Product Team Cialis: Getting Ready to Market

Elie  Ofek

Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2004 (Revised July 2010)

Product Team Cialis: Getting Ready to Market

Abstract

Lilly and ICOS are preparing for the launch of a new drug, Cialis, to compete against Viagra. To position against the incumbent firm Pfizer, which developed and markets Viagra, and other newcomers into the erectile dysfunction market, they must determine how best to segment the market and which target market to focus on. The marketing plan should take advantage of Cialis's medical profile. In particular, they must pay special attention to the communication strategy to patients, physicians, and partners. The analysis, plan, and action should take into account extensive market research and recent competitive developments. Includes color exhibits.

Keywords: Communication Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Segmentation; Pharmaceutical Industry;

Format: Print

26 pages

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Citation:

Ofek, Elie. "Product Team Cialis: Getting Ready to Market." Harvard Business School Case 505-038, October 2004. (Revised July 2010.)

In early 2016, Motoi Oyama, president and CEO of ASICS, a major sports apparel and footwear manufacturer based in Japan, lays out his company’s growth plan for the upcoming 5 years. The new plan set ambitious goals in terms of revenue and profit increases. At the heart of the strategy to achieve these goals are a desire to embrace a more direct to consumer mindset, expand into new customer segments, and communicate a more consistent and emotional brand worldwide. With its primary core customer currently the “serious” runner and its innovation strategy geared towards high-end performance, pursuing these objectives in light of the fierce competitive landscape posed a multitude of challenges. Moreover, the company had recently launched several lifestyle brands (using brand names it had revived), which posed brand architecture issues. Lastly, the company had just acquired a digital fitness app, RunKeeper, and was wondering how best to leverage this asset and how it fit with the main pillars of the growth plan strategy. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games would coincide with the conclusion of the 5 year plan, and ASICS had paid over $100 million to be a Gold Sponsor of the games—Oyama wondered whether his company was on the right track to achieving the goals he intimated to shareholders.

Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2015 (Revised April 2018)

CJ E&M: Creating a K-Culture in the U.S.

Elie Ofek, Sang-Hoon Kim and Michael Norris

Buoyed by the success of K-pop music and K-drama television shows in Asian countries, Chairman Jay Lee, of the South Korean conglomerate CJ Group, believed that the time was ripe for taking Korean cultural content to the West. One initiative, carried out by the Group's Entertainment & Media (E&M) division, was a daylong fan convention, called 'KCON', that was held in Irvine, CA in October 2012 and which featured various Korean cultural elements, such as music, dance, film, and food.

In the spring of 2013, Miky Lee, the Group's Vice Chairman (VC), called a meeting with key executives to review the results of KCON 2012 and make a recommendation to the Chairman on whether to hold a similar event in 2013. As part of their deliberations, the executives were expected to consider where a potential 2013 convention should be held, which artists to invite, which target consumers to focus on, how to price tickets and how to attract more sponsors. With KCON 2012 having lost money, despite a robust turnout, it was far from clear whether to repeat the event and, if so, whether its scale should be expanded beyond 2012's $1.1 million budget. With CJ recently opening a chain of mid-market Korean food restaurants in the Los Angeles area called Bibigo, the meeting would also touch on the restaurant's U.S. growth plans and how they might be connected to KCON.

More broadly, the executives had to wrestle with the question of whether Americans would ever really embrace Hallyu, the Korean Wave, beyond one-off success stories like PSY's "Gangnam Style." And even if they believed so, was KCON the right vehicle to make it happen, or was the event just a waste of the company's time and money?

Keywords: global strategy; Cultural Consumption; Media Businesses; international marketing; event marketing; Creative Industries; cross-cultural adaptation; ethnic marketing; South Korea; Marketing Strategy; Entertainment; Global Strategy; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States; South Korea;

Citation:

Ofek, Elie, Sang-Hoon Kim, and Michael Norris. "CJ E&M: Creating a K-Culture in the U.S." Harvard Business School Case 515-015, January 2015. (Revised April 2018.) View Details

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Product Team Cialis: Getting Ready to Market

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