It took Netflix 10 years to reach 100 million subscribers. It took Disney Plus just over one, thanks to Disney’s incredibly strong, century long, brand equity. (Though admittedly Netflix has won the streaming wars for the time being – leading the market with 300 million subscribers.)
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In the US, ‘report cards’ provide data on the performance of cardiac surgeons. Unfortunately, they incentivise doctors to avoid operating on the severely ill – instead choosing patients who might not even need it.
Dom Pérignon is synonymous with luxury, but it still needs to reach a big audience. The discount retailer Costco sells more bottles than any other retailer in the US.
To solve the challenge of quick and easy delivery, Domino’s Pizza turned to those doing it best: ecommerce leaders. Taking learnings from players like Amazon, it allowed customers to save an ‘easy order’ that they can request in just a few clicks, and created the Domino’s Tracker – the first food delivery service to update customers on their pizza order in real time.
Domino’s has an “order now for half time” ad that airs just before football matches on Sky Sports. It’s a clever, contextual way of encouraging people to use the product at specific moments.
For years, Domino’s Pizza had a promotion that guaranteed delivery within 30 mins or the pizza was free. But it meant delivery drivers often sped to make the deadline which caused a number of accidents, with one crash victim suing Domino’s for $79m. The chain shut the promotion down, citing “public perception of reckless driving and irresponsibility.”
In the 2024 election, Donald Trump made gains of +14 points among Latino voters, despite his condemnation of certain immigrants as “drug dealers”, “murderers” and “rapists.” It turns out that ethnicities don’t always predict attitudes, and the promise of low prices is more important than people think.
The campaign was praised for shattering beauty stereotypes in advertising, and contributed to a doubling in sales. Yet its core insight is remarkably similar to the one in a Body Shop campaign that ran seven years earlier: “there are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do.”
There were 236 different words in Dr. Seuss’s 1957 book The Cat in the Hat. So Bennet Cerf, Geisel’s publisher and co-founder of Random House, challenged Geisel to write a children’s book with only 50 different words, and they bet $50 on the outcome. In 1960, Dr Seuss delivered Green Eggs and Ham with exactly 50 different words. He won the bet and the book has sold ~10 million copies over its lifetime.
30% of Americans don’t drink at all, while the top 10% have 74 drinks per week.
In the early days of Dropbox, 60% abandoned the service and the team couldn’t figure out why. So they offered $40 to a man on Craigslist to use it in person, and quickly found people couldn’t understand seemingly basic features.
It isn’t actually a brand for dudes: 50% of its buyers are women, who choose the brand over traditional toilet paper mostly because it cleans better.
Duolingo has developed its own official English Test (DET) to help people demonstrate their language skills. The DET is now used for international admissions by more than 5,000 higher education programs worldwide, as well as for visas in the US & Ireland.
Duolingo employees don’t talk about ‘MVPs’ (Minimum Viable Products) during the design process – they talk about ‘V1s’. The logic? “MVPs often have a lower standard of quality and can be used as an excuse to ship subpar work. V1s, on the other hand, are polished. They may not have all the bells and whistles, but they meet our bar.” A small but subtle tweak that reminds the team to always deliver excellence.
The popular language learning app runs a Taqueria called Duo’s in Pittsburgh. It’s a great tool for building recognition, bringing in new customers, and fulfilling its mission of improving language skills: customers can try the “Español Challenge” to get a discount on their order. It accounts for ~$1M of the ~$625M in revenue Duolingo makes each year.