Marketing Tactics

Leading beauty products manufacturer Elizabeth Arden is the latest company to cite an intensely promotional marketplace as the reason for worse-than-expected holiday season sales and profits.

The company said sales for its second quarter ended Dec. 31, would be in the range of $414 to $418 million and earnings per share would be between $1.13 and $1.16, substantially below sales of $468 million and earnings of $1.47 during the same period the prior year.

Matrix, a professional hair care and hair color company that is a subsidiary of L'Oréal USA, is aiming to transform the professional hair styling experience with a new program that features Google Glass.

Leading beauty products manufacturer Elizabeth Arden is the latest company to cite an intensely promotional marketplace as the reason for worse-than-expected holiday season sales and profits.

The company said sales for its second quarter ended Dec. 31, would be in the range of $414 to $418 million and earnings per share would be between $1.13 and $1.16, substantially below sales of $468 million and earnings of $1.47 during the same period the prior year.

Hershey is launching a new line of chocolate spreads, called Hershey's Spreads. The spreads will be available in three varieties: Chocolate, Chocolate with Almond and Chocolate with Hazelnut.

New York - The volume of emails sent by marketers increased nearly 13% during the 2013 holiday season compared with the 2012 holiday season, which also saw record highs in volume. Data from Experian Marketing Services shows that while email click-through rates and transaction metrics decreased year over year, the increase in email volume led to a 9% rise in the number of total transactions from email marketing campaigns and an 18.4% increase in overall revenue.

The Container Store has kicked off a new purpose-driven marketing campaign focused on its values-based approach to business and conscious capitalism with full-page national newspaper ads as well as videos on the company’s new YouTube Channel.

Campbell Soup Company is marking the 80th birthday of its iconic Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle soup.

Originally launched as Campbell’s Condensed “Noodle with Chicken” soup, it was the first soup of its kind and is still going strong after nearly a century. According to the company, Americans purchased more than 200 million cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup in 2013.

Best Buy’s defense of its market share proved costly during the holidays as greater-than-expected price cuts caused same-store sales to decline 0.9%, resulting in significant margin erosion and a vow to accelerate cost-cutting efforts in 2014.

Total sales for the nine-week period ended Jan. 4 declined slightly to $11.5 billion, with the domestic segment accounting for $9.75 billion of those sales. While domestic same store sales fell 0.9%, the company can take some comfort in the fact that its online comps increased 23.5%.