How Growth Marketing Helped 7 Companies Amid Crises

The crisis is a turning point for every country. Enterprises are reducing or closing their production facilities. The same situation is now in Ukraine because of the war started by Russia. However, the crisis helped many twentieth-century enterprises develop and prosper in the future, which is strange as it may seem.

I have compiled a list of companies that became world famous precisely during the crises of the twentieth century thanks to growth marketing. I hope these stories will inspire you.

Lego

The history of the world-famous company, which began with the development of stepladders, stools, and ironing boards, began in 1932. Then, amid the Great Depression, Danish entrepreneur Ole Kirk Christiansen created his carpentry business, which was not profitable at first. After a while, the entrepreneur changed his strategy and switched to manufacturing wooden toys for children, which are always in demand in the market. Ole came up with the new company name Lego, which literally means leg godt - "to play well."

The man had a 12-year-old son, Gottfried, who inherited the carpentry business from his father. In 1947, Gottfried bought the rights to the development by English psychologist Hillary Page of plastic cubes that could be connected. The company began to grow successfully. Then Lego switched from wood to the material of the future - plastic. This was the beginning of a new era for the company. In 1958 were created the same cubes which are still popular among children and adults.

Starbucks

October 19, 1987 was remembered as Black Monday when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (a stock index of the 30 largest U.S. companies) fell to 22.6 percent. At that time, Howard Schultz bought the not-so-successful Starbucks coffee chain.

In 1982, Schultz had the idea to open an Italian-style coffee shop. He proposed to the founders of Starbucks, for whom he was working at the time, to turn their coffee shop into a soulful place for socializing and lovers of this wonderful drink. But the entrepreneurs turned Schultz down because "good coffee can only be brewed at home."

Subsequently, Howard returned to them five years later and bought an almost-dying business. Since then, Starbucks has become a symbol of a comfortable space, perfect for solitude, socializing, and work. Starbucks coffeehouses swiftly invaded the US and appeared in 49 other countries worldwide. Now it is the world's largest chain of coffee shops.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia was born during the dot-com crisis between 1995 and 2001. In 1999 American Jimmy Wales created a free online science encyclopedia to be written at will and free of charge by scientists. There were also the first requirements for an online encyclopedia: each article had to pass seven degrees of verification. That is why the new project Nupedia developed very slowly. Within a year after its opening, only 21 articles were published.

Wikipedia appeared as a small offshoot of Nupedia. It allowed and still allows everyone to create articles and, thanks to the Wiki system, does editing in real-time. Wikipedia created 200 articles in the first month; a year later, that number grew to 18,000. Later, the online encyclopedia became multilingual, which led to its insane success among the world's users.

Adidas

Did you know that Adidas and Puma are the same family business born in 1920? After the end of World War I, the state of the economy in Germany was terrible. Hunger, unemployment, and hyperinflation reigned. To survive, the Dassler family decided to make shoes. At first, it was homemade orthopedic shoes for the disabled who had gone through the war. There were no good, high-quality materials at hand, so the tops were made from decommissioned military uniforms, and the soles were made from old car tires.

In 1925, when production slightly increased, one of the sons, Adolf, invented the first soccer boots, the cleats for which were forged by a local blacksmith. The spiked sole quickly gained popularity among athletes because there were no such athletic shoes on the market then. On the eve of the Second World War, the Dasslers already had two factories that produced more than a thousand pairs a year together.

During the war, Adolf sewed training shoes for German soldiers in his factory. His brother Rudolf was taken prisoner, and he never forgave his brother for not trying to free him. The conflict between the brothers led to the decision to split the company. Adolf founded Adidas, and his brother founded Puma. The brothers have not spoken to each other all their lives, and their companies are fiercely competitive today.

Pepsi

Caleb Davis Bradham, a young American pharmacist, invented the drink in 1893. Under his leadership, the Pepsi-Cola company existed until 1921, when the sugar market collapsed.

On the eve of the Great Depression, the company was bought out by Charles Guth - a president of Loft Inc. Surprisingly, the crisis at the time benefited Pepsi, and the company even managed to overtake its main competitor in the market, Coca-Cola. The idea behind Pepsi was that it could sell a 12-ounce bottle for 5 cents at a time when Coca-Cola was selling a 6.5-ounce bottle for the same money. It was the perfect strategy in an era when everyone was trying to save money.

Pepsi continued to gain market share. But in 1953, Coca-Cola's sales fell 3%, and Pepsi's sales rose 12%. It was a critical time for Coca-Cola: the company eventually changed the bottle capacity to 10, 12, and 26 ounces.

Then Pepsi changed its market positioning strategy again. Their main idea was that Coca-Cola positioned itself as a drink for the old generation, while Pepsi proclaimed itself as a drink for the young. In 1964 the classic slogan "You're the Pepsi Generation" was formulated.

FedEx

FedEx or Federal Express came into being during the 1973 oil crisis. Frederick Smith, the company's founder, created the concept of express deliveries over long distances. Several companies were sharing the parcel delivery route back then, so airmail was slow and inefficient. Smith decided that one company should be responsible for the parcel.

The successful plan required planes, trucks, and hangars for sorting centers at a total cost of $150 million. The company set up the logistics and began operating, but the first two years were unsuccessful. During that time, the company lost $29 million. The main mistake was that FedEx did not position itself as a fast delivery company. And so, in 1975, Smith dramatically changed his marketing strategy - the company began dealing only with rush orders that needed to be delivered as early as "yesterday." The effect was maddening, and FedEx quickly gained a foothold in the global market.

Burger King

In 1957, the U.S. went through another crisis - the recession of Eisenhower. At that time, McDonald's was a success in the market because no such establishments existed. The founders of Burger King, James McLamore and David Edgerton, decided to open an establishment and devise a new strategy for serving burgers. Every customer could choose any filling for a burger to their taste.

However, in 1982 that idea stopped working: the franchise restaurants could not keep up with the changes and began to fall far short of their main competitor in quality. Then it was decided that the company would change its usual direction and choose a new positioning - "our burgers taste better because they are cooked on an open fire, not fried on stoves, like at McDonald's." McDonald's couldn't take the pressure and sue. They started talking about it on all the TV channels, and Burger King's sales jumped 10%.

Conclusion

Changing the positioning strategy is worth the risk if you want your business to be constantly in touch with the audience. Go for significant changes, as the world-famous companies did. You can even hire a growth marketing team for this purpose. Of course, some will say they were lucky to build their business amid a crisis. But we all know the saying, "Don't be afraid to take risks, either you win, or you learn."

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