The case examines the transformation of Best Buy under CEO Hubert Joly's leadership from 2012. Facing significant business challenges, including competition from online and physical retailers, Joly implemented the "Renew Blue" turnaround strategy, which focused on improving price competitiveness, enhancing the customer experience both in-store and online, partnering with major tech companies, and investing in employee training and engagement. The case further explores the development and execution of the "Building the New Blue" strategy, aiming to enrich lives through technology by addressing key human needs and expanding services such as in-home advisors and entering the health care market. The case highlights the approach Joly calls "Unleashing Human Magic," which focuses on the importance of aligning company purpose with employee motivation and customer needs to drive business growth and transformation.
In the fall of 2019, the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever (HUL), India's largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firm, is wondering what to do about their experiments to digitize distribution. Despite three years of intense efforts, their apps to empower retailers have not seen any traction. Is it time to shut them down and focus on another area with more potential for digital transformation?
In the fall of 2022, boot maker UGG and its parent company, Deckers, were working to position the brand in the nascent but fast growing metaverse. The metaverse, the online realm that individual users could navigate as digital avatars, was becoming more commercialized, as a range of brands started offering digital products for sale to users. Given the importance of how physical UGGs felt on wearers feet, how should the company think about its metaverse operations?
When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, digital technologies were on the rise, and innovation needed to become a strategic imperative at the company. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom, with infusing innovation into Mastercard's culture. With a significant incremental investment, and free reign to spend it as he pleased, Lyons created Mastercard Labs-a global innovation lab network that became a catalytic force for change at the company. In 2018, Ken Moore, a former innovation leader at Citigroup, became Mastercard Labs' new leader. By then, Mastercard had made significant progress on its journey of cultural and digital transformation, but the company had to continue to think and act differently in order to compete and thrive in the fast-changing digital world. Moore's task was to evolve Mastercard Labs so that it could continue delivering value to Mastercard.
In late 2021, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach and Chairman and former CEO Ajaypal "Ajay" Banga considered how Mastercard could best position itself for continued success in the years to come. Since Mastercard's initial public offering in 2006, the company had grown and transformed, driven in part by a core strategy of "Grow-Diversify-Build" and vision of a "World Beyond Cash." During Banga's recent tenure as CEO, Mastercard had invested in creating a strong culture, recruiting top talent, driving innovation, partnering with would-be competitors, and launching new services. Now, with Miebach at the helm as Mastercard's CEO, the payments landscape was experiencing increasing democratization of the banking system, the rise of blockchain and cryptocurrency, and increasing nationalism, among other shifts. Miebach and Banga needed to identify the most pressing threats and opportunities in the ever-evolving payments landscape and determine how to take advantage of them. As they looked ahead, they asked themselves: Was Mastercard well positioned for the next 10 years?
When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company's competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard's new vision of a "World Beyond Cash" distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify customers and employees, and Build new businesses that reinforce Mastercard's core capabilities. With digital technologies on the rise, Banga knew that innovation would need to become a strategic imperative. Yet, in a 2010 survey, Mastercard's 7,000 employees ranked "innovation" as the 26th most important factor for the future of Mastercard in a list of 27. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom, with infusing innovation into Mastercard's culture. With a significant incremental investment, and free reign to spend it as he pleased, Lyons created Mastercard Labs-a global R&D network that became a catalytic force for change at the company. In December 2017, Lyons is stepping down from his role as Chief Innovation Officer and reflecting on the path ahead for Mastercard and its Labs.
When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company's competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard's new vision of a "World Beyond Cash" distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify customers and employees, and Build new businesses that reinforce Mastercard's core capabilities. With digital technologies on the rise, Banga knew that innovation would need to become a strategic imperative. Yet, in a 2010 survey, Mastercard's 7,000 employees ranked "innovation" as the 26th most important factor for the future of Mastercard in a list of 27. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom, with infusing innovation into Mastercard's culture. With a significant incremental investment, and free reign to spend it as he pleased, Lyons created Mastercard Labs-a global R&D network that became a catalytic force for change at the company. In December 2017, Lyons is stepping down from his role as Chief Innovation Officer and reflecting on the path ahead for Mastercard and its Labs.
Farfetch, a global luxury technology platform and digital marketplace had been surfing the wave of digital transformation in the luxury fashion industry since 2008. While the company's stock price and market valuation had fluctuated since its IPO in 2018, it had achieved positive EBITDA only once in the fourth quarter of 2020. Now, CEO Jose Neves had to decide how to allocate company resources across the various business lines that had sprung up alongside the marketplace, including Farfetch Platform Solutions, a modular set of e-commerce technology solutions and services for luxury retailers and brands, the Store of the Future initiative, a partnership with Alibaba and two of the largest luxury houses (Richemont and Kering), and investment in Farfetch's own fashion brands. As the company expanded into new business lines, it stewarded an increasingly complex and interdependent luxury ecosystem in which it could be perceived as both a collaborator and a potential competitor to its various constituents. How could Neves chart the best path to profitable growth while keeping everyone satisfied as competition heats up in the online and offline luxury retailscape?
In the summer of 2018, Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis needed to make a number of go-to-market decisions ahead of his company's upcoming product launch. Formed through a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch InBev, Drinkworks had developed an innovative home bar system that let consumers make single-serving cocktails or beer with the push of a button. Keurig and AB InBev provided valuable technological, supply chain, and regulatory expertise, but since the Drinkworks Home Bar was a novel product, there were no established market benchmarks for the Drinkworks team to follow as they prepared for the Home Bar's upcoming market launch. After conducting several market research experiments, they needed to interpret the results and make several decisions around customer segmentation, value proposition, product assortment, pricing, and distribution channels. Could Drinkworks be the next billion-dollar opportunity for Keurig and AB InBev?
This supplement to Facelift at Olay (A) explains the major steps Procter & Gamble's skincare brand Olay took to reverse several years of declining sales.
In July 2020, the management team of Harvard Business School Online (HBS Online) had to decide how to allocate its marketing budget for fiscal year 2021 between various digital channels and its portfolio of courses. Since its launch in 2014, HBS Online had grown to almost $60 million in revenue and there were concerns about its potential overlap with other HBS programs such as executive education and Harvard Business Publishing. Growth of HBS Online also raised questions about potential brand dilution of HBS.
By October 2017, Procter & Gamble's skincare brand Olay has been struggling with declining sales for several years. The team has tried many remedies, but none has returned the brand to growth. As pressure grows from Olay's competitors, including hundreds of new direct-to-consumer brands catering to millennial women, North American Skin Care General Manager Chris Heiert must identify a winning marketing strategy that will appeal to women of all ages.
In March 2020, direct-to-consumer (DTC) company Pattern Brands needed to decide how to allocate resources across its different brands. Pattern Co-Founders Nick Ling and Emmett Shine hoped to avoid the pitfalls faced by some DTC companies-such as inability to scale and lack of competitive differentiation-by relying on their previous experience running a successful branding and marketing agency. Rather than focusing on a single brand, they conceived Pattern as a "DTC 2.0" model-a portfolio of 5 to 10 brands that shared a common theme of activities related to the home and a common mission of helping millennials enjoy daily life. Since its founding in August 2019, Pattern had launched cookware brand Equal Parts and home organization brand Open Spaces. Although Pattern's team still believed strongly in the benefits of a multi-brand strategy, Open Spaces' sales and unit economics had significantly outperformed Equal Parts' to date. Pattern's leadership wanted to build on Open Spaces' early momentum with new product colors and product lines, but they debated whether to act on the results of a recent customer survey indicating a positive response to an Equal Parts product redesign. Ling and Shine now had several decisions to consider. How should they allocate resources between repositioning Equal Parts and continuing to grow Open Spaces? How and when should they continue building Pattern's portfolio by developing a third brand? How much should they invest in marketing parent brand Pattern? More broadly, did Pattern's model represent the future of DTC brands?
Michelin, a tire company with over a century of experience, attempts to develop a digital service platform for its fleet and dealer customers. The case focuses on the challenges of bringing a large, well-established company into the digital age. Concerned about the slow growth in the tire market, Florent Menegaux, Michelin's CEO, set out to redefine the company as a mobility company. As part of this growth strategy, Michelin started offering a host of services such as fleet management and tire-as-a-service. In January 2020, Ralph Dimenna, Global President of its Service and Solutions group, launched its latest initiative called Digital Service Platform, a cloud-based system that connected Michelin with its fleet customers and dealers. However, the program was facing resistance in the market and he wondered what he could do to accelerate its acceptance.
Recent years have seen the dramatic rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands by several startups. Many of these brands, such as Dollar Shave Club, Harry's, Glossier, and Allbirds, entered mature markets dominated by established companies, and yet they grew rapidly to attain valuations over $1 billion. At the same time, some DTC brands such as Casper saw a significant drop in their valuations after going public. Are these DTC brands fads or the dawn of a new era? And how should incumbents respond?