Publications

August 2020 (Revised September 2020)
Case

Facelift at Olay (A)

By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Olivia Hull

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... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Demographics; Age; Brands and Branding; Marketing Channels; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Digital Marketing; Transformation; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; United States; Ohio

June 2001
Case

AtomFilms

By: Bharat N. Anand and Taslim Pirmohamed

Examines the evolution of AtomFilms--one of the few companies that survived the spate of failures in digital entertainment in 2000--from the time of its founding in 1998 to its merger with Shockwave in December 2000. Within a short period of time, AtomFilms had built... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Resource Allocation; Brands and Branding; Organizational Structure; Problems and Challenges; Alliances; Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

Find at Harvard

20 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Why the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a Social Media Blockbuster

early Facebook fad, planking is the act of lying face-down in an incongruous place. It is the epitome of digital narcissism and any hint of motive other than "look at me" just clouds the picture. By contrast, the ALS ice bucket... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton

08 Jul 2019
Research & Ideas

Are Paywalls Saving Newspapers?

Media outlets large and small have adopted digital paywalls to augment dramatic declines in print revenues, but given their negative effect on website traffic (and, in turn, online advertising), are paywalls an effective sales strategy? A... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Journalism & News; Media & Broadcasting

September 2020 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Hot Wheels: Launching The Mixed Play Experience

By: Elie Ofek, Andres Terech and Nicole Tempest Keller

Chris Down, Global Brand General Manager for Hot Wheels, and his team from the Advanced Play Group within Mattel, Inc., had developed an entirely new “mixed play” product experience that blended familiar Hot Wheels play in the physical world with breakthrough play in... View Details

Keywords: Toys; Go-to-market Strategy; Product Development; Technological Innovation; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Decision Making; Marketing; Strategy; Los Angeles

04 Apr 2011
HBS Case

Reinventing the National Geographic Society

recalls the remark about magazine piles. "That has come back to haunt us," Fahey says. "People today don't want clutter." It turns out that many things that made National Geographic one of the world's top brands during... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

2023
Working Paper

LALIGA—From a Soccer Competition Organizer to a Global Player in the Sports and Entertainment Industry

By: Stephen A. Greyser, Kenneth Cortsen and Juan Fuentes Fernández

LALIGA, the first- and second-tier professional soccer league (known as “football” outside of the U.S. and Canada) in Spain, enters its 100th soccer season later this decade. The most popular game in the world (Giulianotti, 2012) has gone through many changes since... View Details

Keywords: Soccer; ＂Sports Organizations,; Business History; Strategy; Brands and Branding; Technology Adoption; Sports Industry

Read Now

January 2015
Case

Burberry in 2014

By: Anita Elberse

In February 2014, Burberry's chief executive officer Angela Ahrendts is preparing to hand the reins of the English luxury fashion company to chief creative officer Christopher Bailey. Under their partnership, in place since 2006, Burberry's revenues have tripled to... View Details

Keywords: Management Succession; Luxury; Product Marketing; Brands and Branding; Manufacturing Industry; Fashion Industry; Great Britain

February 2023
Case

Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse

By: Ayelet Israeli and Nicole Tempest Keller

In 2022, Roblox had 58.8 million daily active users, including over half of all children and teens under the age of 16 in the United States. Roblox, a free-to-use “co-experience platform”, allowed users to come together in immersive 3D experiences to socialize, work,... View Details

February 2011 (Revised November 2013)
Case

The Cheezburger Network

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Cheezburger Network was a Web publisher of humorous, user-contributed content, using social media for dissemination, and selling advertising against the traffic of 1 billion page views per quarter. In January 2011, it raised $30 million in venture capital for the... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Digital Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Venture Capital; Emerging Markets; Strategic Planning; Sales; Internet and the Web; Publishing Industry; Web Services Industry

January 2019 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

Hubble Contact Lenses: Data Driven Direct-to-Consumer Marketing

By: Ayelet Israeli

Teaching Note for HBS No. 519-011. As its Series A extension round approaches, the founders of Hubble, a subscription-based, social-media fueled, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand of contact lenses, are reflecting on the marketing strategies that have taken them to a... View Details

27 Sep 2016
First Look

September 27, 2016

equity investors (Gompers, Kaplan, and Mukharlyamov forthcoming). Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51659 Executive Development Programs Enter the Digital Vortex: I. Disrupting the Demand Landscape By:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

20 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 20

driven by patents filed by distant collaborators rather than non-collaborative patents or patents by non-distant collaborators, suggesting low cost long-distance digital communication as a potential mechanism. Download working paper:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2019
Case

Walmart's Omnichannel Strategy: Revolution or Miscalculation?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman

This case describes Walmart's omnichannel strategy in 2018 as it battled Amazon for online retail market share. The case discusses Walmart's early forays into online retail, as well as its 2018 strategy, which aimed to integrate Walmart's enormous brick and mortar... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Strategy; Internet and the Web; Distribution; Distribution Channels; Competition; Retail Industry; Bentonville; Arkansas; New Jersey; Seattle; United States

November 2024
Case

Polish Agro: Where Do We Grow From Here?

By: Willy C. Shih, Lena Duchene and Daniela Beyersdorfer

By July 2024, Polish Agro had grown into one of Poland’s fastest-growing agribusinesses, with €230 million in revenue, 82 employees, and operations across Northern Poland. The company supported farmers with essential agricultural inputs like fertilizers and seeds,... View Details

July 2010 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Beohemija's Duel

By: Das Narayandas and Kerry Herman

Vladimir Joksic, Director of Marketing for Serbia's Beohemija, along with his marketing team has managed to grow Duel, the firm's soap powder offering from single digits to almost 40% of the Serbian market in just a few short years. He has used innovative and... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Growth and Development; Innovation Strategy; Management Teams; Marketing; Product Launch; Competition; Consumer Products Industry

Teaching Interest

The Business of Entertainment, Media, and Sports (Executive Education)

By: Anita Elberse

In the business of entertainment, digital technologies are dramatically disrupting the way products are developed, marketed, and distributed. As a result of this paradigm shift, entertainment executives and content producers are challenged to effectively allocate... View Details

March–April 2017
Article

What's the Value of a Like?: Social Media Endorsements Don't Work the Way You Might Think

By: Leslie John, Daniel Mochon, Oliver Emrich and Janet Schwartz

Brands spend billions of dollars a year on lavish efforts to establish and maintain a social media presence. But do those campaigns actually increase revenue? New research provides an answer to this question, which has vexed marketers ever since social media burst upon... View Details

Keywords: Social and Collaborative Networks; Consumer Behavior; Marketing Strategy; Digital Marketing; Social Media