A viral ad campaign turned granddad-era Old Spice into a 107%-growth body wash
Wieden + Kennedy's 'Smell Like a Man, Man' relaunched the 1937 brand in February 2010; Nielsen showed body-wash sales up 107% in the campaign's last month.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDHarley-Davidson used a tariff's breathing room to rebuild its factories
A debt-heavy buyout left Harley-Davidson losing to cheaper Japanese bikes. It used a temporary tariff to fix its factories, then asked to end the tariff early.
Read the caseSlovenia's NLB went from a €1.55bn bailout to a 2018 IPO that privatised it by 2019
Bailed out in 2013, Slovenia's biggest bank IPO'd 59.1% at €51.50 in November 2018; by June 2019 the state's stake was down to 25% plus one share.
Read the caseZTE paid $2.29bn and replaced its board to survive a US export ban and return to profit
A US ban cut ZTE off from American chips and nearly killed it; it paid an extra $1.4bn, replaced its leadership and was back in profit within three quarters.
Read the casePublicis's data-led Power of One turnaround made it the world's largest ad group
After 0.1% organic growth in 2018, Publicis bought Epsilon for $4.4B, rebuilt around one client P&L per country, and led the industry by net revenue by 2025.
Read the caseEl Corte Inglés replaced its dying chairman with his nephew inside 48 hours
Spain's biggest retailer had rehearsed its succession a year early, so when chairman Isidoro Álvarez died on a Sunday the board needed just two days.
Read the caseMicrosoft revived Age of Empires after 14 years and took it past 50 million players
Fourteen years after Age of Empires III, Microsoft rebuilt the RTS line with remasters, a dedicated studio and Age of Empires IV, passing 50 million players.
Read the caseBose: the founder gave his company's stock to MIT to keep it private forever
In 2011 Amar Bose gave MIT the majority of his audio firm's non-voting shares — dividends for research, independence for the company, no say for anyone.
Read the caseJD Wetherspoon cut pints to 99p and kept opening pubs through Britain's recession
As UK pubs closed at 52 a week in the 2008-09 recession, Wetherspoon cut prices and kept expanding — record sales, £66.2M profit, 250 new pubs planned.
Read the caseXugong's mixed-ownership reform made XCMG one fully listed machinery giant by 2022
China's biggest construction-machinery maker sold 46% of its parent to GIC, CITIC PE and others for ~¥14.8bn, then whole-listed the group by August 2022.
Read the caseMediaTek rode shanzhai phones to the top — then came back from a 2017 flop to lead 5G
A 1997 UMC spin-off made shanzhai phones its flywheel (2004 turnkey), stumbled high-end (2017), then returned as world #1 chip vendor — 12 straight quarters.
Read the caseSojitz's trading-house turnaround from loss to records
Yoji Sato's 2012-13 rebuild pruned assets and refocused on stable earnings; profit swung from -¥1.0B to ¥13.4B, then compounded to a ¥82.3B record.
Read the caseOld Spice's absurdist 'man your man could smell like' campaign doubled sales.
P&G's 2010 Wieden+Kennedy campaign turned a dated grandfatherly brand viral; Old Spice body-wash sales rose 106% in four weeks.
Read the caseNucor bet a nearly bankrupt conglomerate on scrap-steel mini-mills
Nuclear Corporation of America was defaulting on loans and losing money yearly. Its new chief bet it on electric-arc mini-mills over buying steel the old way.
Read the caseSuruga Bank rebuilt around outside sponsors after the FSA froze its core lending in 2018
Japan's FSA banned new investment-property loans for six months; the founder-family chief quit and Suruga rebuilt with Nojima, then Crédit Saison.
Read the caseMoog: the founder won back his own brand name and relaunched the Minimoog
Robert Moog lost his company in the 1970s, fought for the dormant trademark, and in 2002 relaunched Moog Music — starting with a new Minimoog.
Read the caseTowada Audio bought Sony's dead Aiwa brand and relaunched it worldwide
The contract manufacturer that had built Sony's radios bought the discontinued Aiwa name in 2017 and rebuilt it across Japan, Vietnam, India and Brazil.
Read the caseLupin's founder handed CEO and MD jobs to his daughter and son in 2013; records followed
DB Gupta made Vinita Gupta CEO and Nilesh Gupta MD from September 2013; revenue rose from ₹9,462 crore to ₹13,758 crore by FY16, with profit up 72%.
Read the caseFAW's Hongqi reboot took a 4,398-car state limo brand to 300,000 sales a year
A state limousine brand selling 4,398 cars a year was rebuilt around new models and an EV plan, passing 300,000 sales by 2021.
Read the caseYusuf Hamied turned Cipla into a generics giant and cheap-AIDS-drug pioneer.
Yusuf Hamied, son of Cipla's founder, lobbied for India's 1972 patent law and later offered an AIDS triple-combo at $800 a year versus $12,000.
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