio, star chef and restaurateur from Peru, must decide whether and how to adapt his signature Peruvian cuisine to local tastes as he opens restaurants in new countries.
Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. For classroom use in higher education, this Reading is accompanied by a Teaching Note, test bank, and exhibit slides. "Brands and Brand Equity" provides a comprehensive review of the fundamental concepts and theories in branding and introduces key concepts, issues, and terminology related to creating, nurturing, managing, leveraging, and defending strong brands. Students will learn the many components that make up a brand, the value that brands provide for consumers and firms, how firms create brand equity, and the key decisions and challenges that brand managers face across the life cycle of a brand. This Reading also combines theory and practice by summarizing and integrating theories and models in branding research and illustrating them with examples from diverse industries, including success and failure of well-known brands.
Vegemite is an iconic Australian breakfast spread and is often seen as a quintessential Australian product. This case focuses on Kraft's decision to revitalize brand performance through the introduction of a brand extension. Drawing on extensive social media analysis of brand image, the brand team led by Simon Talbot identified a gap in the market for a line extension involving a blend of Vegemite and Kraft's other iconic brand, Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Following a high profile campaign involving a competition to name the new extension Talbot's team chose the name iSnack 2.0 for the new product. The case starts two days after the public unveiling of this name and subsequent nationwide backlash against it. Talbot needs to consider whether to continue with the brand name or change it in light of the public outcry.
Well-established fashion brand Eileen Fisher has traditionally appealed to older women. However, to drive growth, Eileen Fisher's management team wants to target a younger demographic and has revamped its Fall product line to offer more fashionable styles to appeal to younger women. But, repositioning the brand has proven to be harder than expected. This case explores the challenges of appealing to new target markets, without alienating existing customers. The case follows Eileen Fisher's initial forays into social media as they chase a younger demographic, and demonstrates the opportunities and pitfalls that await big brands when they enter the world of Web 2.0.
The case examines an iconic institution's decision on whether or not to undertake a branding initiative. Founded in 1802, West Point has played a key role in America's history. It is one of the nation's oldest institutions of higher learning and is well known for producing prominent military, political, and business leaders. In the increasingly competitive environment of higher education, the Director of Strategic Communications at the U.S. Military Academy is faced with a decision on whether or not to invest resources in a rebranding effort. Over the course of the school's history, several distinct logos have come into existence and little uniformity or guidance for use exists. Data from a recent consumer survey offers some insight for the decision maker to contemplate, as does the school's recent appearance on the cover of Forbes' magazine as the number one undergraduate institution in the nation. Numerous stakeholders, tradition, the competitive environment, and resource constraints all factor into the decision making process.