When talking about Marketing we might name the four famous "Ps":

Product

Price

Place

Promotion

Many times we forget about People -the fifth P- which means customers, clients, or consumers. A product or a service is launched, is in the market because of them. First customers, then product or service.

We'd better listen to people. Some times it will be necessary asking to customers but some other times they will talk by themself.

That's what exactly has happened to Tropicana, the pure premium orange juice of PepsiCo. Tropicana changed its packaging and brand image at the beginning of January 2009, but according to NYT some buyers are passionate about packaging and last Monday, Tropicana executives announced that the previous version will be brought back in the next month.

The Journal Marketing thinks that the new design was very revolutionary for the brand's style; instead Tropicana should have done a restyling. Anyway, perhaps Tropicana made a mistake but it heard its customers and the original package design will be back in March.

Image source: meydad.com

PS: Take a look to that 3 minutes video from AdAge where five weeks ago Peter Arnell, Omnicom's Arnell Group CEO, defends the carton design that is going to be discontinued.

There is a saying in Spain that says: "Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente" (Direct translation: The current takes the prawn that falls asleep), but the English expression would be: "You snooze, you lose".

That's what Harvard Admissions Team avoids every single year when looking for new students. They are pretty awake. Harvard is Harvard, and we might think that they do not need to move from their offices to get the best students over the States and almost, over the world.

But even Harvard -the most prestigious university in the world- has a very well planned marketing strategy where many people (including an army of 8,000 alumni volunteers) play a very important role.

For the next year class -which will start in September- Harvard received around 23,000 applications. Of these, it accepted over 2,000 (less than 10%) which makes it as the nation's most selective college.

Harvard admission's staff shows the importance of synergies when aiming the best and the brightest.

More info: Businessweek

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3. You will get a "coupon" for the "lottery" to win a book (the book is real)

Remember, become a fan on this LINK. And if you even do something else (just spread the blog) you will have more opportunities to win the book.

New Seat Ibiza spot

Original song and videoclip

Agency: Atlético Internacional They've got the rights of the song for the spot and say that the whole idea behind the videoclip was the reason to choose that song. The producer filmed new clips for the skateboard images. (More info only in Spanish)
Producer: Agosto

PS: Due to the comments on this post. Let's take a look to this, from swissmiss.

When you have a huge snow storm in your city you can remain in your office, at home, or instead go out, let your imagination fly, and do something really extreme.

That last combination is what Extreme Channel and the Curb Agency decided to do last week when they made a Guerrilla Marketing campaign. Just after lunch time, 350 "hot spots" of London were marked with 2.000 logos of that channel.

The interesting point is to know if Curb came with the idea while snowing and prepared everything in just few hours or on the other hand they "forecasted" the street campaign at the same time as the storm was getting to London.

Anyway, it was cheap, fast, and it matched perfectly Extreme Channel spirit.
Extremely well done!

Source: vankensen blog

Amazon e-Book reader, Kindle

Once upon a time there was a leading company in a very important field: the music industry. That company had a vertical business organization. They hired musicians, groups, bands, etc. They recorded discs and videoclips. They organized concerts. They produced and sold LPs, Cassettes, and CDs. They sold devices to listen to our favorite music and authors, even they invented the music to go: a man attached to a player device; the Walkman & the Discman.

As you might imagine its name is SONY and Sony BMG. They were the kings of this industry. But Sony was selling with a pretty small effort (I would say they were taking a nap) while another company was struggling with several issues: Apple.

In 2001 Apple came with its first iPod generation (already posted here) and just in few years everyone began to forget CDs and other music players. Apple, thanks to its iPod family has become the leading company of music (selling songs and music players).

Amazon, another leading company -in which case is about books- came up in November of 2007 with Kindle, an electronic reader device. Last Monday Amazon launched its second edition, an evolution of the first one. Once again, SONY came first with an e-Book Reader (October 2008 for its last edition), and once again another e-Company took its market.

Where is going to arrive Apple with its music industry?
Will become Kindle the most common worldwide e-Reader? (and e-Books seller)
What's happening to Sony?

We may think that Sony has become boring, but I don't think so (Play Station has been very popular and well sold). Boring is not a matter in those cases, if you think so, take a look to the official Kindle video. Although Kindle's "second part" looks much nicer than the first edition.

First and second Kindle editions

In a crisis economy like the current one many companies forget about Creativity and Innovation. Their mind goes directly to cut marketing budgets, freeze new product launch, and focus on expenses.

Creativity and Innovation are always pretty important keys when managing a company but even more in a recession. It's a good time to sell what you do, to be strong in your core business but at the same time looking at something new. Looking from outside of the box or hiring new talent (you could outsource this service) will help managers, employees, and more important, customers attitude in their roles (leading, working, and buying). All of them will see -and notice- that the company is trying hard to reach a better situation -than competition for instance- and reshaping its business model.

Marcus Buckingham says on his blog "You can make the effort to discover what you really love to do, and then take the steps to build your career around that." Many companies and talented people have just been following the market force, direction, energy, inertia, but without a really unique value proposition or strength.

By the end of 2008 I received an email of a reader -and almost fan- of The Journal Marketing. Her name is Ainara and she is an Alumni from the University of Navarra in Spain. Today's post reminds me of her. She is pretty young, has a great talent on what she loves to do, and tries really hard to become more and more creative. Ainara is not a company (even when she emailed me didn't have a job) but she is building her career around what she loves. Sooner or later she will get it and pretty sure will fly high.

Do you work on your Strengths instead of your Weaknesses?

Take a look at Ainara's work

How?

Just spread the word of THIS and tell me what you did. Only until the end of February.

It's pretty easy and the Internet it's full of terrific tools.

I highly recommend this article on Smashing Magazine. It summarizes pretty well the relationship between colour identity and its application on the websites of many famous brands like Walmart, Pepsi, Best Buy, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, or UPS to name some of them.



But if you work at/for small-to medium-sized businesses here we have 4 tips from Smashing Magazine:

1. Consistency: Logos, banners, displays, ads... Consistency throughout all marketing media is powerful.
   
2. The subconscious of customers: Customers subconsciously associate colours with their brand experience on the net.
   
3. The impact of re-branding and redesign: What you built around your brand creates expectations in your customers even when you change your identity.
   
4. Make color choices wisely from the start: If you can plan from the beginning, better than replanning and changing everything. Plan for spontaneity.
   

Read the full article here.