In October 2023, the global vice-president of marketing and partnerships at Ball Corporation (Ball), who was overseeing the company’s aluminum cup business, was on his way to a significant meeting. Given a plastic cup for his drink, he thought about his company’s aluminum cups. Despite initial doubts, Ball’s cups had succeeded, doubling sales and gaining recognition within two years. Now, the company was aiming for further growth and found that scaling up posed a challenge. The vice-president believed that a sustainability-focused marketing campaign could assist, but he knew that consumer awareness of the cups was lacking. Ball needed to rethink its messaging to attract more attention. The vice-president wondered how to effectively capture people’s interest and persuade them to purchase his company’s cups.
In February 2024, the general manager and vice-president of Audi Seattle found himself having to consider the future challenges that could be in store for traditional automotive retailing. Despite having faced numerous challenges in the automotive industry over the years, such as recessions and factory strikes, he had remained dedicated to the car business in an ever-changing industry. Now, however, he was all too aware of the imminent threat posed by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) selling directly to consumers. Franchise laws had historically shielded auto dealerships from such threats, but Tesla Inc. had bypassed these laws and was selling directly to consumers, altering the industry landscape. With franchise laws under threat and with some competitors already adapting to the shift, the general manager would have to act quickly in determining how to pivot to avoid revenue and market share losses. How should Audi Seattle adapt to the rapid changes taking place in the industry and secure its future?
In 2022, Doja Cat walked the red carpet for the sixty-fourth annual Grammy Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada, wearing a blinged-out JBL speaker as her only accessory. Chris Epple, vice president of marketing in the lifestyle division of JBL’s parent company, Harman International Industries Inc. (Harman), had realized a huge win with the Doja Cat collaboration. A year after the Grammy Awards, in March 2023, Epple contemplated what was next. He knew this had been the right partnership at the right time, but his greatest concern now was maintaining the social media buzz and continuing to build community around the brand. He wondered how JBL should manage future partnerships and collaborations to keep its target Generation Z consumers engaged and the brand story relevant.
Since its beginning in 2018, Jane Win LLC, a nimble and lean start-up selling amulet jewellery pieces, had seen immediate success. From the company’s inception, its founder, Jane Winchester Paradis, assessed the advantages and disadvantages of an expansion strategy. Paradis also assessed the viability of expanding beyond amulet pieces to achieve substantial growth. Although the young company already enjoyed strong brand recognition and offered a meaningful unique selling proposition, there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including which growth strategy would be the most suitable. Did the company have the resources and skilled management team necessary to adequately support and monitor its growth? What legal and financial issues must Paradis consider? What marketing and operational issues were the company likely to encounter during expansion?
Two years had passed since Jazwares Limited Liability Company (Jazwares) acquired Squishmallows—a plush toy business—and Jeremy Padawer, the chief brand officer of Jazwares, was challenged in how to ensure that the Squishmallow plush toys would be more than a passing fad. As Squishmallows expanded, so did its leadership team. In November 2022, Padawer promoted Crystal Pizzullo to the role of vice president of the brand’s Global Business Unit. Pizzullo’s role was paramount to ensuring the ongoing success and protection of the brand identity of an extraordinarily successful business. Squishmallows enjoyed strong brand recognition and offered a meaningful unique selling proposition, but there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including which growth strategy would be the most suitable for Jazwares.
MedfirstIndia Trading Private Limited was a privately owned e-commerce start-up in India. The firm’s goal was to establish a first-of-its-kind medical devices e-commerce platform catering to various underserved market segments, such as small hospitals and independent medical practices. The firm relied primarily on digital channels for branding and customer outreach. However, the founders did not have a structured data-driven decision-making strategy in place despite the wealth of data flowing in through web analytics. In 2018, after three years of operations, the firm closed its doors. The case highlights the challenges of strategizing and managing the digital marketing operations of an e-commerce start-up.
In October 2022, Evan Ehlers, founder and executive director of Sharing Excess, a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization dedicated to food rescue, received an unexpected call to help rescue 630,000 avocados from Peru, which were days away from being dumped in the landfill. Ehlers soon understood that it would be a race against time, given the perishable nature of avocados. How could he and his team devise a distribution and marketing plan to match the avocados to people and organizations that could use them before they went bad? The challenge was daunting, and the clock was ticking. What could he do to save hundreds of thousands of avocados from being thrown out in a short time frame of 48 hours?
Hopeworks Camden (Hopeworks), a small non-profit organization based in Camden, New Jersey, with a $4.7 million annual budget in 2022, was looking ahead to 2024. It was mid-July 2023, and the board of directors tasked Don Rhoton, Hopeworks’ chief executive officer, and Onome Pela-Emore, their chief operating officer, to develop an expansion plan that is financially viable and increases their geographic reach, beginning as early as the second quarter 2024. Rhoton and Pela-Emore believed in their mission and knew that to grow they would need to increase in spatial geography, obtain new business opportunities, increase recruitment and training, and be competitive in the marketplace. They also knew that to make this all happen they would have to question how they market, determine who they would market to, and how the market will recognize them as a competitor.
Honeygrow, a healthy food chain, has seen steady growth since opening its first location in Philadelphia in 2012. Justin Rosenberg, founder and chief executive officer of honeygrow, is assessing the advantages and disadvantages of an expansion strategy and wondering how he should lean into social media more to aid and develop his brand story further.
This case explores the unique challenges social entrepreneurs face in balancing social impact and growing their market reach. Jane Bloom, founder of Caring Caps, is passionate about this social cause and built a culture of giving back into the mission and vision of the organization. But operating a non-profit with the goal of growing can create significant strain on a founder and volunteers. The organization in this case provides knitted caps for cancer patients and fully embraces the inclusion of social mission, purpose, and vision into its everyday operations to create a significant social impact of individuals battling cancer.<br><br>Caring Caps has had minimal awareness since its inception in 2013 and is looking to evolve into something beyond a community within a synagogue and to provide its “comfy” caps to more hospitals and cancer centers to reach those in need. One of the biggest challenges is to identify a growth model for Caring Caps to stay sustainable. What should Bloom do to position Caring Caps for future growth? What marketing should she consider?
In September 2022, inspired by personal experiences, marketing executive Nicole Bezinski decided to set up GirlsTakeOver.org (GTO) after recognizing that teenage girls and young women in high schools and colleges in the United States were lacking coping mechanisms to help them manage increased stress and performance pressures. While schools received numerous new education program ideas annually, they were highly selective about which programs met the stringent criteria and were accepted. Consequently, Bezinski found herself with the challenge of proving that non-profit GTO offered students the self-management and coping benefits they needed. A high-impact proof-of-concept model was critical for GTO to receive serious consideration and acceptance by schools. Acceptance would lead to support, advocacy, and critical financial sponsorship from numerous stakeholders to enable GTO to launch and run operations in the first year. Bezinski had to finalize her proposal including the proof of concept before schools began accepting new education program applications.
Jason Kelce, an NFL player and athlete recognized around the world, had built a strong personal brand over the course of his career. He had reinvented himself and worked hard at honing his own personal branding, successively building a successful platform for each venture and staying forward-looking about his future after retiring from football. By 2023, Kelce was at a crossroads. He was not quite ready to hang up his Philadelphia Eagles jersey, and he knew that managing his own personal brand was a full-time endeavour as well. What was the best way to further develop his brand so that it would continue to flourish post-NFL career? What kinds of projects should Kelce take on next?
In May 2022, an interactive brand activation for Insomnia Cookies (Cookies), called CookieLab, celebrated its one-year anniversary. Insomnia enjoyed strong brand-name recognition for its late-night snack of freshly baked cookies and offered a strong unique selling point (USP), especially among college students. But there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including whether a growth strategy through CookieLab was the most suitable strategy for Insomnia.<br><br>Specifically, should Insomnia expand CookieLab to other locations, locally, in the north east region of the United States, or across the United States? If yes, what marketing strategy and tactics should Insomnia use to grow that expansion?
Longevity Wines was a family-owned urban winery and certified minority-owned business based in the Livermore Valley wine region of Northern California. Founders Phil and Debra Long opened Longevity Wines in 2008 when their winemaking hobby outgrew their garage. By that time, they had spent years visiting tasting rooms and had identified a need to increase inclusivity in the wine community. The wine industry had a history of exclusion in terms of race, gender, and class; how could Phil Long make the wine community more inclusive and his wine brand more accessible to BIPOC consumers?
The concept of Jungle Bay Dominica (Jungle Bay) was created by Samuel Raphael on the island of Dominica in 1997 and first opened for business in 2005. Raphael’s philosophy was that he could profitably operate a luxury hotel with minimal disturbance to the surrounding natural environment that functioned as a tool to further the economic growth and social welfare of the local population. To its clientele, Jungle Bay offered a variety of experiences in a tropical setting, such as breathtaking views, spa treatments, lush gardens and orchards, adventure tours, and fresh organic food. For the Jungle Bay team, Raphael provided opportunities for learning new skills and a steady income, and he gave motivated individuals an opportunity to grow. However, a series of natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in Jungle Bay struggling to achieve occupancy rates above 35 per cent. Raphael had to determine the best way to expand Jungle Bay’s marketing efforts, increase occupancy rates, and increase revenue.
In October 2021, the head of digital communications and branding at the Australian biopharmaceutical conglomerate CSL Limited (CSL), was tasked with a strategic rebranding exercise. By August 2022, he and other stakeholders felt a sense of pride and satisfaction at how quickly the rebranding initiatives had been completed. CSL felt that it had achieved the desired brand associations and met its targeted brand net promoter score performance. Looking forward, the company’s executives needed to outline an implementation plan to ensure CSL’s brand positioning—its key differentiator—to ensure that CSL outpaced respected competitors and that the CSL brand connected with the company’s product brands at each customer touchpoint—all while maintaining trust and attracting the best researchers possible.
Based in South Africa, United Exports was a leading producer of blueberry varieties. In April 2022, the company faced an issue of competitive positioning and entry in a crowded US market. The chief executive officer of United Exports, Americas, was preparing for a strategic planning meeting where the goal was to develop actions to grow the company and expand distribution in the United States. United Exports’ OZblu brand had simultaneously attempted to create year-round blueberry supplies and to shorten its supply chains by selling Florida-grown blueberries in the United States. The CEO knew he had to rethink supply chains in a post-pandemic world and in light of shifting consumer buyer behaviour realities. He had to find a way to best enter the US fruit produce e-commerce market while aligning with United Exports’ values and selling proposition. The CEO needed to examine and carefully consider e-commerce models, including subscription, rapid delivery, and the online grocery landscape.
Since its beginning in 2021, Stitchwheel LLC (Stitchwheel), a needlepoint canvas painting service, had seen immediate success. From the company’s inception, the co-founder of Stitchwheel had been assessing the advantages and disadvantages of an expansion strategy and wondered what barriers she might encounter. She was also assessing the viability to expand beyond painted needlepoint canvases to achieve substantial growth. Within a short time frame, the company had enjoyed strong brand recognition and offered a meaningful unique selling proposition, but there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including which growth strategy would be most suitable. Did the company have the necessary resources and skilled management team to adequately monitor and support growth? What marketing and operational issues was the company likely to encounter with expansion?