Hello All!

Many organizations spend millions and millions of dollars in marketing research and ad-campaigns in order to come up with new and improved strategies and tactics to boost up sales. Quite rarely do we see companies that take the opposite approach; instead of coming up with something brand new every time, they look at what has been done before and recycle campaigns or products that have been successful in the past.

I have one very good example of a company that has successfully managed to bring back products and strategies from the sixties and fifties to the 21^st century.

Marimekko is a textile and design company founded by two art directors in 1951 in Finland. The company has since its start had a strong and stable fan base both domestically and internationally. But during the recession in the 80’s, sales started declining at a tremendous speed. The company was about to go bust until the CEO at the time decided that it was time to remind the public of the happier and more successful times. To do this Marimekko decided to bring back textiles and patterns that had been the most successful and popular in the 60’s and 50’s, which had been the golden time for Marimekko.

This was obviously a huge gamble and could have gone very wrong, but it didn’t. Old prints and products brought back positive memories to the consumers, and sales started slowly but steadily reaching their original levels. Obviously just recycling old products isn’t enough on its own, new prints and products have to be designed so that they can be brought back as retro prints in 20 or 30 years!

So, what’s the moral of the story? Sometimes new isn’t better and sometimes it pays to look to the past to be successful in the future, even in marketing! And to all of my fellow Vancouverites its your lucky day: Canada’s only Marimekko concept store is located right here in Vancouver on Hamilton and Davie.

Marimekko fans include celebrities from Jackie O. to Sarah Jessica Parker.

Until next time,

Roosa xxx

Hi all!

My name is Roosa, and I’m a blogaholic. On an average I read about 50-70 blogs more or less daily but I have never crossed over to the other side and actually written one. Most of the blogs that I read are fashion, lifestyle, cooking, or travel blogs, and I am so excited to finally be writing a blog that will most likely cover all these topics, with a twist of marketing!

Besides blogs, another huge interest on mine is fashion and design. And often these two go hand-in-hand, at least in the world according to Roosa. As I started thinking about marketing concepts, the marketing mix, and the four P’s, linking them to fashion popped instantly to my mind.

One of the four P’s is Promotion. Promotion is bringing the product to the attention of the customer, as we all know. Blogs are a huge part of fashion promotion today. Before the blogging trend really took off about 5 or 6 years ago, fashion marketing was basically dependent on fashion shows, fashion magazines, and billboards.  The marketing directors and PR firms of different designers and labels (high end and high street) had to rely on customers to first buy a magazine for a good $5-10, and then only hope that the customer would spot the garment on one of the pages, and get inspired to by it.

Now in the world of blogging, fashion promotion is more visible than ever and easier than ever. Almost all fashion bloggers, that have made a name for themselves either internationally or domestically, promote products of various designers and labels. The banners and sidebars are full of commercials, companies send samples for bloggers to wear and display photos of them on the blog, and some designer labels have even gone to the extreme of collaboration with the blogger; having them as models or even as co-designers.

Of course, this is not cheap for designers, but it is easier to get a blogger to show your stuff in a picture than to convince Anna Wintour that your clothing is worth displaying on the pages of Vogue, and most importantly it is way more accessible to a huge public. Most blogs have several hundreds of thousands of hits per day, which brings the number of hits to tens of millions in a month. That kind of publicity is hard, if not impossible, to reach with any magazine.

Here’s one of my all time favourite:

Chiara of The Blonde Salad, whom collaborates with Alberta Ferretti.

Until next time,

Roosa xxx

Pictures: Google