Publications

March 1991
Teaching Note

Procter & Gamble Co. (A), Teaching Note

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Teaching Note for (9-584-047). View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Product Launch; Consumer Products Industry

October 2003 (Revised August 2005)
Case

American Legacy: Beyond the Truth Campaign

By: Youngme E. Moon and Kerry Herman

The hard-hitting "Truth" campaign has been one of the most successful antismoking initiatives in history. The focus of the "Truth" campaign is to dissuade teenagers from smoking. The sponsor of the campaign, the American Legacy Foundation, is now trying to decide... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Communication Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Choices and Conditions; Ethics; Brands and Branding; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

equal-revenue-earning teams. These changes allowed the NFL to become a profitable enterprise by promoting competition among the teams for players and among the networks and merchandisers for broadcasting and advertising rights,... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment & Broadcast Media

Owsley Brown II

Taking the helm of the family company from his brother in 1993, Brown dramatically expanded Brown-Forman’s international presence and invested heavily in sales and marketing. Brown orchestrated a total marketing “makeover” for the company – shunning over 35 years of... View Details

Keywords: Food & Tobacco

14 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

How to Profit from Scarcity

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge.Marketers are trained to match supply to demand. Everything that consumers need should be... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Advertising; Advertising

01 Mar 2012
News

Reinventing Radio Days

up with Pandora, which now holds more than 900,000 tracks, mostly music but also some comedy routines. Analysts expect 2011 revenues of $275 million, mainly from advertising (subscribers may also opt to pay for ad-free listening). Even... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; internet radio; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries; Arts, Entertainment; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

01 Dec 2017
News

3-Minute Briefing: Wei Zhang (MBA 1999)

connection we feel with animals. People thought the most we could do was 30 to 50 million yuan; eventually we did 606 million yuan in box office. Working in media was always my dream. One summer I saw an advertisement recruiting for kids... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

12 PM – 1 PM EDT, 25 Apr 2017
Webinars: Trending@HBS

A Recipe for Digital Disruption

In recent years, a new wave of digital disruption has been taking over the Internet. In this talk, Associate Professor Teixeira will show how a variety of firms, both incumbents and startups, are using digital technologies to break the bonds between activities that... View Details

15 Mar 2021
Office Hours

Readers Ask: What's the Next 'Big Thing' in Finance?

strongly lean toward those. Question: How important is advertising for big companies? Cohen: Advertising is a lifeblood for corporations, even though how they’re doing it changes over time. They used to use... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Financial Services

20 Oct 2014
Research & Ideas

Users Love Ello, But What’s the Business Model?

Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Administration, provide insights into the next generation of social networks, and what kind of network they'd build with unlimited funding. Q: How native is advertising to the social media space? Is... View Details

Keywords: Re: John A. Deighton & Sunil Gupta; Publishing; Financial Services

Web

Industrial Life Photograph Collection - Photography Collections - Historical Collections

exteriors and research laboratories, and close-ups of equipment and products. Most photographs were produced originally for publicity purposes, including annual reports, company histories, and advertising materials as well as... View Details

01 Feb 2000
News

He Begs to Differentiate

operate. As a result, branding becomes more and more important - differentiating what they do and what they sell. That's good for us, because we're in the differentiation business." WPP is one of the world's largest advertising and... View Details

February 2009 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Publicis Groupe 2009: Toward a Digital Transformation

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Matthew Bird

After a series of acquisitions, Maurice Levy, the Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, had created the fourth largest marketing and communications company in the world. His next major challenge was managing the firm's digital transformation. In December 2006, the... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Transformation; Financial Crisis; Globalized Firms and Management; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Information Technology; Advertising Industry; Advertising Industry

17 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

Who is Boss in the Sharing Economy?

the ride-hailing app). In contrast, transferable decisions can be made by either party—the type of car an Uber driver uses; the kinds of details an Airbnb host lists about an apartment offered for rent; or how a hair stylist at a salon will View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Service; Technology

01 Sep 2008
News

Reality to News Biz: Drop Dead

the rarified New York Times from layoffs. Too often, restructuring begets thinner issues larded with generic newswire copy — hardly the recipe to bring back readership and ads. Fine, if all that won’t save us, then going wholeheartedly digital surely will, right? After... View Details

Keywords: Roben Farzad; journalism; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

June 2020
Teaching Note

Brand Storytelling at Shinola

By: Jill Avery, Giana M. Eckhardt and Michael Beverland

Detroit, Michigan, aka “The Motor City,” is known as the birthplace of most of the American classic automotive brands. It is a city filled with the rich history of the industrial age, the pride of American manufacturing, and of the soulful sounds of Motown music. It is... View Details

Keywords: Brand Storytelling; Brand Management; Brand Management Of Places; Luxury Brand; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Advertising; Luxury; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; United States

January 2019 (Revised March 2021)
Case

SoundCloud: Subscription Streaming?

By: Ashish Nanda, Eric Van den Steen, Andy Wu, Jeffrey Boyar and Bonnie Bennett Slater

Established in 2007, SoundCloud already boasted the second largest number of active music listeners among all streaming services and was recognized as the go-to platform for new artists by early 2014. Yet, its founders were questioning the robustness of the firm’s... View Details

October 2014
Article

Making Charity Pay

By: Michael I. Norton and Jill Avery

Companies are increasingly experimenting with the use of philanthropy to enhance consumer loyalty, brand awareness, and sales. But even highly creative approaches that garner a lot of buzz often fall short of sales goals, leading many companies to conclude,... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Charitable Giving; Charity; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Advertising; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry; United States