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In January 2016, the 113-year-old tea brand Brooke Bond Red Label (Red Label), a sub-brand of Hindustan Unilever Limited, created a groundbreaking advertising campaign that launched India’s first transgender pop band, 6 Pack Band. The campaign comprised six videos, which reached over 25 million people in a short span of time and won numerous awards. By mid-2016, Red Label’s 6 Pack Band was clearly hitting the right notes with its target audience, but questions began to be raised about the future of the campaign. What should Red Label do next? Should it create more content around 6 Pack Band or abandon it altogether? Should it seek out other relevant and thought-provoking social issues for advertising purposes? If so, which issues should it address, and how?

Soweto Gold was a premium microbrewery in the township of Soweto, South Africa. In 2011, one of its co-founders got the idea to start a craft brewery while on an advanced brewing course in London. After a period of soul-searching and research, in 2013, he found a partner to begin producing and marketing a new craft beer. They found early success by focusing their efforts on getting to know the craft beer market and creating a sustainable value proposition. However, by 2016, they faced questions regarding how to grow the market for their iconic brand. How could they better reach some of their untapped markets and cement the brand in the minds of consumers? Should they contract out the brewing to a larger company outside Soweto in order to expand production? The challenge was to act boldly but not make any mistakes.

In January 2016, the 113-year-old tea brand Brooke Bond Red Label (Red Label), a sub-brand of Hindustan Unilever Limited, created a groundbreaking advertising campaign that launched India's first transgender pop band, 6 Pack Band. The campaign comprised six videos, which reached over 25 million people in a short span of time and won numerous awards. By mid-2016, Red Label's 6 Pack Band was clearly hitting the right notes with its target audience, but questions began to be raised about the future of the campaign. What should Red Label do next? Should it create more content around 6 Pack Band or abandon it altogether? Should it seek out other relevant and thought-provoking social issues for advertising purposes? If so, which issues should it address, and how?

Soweto Gold was a premium microbrewery in the township of Soweto, South Africa. In 2011, one of its co-founders got the idea to start a craft brewery while on an advanced brewing course in London. After a period of soul-searching and research, in 2013, he found a partner to begin producing and marketing a new craft beer. They found early success by focusing their efforts on getting to know the craft beer market and creating a sustainable value proposition. However, by 2016, they faced questions regarding how to grow the market for their iconic brand. How could they better reach some of their untapped markets and cement the brand in the minds of consumers? Should they contract out the brewing to a larger company outside Soweto in order to expand production? The challenge was to act boldly but not make any mistakes.

This case follows the conception and emergence of the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF). In an already crowded and highly competitive industry, Abdulhamid Juma was attempting to define and establish a unique brand positioning for DIFF. Committed to its vision, Juma led the introduction of various initiatives over the years and was able to effectively grow the festival's profile amid emerging regional and well-established global players like the Cannes, Sundance and Toronto film festivals. By the end of 2016, Juma found himself at a crossroads. Could he continue to follow the historical strategy or was it time to consider a change in order to take it the next level? What would be the best strategy for ensuring DIFF's survival for many years to come?

CEO Art Peck was eliminating his creative directors for The Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic brands and promoting a collective creative ecosystem fueled by the input of big data. Rather than relying on artistic vision, Peck wanted the company to use the mining of big data obtained from Google Analytics and the company's own sales and customer databases to select the next season's assortment. Peck was betting that intelligence fueled by big data could outperform a fashion industry creative director at predicting the future fashion trends and tastes of consumers.

CNS Worldwide has long been the market share leader in the IaaS cloud server market, yet it has remained unprofitable for years. Industry capacity utilization is low, and prices have declined over 70% over the last decade. CNS is considering withdrawing from the market if it cannot find a way to increase prices. As a large public bid is about to be held, CNS must decide whether to bid and, if so, at what price. This case is intended for use an introductory marketing management course that involves an in-depth analysis of pricing. It can also be used in courses on pricing, business-to-business (B2B) sales, or competitive strategy. The case introduces students to specialized pricing mechanisms, oligopolistic markets, the challenges of avoiding a price war, the concept of price leadership, and the possible effects of a firm taking this role, including what it needs to do to succeed. There is a direct analogy to the airline industry that can be discussed during the last part of the class.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 917531.

An investment analyst was tasked with determining the impact of political controversy on firm performance in the aftermath of the highly charged 2016 U.S. presidential election. After this election, U.S. firms such as New Balance, GrubHub, and PepsiCo faced boycotts from aggrieved activists. The analyst needed to better understand the downsides-and potential benefits-of firms' involvement in political controversy. To do so, she needed to graph the impact, if any, political events had on the companies' stock returns. But were markets truly efficient and rational-that is, could they reliably capture the impact of political controversy on firm performance?

Student spreadsheet for case W17296.

An investment analyst was tasked with determining the impact of political controversy on firm performance in the aftermath of the highly charged 2016 U.S. presidential election. After this election, U.S. firms such as New Balance, GrubHub, and PepsiCo faced boycotts from aggrieved activists. The analyst needed to better understand the downsides—and potential benefits—of firms’ involvement in political controversy. To do so, she needed to graph the impact, if any, political events had on the companies’ stock returns. But were markets truly efficient and rational—that is, could they reliably capture the impact of political controversy on firm performance?

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B17A027.

In December 2014, Guardian Lifecare Private Limited (Guardian), a pharmacy retail chain in India, was looking for ways to maintain its high growth in India’s emerging market. Riding a surge of growth in organized retailing, Guardian had become the second-largest player in the Indian pharmaceutical retail market within a decade of its launch. This market had been plagued by several structural weaknesses such as widespread sales of spurious and substandard drugs, customers’ lack of education, a poor overall customer experience, and low margins caused by the market’s highly fragmented nature. Placing customer centricity at the core of its value proposition, Guardian had addressed these weaknesses to build a successful retail chain. Now, as it prepared to open more stores as part of its consolidation phase, it needed to address several long-term growth challenges such as poor penetration in rural areas and competition from e-commerce and small local pharmacies.

In 1999, three brothers opened a small fast food outlet in a small city in Eastern India. The geodemographics of the city changed markedly over the next few years, providing the brothers with an opportunity to redefine their business and grow. By focusing on who their customers were and what they needed, the brothers created a new market in the city's fast food sector, avoiding the entrenched competition in the existing market. The brothers’ venture was not initially successful and they did have some problems along the way, but by 2016, they had established an unrivalled chain known for its biryanis and other food items. What led to the brothers’ success? Could they continue to grow with this strategy? Were they established enough to consider international expansion?

It was September 28, 2015 when Murray Sawchuck, an award-winning magician and headline performer in Las Vegas received an e-mail from Seth Leach, a young, but accomplished creator of viral videos based in Denver, Colorado. Leach felt strongly that Sawchuck’s talent for magic and comedy had great social media potential and that a meaningful collaboration could be developed between them. An initial test video was recorded and was an instant viral success with more than 100 million views across all social media platforms. Sawchuck could not decide if it was just luck or whether there really was a success formula for creating viral videos that was reliable and replicable. He also was unsure just how to leverage his brand as an entertainer through these videos such that there would be tangible value created from them.

This case scenario is based on a real company (with name disguised and artificial but representative data) that uses search engine advertising, running paid search ads on the two major search engines, Google and Bing. Students are presented with weekly traffic data for both Google and Bing and are asked to perform an ROI analysis for the company. Solution Notes are available for both student and instructor use for this case.

This case examines the strategic choices and business model with regards to branding at Mavi, a leading Turkish apparel retailer. The case is presented from the perspective of the company CEO and its global brand director who is also part owner. In 2015, Mavi had sales of $419 million, up 20% from the previous year. Growth rates like these were becoming routine at Mavi. But, the path to growth was getting more challenging, and Turkven, Mavi's private equity partner, was planning its options after seven years of investment. There were four growth levers Mavi could pull, but each involved selecting one growth path while neglecting another. Should the company invest in growth domestically or internationally? Should they change the price positioning of the brand to move upmarket or down market? Which value proposition offered the most future promise: functional differentiation, lifestyle differentiation, or celebrity endorsement? Should the company continue to serve both men and women of all ages, or were there specific consumer targets that offered the most promise? Managers realized that these choices would not only determine the company's short-term growth trajectory, but also shape the longer-term value of the Mavi brand.

This case study discusses Magic: the Gathering (Magic), a collectible card game that is owned by Wizards of the Coast (Wizards), a subsidiary of Hasbro. In particular, it focuses on how Wizards manages the Magic player community and its need to learn how to respond to various kinds of consumer-generated content (CGC) created by players. Magic is a collectible card game that has seen tremendous growth since its inception in 1993. By 2015 it had 20 million players worldwide and generated annual revenue of $200 million USD. Its primary revenue stream comes from selling sealed packs of Magic cards, and it releases a new set every three months. There are various types of packs available; each contains about 15 cards. Players must use these cards to construct a 60-card deck, which they use to play head-to-head against an opponent's deck. The case study describes in detail how Wizards interacts with its community. Predominantly, the company uses social media to release news, gather feedback, and respond to issues. Particularly noteworthy are how Wizards uses Spoiler Season to increase the anticipation for new card sets, and Friday Night Magic, casual tournaments at local game stores to connect players with vendors. The player community is very diverse, both in terms of age (roughly from 12 to 45 years old) and level of engagement (from occasional/casual to tournament-level, competitive players). In addition, Magic players are drawn to the game for a variety of reasons, which is illustrated by the three player types (or personas) Timmy, Johnny and Spike. This diversity is important for Wizards to keep in mind when the company develops new products, promotes its products, organizes events, and interacts with the community.

This article provides an organized approach for managers to develop social marketing strategies that target upstream decision and policy makers. A conceptual application model and five-stage process is presented for an upstream social marketing strategy based on integrated marketing communications (IMC). IMC concepts are described in the context of social marketing, as well as specific stages for creating an IMC social marketing strategy; these include target audience research and determination, channel selection and integration, strategic message creation, and measurement and control. A central and novel feature of the IMC social marketing strategy model is the simultaneous targeting of an upstream decision maker and influential peripheral (upstream) audiences in order to triangulate and increase campaign effectiveness. An IMC approach to upstream social marketing ensures consistent, persuasive messages specifically crafted for the selected target audiences and coordinated through precise channels to maximize impact. This multi-channel, multi-audience approach to message creation and channel selection produces synergies that increase the potential to influence an upstream decision/policy maker.

Brand pages in social media are a great way to foster consumer gathering around a brand, but it can be challenging to keep fans engaged and coming back to see updated content. Brands with millions of fans on Facebook have seen organic reach fall below 2% of their base. In this article, we describe how the creation of virtual brand communities can help brand managers increase fan engagement. We suggest the steps, conditions, advantages, and limitations involved in nurturing a brand page as an online social gathering that assumes some of the characteristics of a virtual brand community. The results of our study show that a brand page can have some of the characteristics of a virtual brand community-topical information exchange, identity communication, and establishment and internalization of cultural norms. We also show the importance of having celebrities among fans in order to foster social interactions and legitimate social practices on brand pages.