Colorful Aircon

Until recently, you could buy an aircon in Japan in any color as long as it was white. Sanyo has changed this with the new Shikisaikan, which is available in seven colors.

As usual when large Japanese companies launch a new product, also Sanyo has started a competition. Such competitions are usually simple prize draws, but Sanyo has come up with a different approach based on blogs. Viewers of the site are asked to write an essay on an interior-related topic on their blog, and trackback to the Sanyo site. The best entry wins half a million yen - and Sanyo gets free data on the interior-related preferences of potential customers. While the instructions on how to take part are not very clear, and many bloggers might be not familiar with trackback, considering there are 3.35 million blogs in Japan and rising, such campaigns are probably set to become standard marketing tools in the future.