Renewing the Nissan Brand

Abstract

One of the directors described his time working at Nissan as a experience. It was a bumpy ride, but under the guidance of Carlos Gosen, Nissan became one of the most remarkable corporate turnaround stories in the automotive or any other industry. In this case, students can see how Gosen carried out his plan to rescue Nissan by building an emotional connection between customers and the brand, introducing cross-functional teams, designing the Xterra, encouraging managers to lead from the middle, organizing the Shift marketing campaign, and answering the question, What's your brand stand for? Now, Nissan faces such issues as finding the right balance between managing costs and building demand and the level of differentiation needed to maintain the customer's relationship to the brand. Excerpt UVA-BC-0194 RENEWING THE NISSAN BRAND When you have a near-death experience, and that's really what we were in before '99, it does have a tendency to focus the organization. —Mark Perry We can't afford to lose that appetite for risk, because it's the thing that brought us out [of decline]. And it's going to be one of the very things that is going to end up keeping us going and inspired in the future. —Tom Tackes . . .