Please help us re-brand Visit Topeka, Inc and be entered into our giveaway drawing!

The short survey will take about five minutes. Upon completion, you will automatically be entered into a drawing for a free hotel package including: a one night stay at Senate Luxury Suites, a lavender sachet, two Ghost Tour tickets, $10 off at Brick Oven Courtyard Grille, two tickets to Great Overland Station and scratch-off tickets to Jersey Mike’s.

The winner will be drawn Monday, June 15. The winner will be contacted directly by phone and email, and will be announced via Twitter and the jhP Facebook Fan Page.

Click here to get started.

Thank you for your time!

On those Extreme Makeover shows, it’s fun when the family says, “Wow! You look so terrific, we almost wouldn’t recognize you!” But what if the makeover was SO extreme that the baffled husband said, “… who are you?” And the kids cried, “Where’s our mommy?” That’s exactly what happened to PepsiCo’s Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice products.

After a major package redesign, Tropicana sales dropped a whopping 20% between January 1 and February 22, 2009, according to AdAge.com. To stop the bleeding, PepsiCo, the parent company of Tropicana, trashed the new look and rushed back to the old design. So what went wrong?

1.) PepsiCo underestimated the value of package recognition.

Consumers knew Tropicana by its look. But when the re–branded packaging was put next to other orange juice brands (Minute Maid, Dole, etc.) nothing said to the consumer, “Hey! It’s me, your old friend Tropicana!” The key design elements that made Tropicana packaging iconic to loyal customers were either muted or missing. Consumers no longer recognized their favorite drink. They assumed it was gone and simply grabbed another brand.

2.) The redesign was too much too fast!

It’s often best to ease into a new logo or package design gradually. But Tropicana dove head first. The packaging changed so suddenly and radically that loyal customers looked right past it.

3.) The packaging was too generic.

Although the new packaging was attractive on the design board, it looked so bland on the shelf that it simply blended into the background. Loyal customers couldn’t distinguish between their favorite brand and generic orange juice brands.

4.) The new packaging made it hard to distinguish between varieties.

Whether you were looking for Tropicana’s No Pulp or Calcium variety, all the new packaging looked the same! Tropicana’s previous packaging had used different colors to successfully differentiate each variety. Even customers who figured out what Tropicana looked like now couldn’t find the taste they wanted.

On February 23, after losing millions of dollars in sales, PepsiCo announced they were ditching their new look and reverting to the previous package design. Clearly, they learned a valuable lesson or two. What would you have done differently if you were PepsiCo?

jones huyett Partners is proud to work with Meals on Wheels for one of their largest fundraisers, “Sumptuous Settings.” This year’s theme is “Windows to the Soul.”

The jhP team has produced creative elements for the event, including photographs, cards, and posters.

Everyone at jhP is honored to help Meals on Wheels with their efforts to feed elderly and homebound in Shawnee and Jefferson Counties. Please join us this weekend for Sumptuous Settings 2009!

Mindy Armstrong, jhP associate photographer, was recently awarded First Place for the Regional non–master group and First Place for the Kansas non–master group at the annual conference for the Heart of America Professional Photographers Association. At the conference, Mindy’s piece was compared against work by photographers from Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. Her winning image was titled “United We Stand,” and she took the photo in the summer of 2008 for the United Way of Greater Topeka’s 2008 campaign materials.

Mindy was also awarded a Gold ADDY from the American Advertising Federation of Topeka for the same image in February 2009. Mindy joined the jhP team in the fall of 2007. She has been a member of the Heart of America Professional Photographers Association since 2005.

Congratulations Mindy!

All Aboard!!!!! In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, jhP team members competed in the first annual Great Topeka Bed Race, sponsored by Housing & Credit Counseling Inc.

jhP determined early in the planning stages to do what we do best – be creative! Our theme was the Orangeland Express – to highlight our brand and Topeka’s history of being a railroad city. With the entire team on board we quickly created a train out of our bed with a fully functioning smoke stack that blew orange smoke.

A good time was had by all as our locomotive rolled along the parade route in downtown Topeka.