John Heppner: We were able to rethink, redesign, repackage, and reposition our products from a viewpoint of how people use particular padlocks and in what contexts they use them. The relaunch didn't occur overnight. It happened through a process and a partnership. It turned out that what had always mattered to Master Lock was not what had always mattered to our customers.
John Heppner has been at Master Lock since 1992 and has held his current position since January. Master Lock, an operating unit of $5.5 billion Fortune Brands, holds more than 50% of the U.S. padlock market, with products that include specialty locks for guns and for skis.
Before Harry West (hwest@dcontinuum.com) joined Design Continuum, a strategy, design, and product-development company, he was an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, where he founded the Mechatronics Design Laboratory. Three new product lines already have resulted from the Master Lock-Design Continuum collaboration.
President and COO
Airbus Industrie of North America Inc.
Herndon, Virginia
How do you differentiate your brand when you're the "little guy"? You do what the "big guy" can't: Be quick, nimble, responsive, and personal. In other words, innovate. As a European organization, we're sometimes considered an outsider by American customers: We're a "them," Boeing's an "us" -- despite our putting billions of dollars' worth of revenue into the U.S. economy each year. But in 1997, we faced an even bigger obstacle when our two formidable competitors, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, merged to form one mammoth company. Rather than shrink in the face of such competition, Airbus relaunched itself to hold 50% of the market. We went from delivering about one aircraft to a U.S. airline each month in 1996 to delivering about two aircraft to a U.S. airline each week this year.
How have we done it? We've used innovation to deliver the most economical, comfortable, and technologically advanced product available. For example, the latest Airbus brainchild, the A3XX, is a double-decker, 555-seat aircraft. As expected, we have our skeptics. But we know that playing on the big guy's turf means that we have to do what's unexpected.
Henri Courpron joined Airbus Industrie of North America Inc. in 1992 as director of contracts, having previously served at Airbus Industrie in France. Today he heads the Airbus Commercial team that serves the United States and Canada. Airbus Industrie of North America is a subsidiary of Airbus Industrie of Toulouse, France, a consortium of four European companies. The $16.7 billion organization manufactures planes for such companies as Air Canada, FedEx, Northwest, United Air Lines, United Parcel Service, and US Airways. It has more than 350 aircraft operating in North America, with backlog contracts that are expected to double that number by the end of 2003.
Chief Marketing Officer
Internet Capital Group
Wayne, Pennsylvania
How do you take a 100-year-old brand and reinvent it into something that is relevant to today's buyer? That was the challenge that we faced at Oldsmobile. We had to change the image that consumers had of Olds -- from that of their grandfather's Cutlass Supreme to that of a hip, refined performance vehicle.
Our solution? Startle people. Do things that force them to shake off their old image of us; give them pause to consider that we've changed in every way -- from our power train to our interior ergonomics.
And at the same time, any brand relaunch requires humility: We've learned to accept that there are people who simply will never buy an Oldsmobile, no matter how different or how new we make that brand. The important thing is to find out exactly who those people are and what their characteristics are. That kind of profile is valuable information. It leaves you with more energy to focus on people who will be customers -- and to avoid those who won't be.
Karen Francis, who joined General Motors in 1996 and became general manager of its Oldsmobile division in January 1999, recently relaunched her career and is now chief marketing officer, as well as a managing director, of Internet Capital Group, which invests in and manages e-commerce companies. Previously, she was VP of marketing at Empire-Berol in Nashville, a consultant at Bain & Co. in San Francisco, and a brand manager at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. Oldsmobile, the $7 billion General Motors division founded in 1897 by Ransom E. Olds, is America's oldest car company. After years of decline, its sales have been up 26% since it introduced the Alero in 1998.
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