Domain 02 · 28 cases
Marketing & Growth
Positioning, viral loops, brand voice and growth engineering, from Dollar Shave Club and Liquid Death to Dropbox, Red Bull and the Ice Bucket Challenge.
- Design a campaign people perform instead of passively watch
- Differentiate a commodity with a point of view
- Build growth into the product instead of bolting it on
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: A Viral Movement
In the summer of 2014, the ALS Association pulled in more money in a few weeks than it had in the entire prior year, raising over $115 million against…
Apple's "1984": Launching the Macintosh
Apple ran its most famous ad exactly once on national television, during Super Bowl XVIII in January 1984. No price. No features. The computer's name barely…
Burger King: Stunt Marketing
In 2018, Burger King used geofencing to offer a one-cent Whopper, but only to customers standing within 600 feet of a McDonald's. The Whopper Detour drove…
Casper
In 2014 Philip Krim and his cofounders compressed a queen mattress into a box, killed the showroom, and handed buyers 100 nights to change their minds. The…
Chevy Nova: The Localization Myth
You've heard it: Chevrolet launched the Nova in Latin America, it flopped because 'no va' means 'doesn't go' in Spanish, and it became the textbook…
Clubhouse: Manufactured Scarcity and the Hype Cycle
Clubhouse launched invite-only in April 2020 and became one of the fastest apps in Silicon Valley history to reach a serious valuation. Scarcity did the…
Coca-Cola's New Coke
In 1985, Coca-Cola had clean data: in blind tests, consumers preferred a sweeter new formula, just as the Pepsi Challenge had been showing. So Coke…
Dollar Shave Club
A founder with roughly $4,500 in production budget filmed himself walking through a warehouse cracking jokes about razors. Within 48 hours the video had…
Dove: Real Beauty
Dove was a commodity soap brand owned by Unilever, fighting dozens of near-identical products in a category built on impossibly polished models. Then in 2004…
Dropbox
Dropbox had a genuinely useful product in a category most people didn't know they needed and couldn't find through search. Paid ads didn't pencil out: "cloud…
Duolingo: The Mascot and TikTok Growth
Duolingo's TikTok account pulled in millions of followers with almost no paid spend. The strategy: an unhinged green owl, a social media manager with real…
Glossier
Emily Weiss started a beauty blog in 2010 while working as a fashion assistant, interviewing women about what they actually put on their faces. Four years of…
GoPro
Nick Woodman started GoPro in 2002 because he could not film himself surfing. The early version was a wrist-mounted film camera. But once it went digital and…
Hotmail
In 1996, Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail, one of the first free web-based email services, and then hit the wall every founder dreads: a great…
Liquid Death
Water is about as commoditized as a product gets, yet in 2019 a former creative director launched Liquid Death with heavy-metal imagery, tall cans that…
Mailchimp
No venture capital. A product given away free to small users. A cartoon chimp as the face of the brand. And in 2021, a sale to Intuit for roughly $12…
Michelin Guide: Content Marketing Before Its Time
In 1900, France had fewer than 3,000 cars, and a tire company published a free travel and restaurant guide. It was not a vanity project. The Michelin…
Nike
In 1984 Nike, a running-shoe company losing ground to Reebok in the aerobics boom, paid a 21-year-old who had not played an NBA game about $250,000 a year…
Notion: Community and Template-Led Growth
Notion shipped a flexible productivity tool that was powerful but complex enough that new users often did not know where to start. Templates fixed the…
Oatly: A Polarizing Brand Voice
Oatly spent years as a forgettable Swedish health product before a new CEO and creative director tore up the packaging, the website, and the way the company…
Old Spice
By the mid-2000s Old Spice was the scent your grandfather wore, sales were sliding, and the brand was basically a punchline. The obvious fix was to quietly…
Patagonia
On Black Friday 2011, Patagonia bought a full page in the New York Times and ran an ad telling customers not to buy its jacket. It sat in the same paper as…
Red Bull
Red Bull tastes like cough syrup to plenty of people, costs more than a soda, and offers no formula advantage — yet it moves billions of cans a year and…
Snickers: "You're Not You When You're Hungry"
In 2010, Snickers was a candy bar losing ground in a snack aisle obsessing over health and energy. Then BBDO New York landed on a single human truth so…
Spotify Wrapped: Your Data as Shareable Marketing
Every December, Spotify's app sees a surge in daily active users that no media buy explains. Since 2016, the company has wrapped each listener's year of…
Squatty Potty: The Viral Video for an Awkward Product
Squatty Potty had a real product with a defensible health argument and a marketing problem most brands never have to solve: how do you sell a toilet stool…
Tupperware: The Party-Plan Model
Earl Tupper's airtight container was genuinely clever, and it flopped in stores, because no one could figure out how to seal the lid without watching someone…
Wendy's on Twitter
In 2017, Wendy's Twitter account started roasting customers and competitors by name, and the bit worked so well that a recurring "National Roast Day"…
Start your Playbook
The MBA you actually use.
Read the case, extract the move, apply it to your own company with an AI coach that actually read your answer. Five to ten minutes a day.
7-day free trial, then $5.99/mo or $49.99/yr. Cancel anytime.