The Marketing Innovations Club produced yet another eye-opener. This time the event was “Public Relations and Internet”, supported jointly by the Departments of Information Technology and Marketing.

On March 1st 2006, the students of the IMBA and Marketing Management programs had the opportunity to gain insight into the rapidly growing use of technology in Public Relations (PR).

Presenting the topic were:

* Pablo Paniagua, founder of Paniagua Consultores (a Spanish PR consulting Firm)
* Juan Iván Martín, MD and Financial Director of CommPact (a leading Spanish Technology PR firm)
* Steve Maynard, Director of European Marketing of Visto UK.

Visto is the client of both Paniagua Consultores and CommPact. They provide a platform for mobile email solutions to mobile operators in Europe and USA.

The discussion was focused around two main areas: the emergence and importance of technology in Public Relations and where the technology ends and the marketing begins. The icing on the cake was the case study of Visto itself on how it used technology based public relations to gain footprint at 2005 3GSM Congress at Cannes.

Students at Instituto de Empresa showed immense insight into the industry and came up with questions that tested the knowledge and experience of the speakers. Tools such as Viral Marketing, Webstat, Rapid Action Sites, Virtual Pressroom and many more were discussed in detail, evaluating the pros and cons of each. The case of Visto was special as it also brought to light that technology is an augmenter of Public Relations and thus can not replace traditional PR at the very core.

We thank Compact, Visto and Paniagua Consultores for insight into the fusion of marketing and technology! We also thank Eduardo Fernandez Cantelli and Jose Esteves from the departments of Marketing and Technology here at Instituto de Empresa.

We won’t try to convince or change what you think about subliminal messages in ads, but we’ll merely provide you with different links that refer to this issue. They are related to ads, politics and others, and we may remind you that the opinion of some of this links does not necessarily represent the opinion of the Club members.

"Subliminal Seduction"
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/22/subliminal-advertising.html
“Sex, Crackers and subliminal ads”
http://www.adweek.com/aw/magazine/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1852593
“Subliminal Ads Pop Up on Sci-Fi Channel”
http://www.omnipublicity.com/pressreleases/Subliminal%20Ads%20Pop%20Up%20on%20Sci-Fi%20Channel.htm
“20th Century Brainwashing and what's hidden in the Microsoft's logo”
http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/sublimi.htm
“Bush says 'RATS' ad not meant as subliminal message”
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/12/bush.ad/

We are very interested in hearing what you have to say! So share with us your opinion or experience with this type of advertisement!

James focused on how marketing has been used by the company to achieve success: it is Spain´s largest cava producer. Considering what we are currently learning in our marketing course, James put into context how Freixenet uses the 4 Ps -product, price, place and promotion-.

For instance, we learned that an average person spends only 2 seconds when choosing a product in the supermarket, and therefore placing our product at eye-level is essential to achieve consumer trial. In terms of advertising, Freixenet uses celebrities to sponsor the product (e.g. Demi Moore), making their Christmas campaign very well-know in Spain.

Freixenet not only owns a large portfolio of different cavas and still wines, but it is also present in all the major markets around the world. It was interesting to see how the company's strategy vary geographically, were in markets such as the US Freixenet is sold as a premium product, and in Germany (where the average per capita consumption of cava is 6 bottles per year!), sales are price-driven. As well, the black bottle is popular in the UK, while the white one is in Spain.

To end this very interesting presentation on a high note, Freixenet generously donated very innovative bottles of MiniBlack cava -which have an attachable plastic device to drink it-, and we most say very popular among the IE students that tried it!

The Marketing of Freixenet has been the first event organized by this year IE Marketing Club. The Club´s members are Kysha Gibson (Club Coordinator), Alexander Corrie, Vanessa Espasa Sancho, Vygantas Tutlys, Deepanjan Mukherjee, Álvaro Carpio Colón, and Teresa Molina Talavera, all IMBA 2006.

The marketing club thanks Freixenet for a successful event!
For more information you may visit Freixenet’s official website: http://www.freixenet.es