Chase Sapphire: Creating a Millennial Cult Brand

Shelle  Santana; Jill  Avery; Christine  Snively

Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2017 (Revised November 2018)

Chase Sapphire: Creating a Millennial Cult Brand

by Shelle Santana, Jill Avery and Christine Snively

Abstract

The launch of the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card was enthusiastically received by millennial consumers, a cohort that had previously eluded JPMorgan Chase and its competitors. With the one-year anniversary of the launch approaching, managers are focused on retaining customers attracted by a one-time signup bonus of 100,000 reward points and on acquiring new customers now that the bonus had been reduced to 50,000 points. They were also refocusing on the remainder of the Chase Sapphire product portfolio to assess differentiation among the products and to identify white space in the market that could support additional new product launches.

Keywords: Brand ＆ product management; Product Strategy; New Product Development; credit card; customer acquisition; CRM; millennials; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Credit Cards; Product Development; Product Launch; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Demographics; Financial Services Industry; Service Industry; Banking Industry; United States; North America;

Language: English

Format: Print

23 pages

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Citation:

Santana, Shelle, Jill Avery, and Christine Snively. "Chase Sapphire: Creating a Millennial Cult Brand." Harvard Business School Case 518-024, September 2017. (Revised November 2018.)

Marketers have long appreciated the value and power of storytelling. Stories fill brands with resonant and relevant meaning and empower brands to serve as critical elements in the lives of consumers. Mastering the art of brand storytelling is an increasingly important part of managing brands in the contemporary brandscape, as today, we live in a world filled with an ever-expanding panoply of physical and virtual media spaces and places within which to create and tell stories with and to our consumers. This technical note outlines how and why consumers respond to brand stories, illuminates the four elements that make up good stories, discusses the use of archetypal plots and characters and other storytelling appeals, and provides guidance and a template for creating resonant, relevant, authentic, and differentiated brand stories.

Brian Perkins, chief architect of the $6 billion Budweiser brand, was excited about 2018, in which the company would launch Budweiser into several new markets in Africa and Latin America. He was feeling the pressure to finalize a global brand strategy that would define Budweiser’s value proposition and guide its development and execution around the world. The problem was that Budweiser actually had two distinct brand realities that differed across geographies and that often interfered with each other. He worried whether the company could keep selling a premium brand proposition abroad as the brand’s less premium reputation faced challenges at home in the U.S., and whether he needed to force a monolithic global brand strategy everywhere or allow for local market customization. Could Budweiser simultaneously accommodate two or more brand realities?

Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019 (Revised October 2020)

Kraft Heinz: The $8 Billion Brand Write-Down

Jill Avery

On Friday, February 22, 2019, following an unexpected and disappointing earnings report, The Kraft Heinz Company’s stock price fell 27%, wiping out $16 billion in market value. CEO Bernardo Hees had announced that the company had taken a $15.4 billion asset write-down, that the company would be cutting its annual dividend from $2.50 to $1.60 and that it was under SEC investigation for accounting irregularities related to its procurement process. $8.3 billion of the asset write-down was related to a loss in value of the firm’s intangible assets, specifically its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands. As Kraft Heinz looked ahead to the future, it was time to recalibrate its brand management strategies. With $50 billion in brand assets remaining on its balance sheet, effectively managing its brands going forward was critical to avoiding another brand asset write-down and to regaining the $8 billion brand value the company had just lost. Was Kraft Heinz's brand asset write-down the beginning of the end of the market dominance of "Big Food" brands across the board or was it idiosyncratic and a result of the firm's brand management resources, capabilities, and strategies?

Keywords: brand management; Brand Value; Brand equity; marketing ROI; brand storytelling; Intangible assets; brand valuation; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Management; Corporate Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Food; Marketing Communications; Advertising; Private Equity; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; North America;