In 2010, T-Mobile US executives had one question in mind: “How can we salvage the assets before things get even worse?” T-Mobile was the fourth telecom company in the US. AT&T and Verizon were crushing them. So T-Mobile executive team decided to look for buyers and sell the company. AT&T jumped at the opportunity like…
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Brand Dilution: How Strong Brands Lose Their Power (And How To Avoid It)
Why more is less In 1954, Philip Morris created one of the most famous characters in advertising history. The Marlboro Man. Marlboro was a struggling product before the campaign. It was advertised as a women’s cigarette. But increasing health concerns and public pressure pushed them to look for a new positioning. They needed a way…
Value Tradeoffs: How To Increase Your Brand’s Perceived Value (Without Doing Anything New)
A few years ago, Ryanair’s marketing team started doing something no other brand could even think of. Roasting their own customers on social media. Why? Well, Ryanair has all the downsides of a low-cost airline. No free food or drinks. Uncomfortable seats with little legroom. And random seat allocation where you can’t even sit with…
Circle Of Competence: How To Increase Your Odds Of Winning in Business
In 2003, things were going great for Robert Brooks. He bought the franchise rights for Hooters restaurant in the 80s and turned it into a successful restaurant chain with 430 branches worldwide. The media mostly paid attention to Hooters Girls. But restaurant businesses are tough. Behind the attention-grabbing ‘breastaurant’ concept, Brooks built a well-functioning system…
Double Diamond Model: How Ogilvy Made Dove Great Again
In 1957, Unilever was about to introduce a soap — Dove. But they had a problem. Soap is a commodity. All soaps from different brands do the same thing. Hence, it’s hard to differentiate a soap brand. So they asked for David Ogilvy and his advertising agency’s help to figure out the positioning of Dove.…
How to Make Your Business Antifragile With Redundancy
You saw it on the news. OceanGate’s Titan lost contact with its surface ship on the 18th of June, 2023. The company was organizing touristic visits to the wreckage of Titanic for a “Titanic experience.” A few days later the search and rescue teams found Titan’s wreckage. A tragic ending. People speculated about what caused…
Psychological Moonshots: Radical Product Improvements With Little Cost
Canadian police had a problem with rowdy clubbers in the early 2000s. They made a mess in the streets after the clubs got closed. Shouting, fights, vandalizing… Every single weekend. People who lived in those neighborhoods begged the authorities to find a solution. It wasn’t easy. They tried closing clubs earlier — hoping it’d make…
Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Make Your Competition Irrelevant
In 2001, Casella Wines decided to enter the American market. They were a wine producer from Australia. And CEO John Casella decided that it was time to expand into a bigger market. But the US wine market was as competitive as it gets. Hundreds of wine brands from France, Spain, and California filled the shelves…
The Peak-End Effect: How To Make a Lasting Impression (Even After Failures)
The peak-end effect is when our minds use the peaks and ends of experiences to build a memory. Let’s see how it works with a story from Disneyland. And we’ll finish with other examples (a hotel chain and KFC) to understand how to use it in business. Joe was in Paris with his girlfriend. After…
Jobs-To-Be-Done: How to Discover The Real Insights That Increase Sales
About 10 years ago, McDonald’s marketing team received an objective from their management. Increase milkshake sales. How hard could it be? Especially for a sophisticated marketing team with an unlimited budget. So they created a focus group that fit the milkshake buyer persona, based on data of millions of customers. And made interviews with them…