CASE EXAMPLES

AMAZON

• Many consumers, especially city dwellers,

worry about getting packages delivered when
they're not at home. The company responded
with Amazon Locker, a network of self-service
pickup boxes.

• Delivery charges, no matter how reasonable,

are a chief irritant to consumers, and a reason
to buy locally instead of ordering online.
Amazon Prime charges an annual fee for free
delivery of most of its products.
 CASE EXAMPLES
AUDI

• In 2012, Audi changed the way in which companies sell

vehicles, with the introduction of an innovative showroom
concept named Audi City.

• Audi City provides an unique brand experience and allows

visitors to explore the entire catalogue of Audi’s model
range hands-on in stores located in city centres, where large
showrooms are not a possibility.

• At Audi City London sales went up 60% from the traditional

Audi showroom that previously occupied the site.

• Moreover, they only stock 4 cars, reducing the cost of

having to hold a large volume of stock that often does not
match a customer’s criteria.
 CASE EXAMPLES
UNDER ARMOUR

• Under Armour wanted to become much more than an

athletic apparel company when they introduced “connected
fitness”—a platform to track, analyse, and share personal
health data right to customers’ phones.

• UA MapMyRun app identifies the product model& colour.

Customer enters your height, weight, age, and fitness goals
and go for a run. The app uses machine learning to collect
data from a sensor in the shoe’s footbed and calculates your
stride length and cadence.

• UA’s ArmourBox, where customers can go online and enter

their training schedule, favourite style and fitness goals.
ArmourBox uses analytics to send new shoes with discount
offers to customers on a subscription basis.
 CASE EXAMPLES
S TARBUC KS

• Starbucks’ main innovation is their Mobile Order and Pay app.

This is fundamentally a customer-first strategy, as it addresses
the basic wants of the consumer like convenience and line
avoidance.

• Coupled with their extensive loyalty program, the app gives

Starbucks the perfect venue to up-sell and market to
consumers.

• Furthermore, the app funnels back massive amounts of user

data to the company, allowing them to better understand
their customers’ habits and desires.

• “Where others are attempting to build a mobile app,

Starbucks has built an end-to-end consumer platform
anchored around loyalty.” Kevin Johnson, COO, Starbucks
 CONTENT EXAMPLES
BURBERRY KISS

• An interactive email campaign allowed you to choose a colour of the Burberry’s new
lipstick. You then got to pucker up and really kiss your smartphone. Burberry took a
digital imprint of your mouth in the colour of lipstick you chose.

• Then, you could send this virtual kiss to anyone you wanted via email.

• To make the campaign more

interesting, Burberry even partnered
with Google Places and Google
Street View so you could watch your
digital kiss travel all the way to its
destination
 CONTENT EXAMPLES
LV NOW

• Louis Vuitton regularly publish their own exclusive

online magazine through a curated website called
LV Now. This digital publication lets you stay
abreast of the latest events and news coming
down the pike for the fashion house.

• One of their most recent posts was about their

new scented candle, with benefits going towards
(RED), an organization that seeks to stop AIDS.

• The chic imagery and attention to detail present in

this digital magazine matches the rest of the
branding consumers know and love from Louis
Vuitton.
CONTENT EXAMPLE
HERMES

• Hermes ‘House of Scarves’ is an online destination

dedicated to their most iconic accessory, the scarf. The
website is a delight to browse through as every click brings
you closer to each creation and leads to a seamless
purchase experience.

• One of their most striking video productions, captures their

Flora and Fauna collection. With sounds that make you feel
like you are in the heart of a thriving jungle and visuals that
cajole you to reach out and touch the smooth fabric, it is a
visceral delight to say the least.

• Hermes got wild life enthusiasts, photographers, nature

lovers into their website traffic, who then influenced by
sharing content and comments to their followers.
 CONTENT EXAMPLE
BALENCIAGA

• Resembling a popular Yeezy campaign,

Balenciaga played on paparazzi-themed
imagery to display their S18 collection.

• The campaign focused on ‘papping’ models

attempting to hide from photographers with
their Balmain accessories and clothing; logos
clearly on display!

• This type of imagery echoes the Instagram

posts of top models.

• All images were photographed by real

French paparazzi and credited to the French
Wire.
 CONTENT EXAMPLE
BALMAIN - VIRTUAL ARMY

• One of the most innovative campaigns in recent times is one by the luxury French fashion house,
Balmain.

• They launched an exciting campaign whereby the models are in fact an artistic CGI representation.

• It features three custom-designed digital models named Margot, Shudu and Zhi. Each is wearing
tailored styles created by software company CLO Virtual fashion.
 COOLEST COOKER
AL -IN-ONE OUTDOOR ENTERTAINMENT SOLUTION

• The Product: An all-in-one outdoor entertainment solution for

tailgating, camping, boating, picnics, beach parties, barbecues, and
anytime you’re enjoying the great outdoors. It includes a blender,
bluetooth speaker, USB charger, LED light, oversized wheels, bottle
opener and bungee tie down.

• Marketing Model: The company initially raised $13 million from 60,000
customers pledging $165 and more for a cooler. But R&D cost,
manufacturing and shipping each cooler was $235. the company began
selling the cooler on Amazon for $400 with immediate availability,
resulting in down votes. Over 20,000 early backers had still not received
their coolers two years after the promised delivery date, sparking an
investigation from the authorities.

• Lessons Learned: Great renderings and videos may help pre-sell an

idea, but developing the full product and manufacturing it at necessary
margins is a different ballgame and multiple times harder. Your supply
chain can make or break your product. This cannot be an afterthought
 GOOGLE GLASS
WEARABLE DIGITAL DEVICE

• The Product: A wearable, voice-controlled Android device

that resembled a pair of eyeglasses and displayed
information directly in the user's field of vision.

• Marketing Model: Consumers did not know what problems

a wearable computer would solve for them and why they
needed a $1,500 pair of glasses. The design was not
aesthetically appealing. It made users looked like ‘dorks’
with a geeky look. Product had several bugs in the UI with
no fixes.

• Lessons Learned: Technologies looking for a problem to

solve have a very high probability to fail. Product designers
need to solve problems that customers care about and are
willing to pay to resolve. Do not fall into the “If we build it,
they will come” mindset.
 3D TELEVISION
PL ATFORM VS CONTENT

• The Product: A television that conveyed 3D depth perception to the

viewer for specially formatted programming. Experiencing the effect
required wearing plastic glasses, but some TV sets offered a simulated
3D mode that could be viewed with the naked eye.

• Marketing Model: Major brands such as LG, Sony and Samsung were
initially on board along with some TV networks.Viewers wearing cheap
plastic, bulky and uncomfortable 3D glasses with 25% reporting eye
strain and dizziness. This may have been a tolerable tradeoff for a single
movie-watching experience, but did not translate well to ongoing daily
use. Absence of 3D content at the product launch meant low TV sales.
No motivation for content creators to create new content.

• Lessons Learned: Adding friction to the UX by requiring users to do

more work will reduce adoption. Users do not desire products – they
desire to accomplish an outcome. Customers want to do less work using
your product, not more. Consumers now expect instant gratification and
do not have the patience to wait.
 MICROSOFT ZUNE
NEW WALKMAN

• The Product: Zune was a portable digital music player from

Microsoft launched as a competitor to the Apple iPod. Sleek looks,
but bad desktop software, a comparatively meagre music library and
software updates that generally made things worse.

• Marketing Model: launched the Zune five years after the Apple iPod
established itself as the dominant market leader. It had no unique
or innovative differentiation compared to the iPod. It did not solve
any problems that iPod was not already solving. Zune did some
really artsy ads that appealed to a very small segment of the music
space, and didn’t captivate the broad segment of music listeners.

• Lessons Learned: “Me too” products will not succeed if there is a

well established market leader. Customers need a compelling reason
and benefits to make the switch.
 FACEBOOK HOME
YOUR NEW WALLPAPER

• The Product: It essentially turns the mobile home screen and lock
screen into a Facebook content-based experience with what it calls
“Cover Feed.” Content loads while the phone is sleeping. The design
was clunky and couldn’t be customised, and it used large amounts of
data and battery and they couldn’t have easy access to their apps.

• Marketing Model: Facebook tried to expand its dominance in social

media. Customers weren’t impressed, and most users reported that only
the most Facebook-obsessed people would enjoy it. Less than a month
after Facebook Home was released, the cost of a two-year subscription
dropped from $99 to $0.99. Facebook soon disbanded the team that
was working on the project.

• Lessons Learned: If the business is based on a free for customers

model, changing it with limited benefits would be disastrous. Facebook
did not realise that there was no compelling need for such a product.
AMAZON FIRE PHONE
FACE RECOGNITION PHONE

• The Product: Amazon entered the smart phone market with the Fire
Phone in 2014. Fire Phone’s biggest differentiator was 3D face
scanning technology, but many people thought it was too gimmicky

• Marketing Model: The phone was only released on AT&T, which

greatly limited the number of customers who could purchase it.
Favourite apps like Google Maps, Starbucks App were not available.
Most users thought the phone was only mediocre and overpriced
and that it wasn’t worth to switch from their current phones. The
product was discontinued the next year after just one model and
took a loss of $170 million with unsold inventory.

• Lessons Learned: By limiting to one service provider, without any

synergy, the product launch will have a small base. The
differentiators and new features were not compelling enough to fill
any major gaps in the market. Piloting is important prior to market
launch and mass production.