Brand extensions across categories - good and bad

DISNEY
Good: Disney 'Fairy Tale Weddings' bridal wear. Disney branding kept subtle and tasteful.
Bad: Walt Disney Signatures $1,295 executive fountain pen.

HARLEY DAVIDSON
Good: footwear
Bad: Xtreme cake decoration kit

IAMS
Good: pet insurance

Prototyping at Harrah's

Harrah's offered 2 groups of customer either:
- a $125 package, including a free room, 2 steak dinners, and $30 in chips
- $60 in chips

The $60 offer generated more gambling revenue than the $125 offer.

Including unavailable metrics

At DaVita, if a metric is considered important, but the data isn't currently available, the metric is included on reports anyway with the notation 'not available'. The persistent mention of important measures that are missing helps motivate the company to figure out ways to gather that information.

DaVita is $2bn Californian manufacturer of kidney dialysis machines.

Source: Evidence-Based Management, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, HBR

Types of Change Management Strategy

Types of change management:
- Evolutionary: gradually evolve values, structure and performance measures
- Jolt and refocus: risky but quick change
- Follow the leader
- Multifront small changes: many small operational changes at once, designed top down
- Systematic redesign: much more root and branch, again top down
- Bottom up: practical changes, starting bottom up from customer-focussed probs

Source: Adapted from a 1995 McKinsey Quarterly article here.

BP's Aloe Vera Plants - Iconic Action

BP has placed potted Aloe Vera plants in the lobby of its headquarters. Of all the green plants, Aloe Vera converts the most carbon dioxide to oxygen. As such, it embodies a core value of the BP brand: to be "green." Every day as employees walk into the office, the plants remind them of their shared corporate vision - to go beyond petroleum - and the imperative to develop renewable energy.

http://www.landor.com/index.cfm?do=thinking.article&storyid=465

Time Inc and Lexus customised 'Mine' magazine

Sign up and get 5 free issues of a 36-page magazine, tailored to your preferences.

All will have Lexus ads, also with tailored messages.

https://www.timecmg.com/mine/

Home Visits - Iconic Action

I've heard this told by an ex-P&G employee about AG Lafley, and by a Unilever person of one of their CEOs. Either way, the CEO was said to get off a plane on a business trip to a country and insist on doing 2 customer home visits before they'd go to the office or look at the P&L.

IKEA's Ingvar Kamprad Statue - Iconic Action

When they erected a statue of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad in his hometown they invited him to perform the unveiling. Instead of cutting the ribbon, he untied it, folded it up neatly and handed it to the mayor. "Now you can use this again," he said.

Continental Airlines - Iconic Actions

Gordon Bethune, CEO of Continental Airlines from 1994 until 2004.

- Concerned that customer-service employees were micromanaging customers by relying too heavily on a very thick instruction manual, he set fire to a stack of manuals in the parking lot.
- After he offered each employee a $65 bonus every month that Continental placed among the top five for on-time departures, Continental jumped to fourth the subsequent month and first thereafter.

Source: http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2006/10/the-tools-of-cooperation-and-change/ar/5
(probably quoting from Bethune's book From First to Worst)

Name That Tune

Shazam uses high tech algorithms to name a tune you play it via your mobile phone.
Namemytune.com solves the same problem, by asking people to listen to clips of people humming!