Brand yoga: How to be flexible and pivot your marketing strategy in the face of recession
There are endless examples of brands that have switched to new business models through circumstance or necessity. The key is to do it on your own terms.
Ferruccio Lamborghini built tractors. They were small, but they were powerful and efficient, so he sold a lot of them and became a wealthy man.
Wealthy enough to own a collection of the finest sports cars of the era.
Including a number of Ferraris.
According to motoring folklore, he loved the styling of the Prancing Stallion’s motors, but that was about all he liked about them. His real gripe, alongside comfort issues, was that the Ferrari clutches were unreliable, meaning his cars were on a constant conveyor belt back to Maranello to be repaired.
Supposedly, he met one day with Enzo Ferrari to discuss his car’s frailties, but was given short shrift.
Lamborghini was miffed and, as an entrepreneur and industrialist with, one imagines, an appropriately robust ego, didn’t take the sleight lying down. He re-engineered his own Ferrari, then, taking expertise and parts from his own tractor factories, built a rival sports touring brand — Automobili Lamborghini.
