Procter & Gamble is planning to spend $60 million to get the word out about Total Care, a sub-brand for Tide and Downy that borrows a number of ingredients typically found in beauty care products to help clothes stay fresh looking after 50 washes. "We've looked to our beauty care lines for inspiration in the past," says Kash Shaikh, a representative for P&G. "But this is really the first time we've embraced this idea of elevating the category from fabric care to fashion care." Tide advertising will focus on the "seven signs of beautiful clothes." Ads will promote …

Chrysler has launched a special division called ENVI -- pronounced "envy" -- to bring electric-drive vehicles and related advanced-propulsion technologies to market. "ENVI is currently developing electric vehicles for the three Chrysler brands and is planning on product within three to five years," says spokesman Nick Cappa. The move comes as some dealers quietly question why Chrysler is not stepping up efforts to bring more hybrid technology to market quicker in light of $4-a-gallon gasoline and tanking SUV and truck sales. Some say they've been told not to expect the bulk of the automaker's lineup to have a hybrid …

Ocean Spray built its entire business around a single fruit, the cranberry. While it added grapefruit in 1976, the name "Ocean Spray" remains synonymous with cranberry, and it represents what has become a virtual cranberry monopoly. Ocean Spray is a cooperative owned by about 650 cranberry growers throughout North America (plus about 100 grapefruit growers). The story begins with three cranberry growers from Massachusetts and New Jersey who wanted to expand the market for their crop. Ocean Spray's flagship product, Cranberry Juice Cocktail was introduced in 1930. But it is continuous brand expansion that keeps Ocean Spray ahead …

In an effort to clamp down on so-called ambush marketers, the Chinese government says it will restrict advertising space in Beijing, giving preference to the official sponsors of the Olympic Games. Nike, which has broad marketing ambitions in China but no qualifying sponsorship deal, is one advertiser that is likely to suffer. The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, which is known as Bocog, has asked advertising agencies to avoid using Olympic symbols without authorization and is asking media companies to carry ads of Olympic sponsors on their channels featuring Olympic content. Nike and Olympic sponsor Adidas …

Reacting to a sales decline -- and a rare misreading of the market -- Toyota is speeding its decision to shuffle production sites for several vehicles and to bring assembly of the world's most popular hybrid, the Prius, to the United States. It will assemble the Prius at a plant it is building in Blue Springs, Miss., starting in 2010. It was to assemble the Toyota Highlander SUV there, but that car-based vehicle will instead be built in Princeton, Ind. "It definitely makes sense to produce the vehicle here, which is the biggest market for the Prius," says Mike …

Increased competition -- both from new domestic competitors such as Bud Light Lime and Miller Chill, as well as stronger import brands -- are taking a toll on Corona Extra sales, executives at the brand's U.S. importer now admit. Earlier, they had blamed a price increase. There has been "some impact from new competitive product introductions," Rob Sands, CEO of Constellation Brands, which owns 50% of Corona importer Crown Imports, recently told Wall Street analysts. That's a significant change from Sands' story two months earlier, when he said, "our people have said that they didn't think that the Bud …

More and more often, we see tired brands being put out to pasture and replaced by presumably better ones. Although weakened brands may have lost their currency, there is often life left in them in the form of embedded equity and a remaining core of loyal consumers. Many brands have been successfully revitalized, such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Johnnie Walker, Olay, and Ford's Mustang. Most brand managers will eventually have to make the decision either to stay the course or to abandon ship. As tempting as starting anew is, it carries its own risks. But the price of …