Digital Marketing

New York – Barneys New York keeps expanding its use of  social media. The luxury retailer will enable customers to shop directly from a link embedded in its official Instagram account. Utilizing technology from Like2Buy, the feature will link customers to shoppable Instagram images which connect to the Barneys e-commerce site.

Home furnishings retailer West Elm has named a new senior vice president of design for its retail, catalog and online channels.

The company says Johanna Uurasjarvi will lead the product design team and report to West Elm President Jim Brett.

Bringing more than 20 years of fashion design experience and a lifetime of passion for design and global craft, Uurasjarvi joins West Elm from the lifestyle brand, Anthropologie, where she was the executive creative director of product design.

Membership buying club DirectBuy Inc. takes an unusual approach to retailing. It offers paid members the chance to directly purchase goods from manufacturers and wholesalers, without paying retail markup

So perhaps it is to be expected that 50-plus-store DirectBuy, which also offers online and in-home shopping options to its 250,000-plus members, approaches business intelligence (BI) a little differently, as well.

Foot Locker is teaming up with ASICS on a creative campaign that tells the life story of runners on film.

The "Real Lives. Real Runners." campaign will provide a platform for runners to capture and share their stories. Building on the successful 2014 "All Runners Welcome" campaign from Foot Locker and ASICS, "Real Lives. Real Runners." invites filmmakers to identify authentic runners and document in a short film why they run and how running impacts their lives.

Spartanburg, S.C. – Denny’s is partnering with 20th Century Fox on an omnichannel promotion for the upcoming movie “Fantastic Four.” The Denny’s Instagram channel will be posting a series of exclusive clips for followers throughout the partnership.

Somerville, Mass. – Almost all (91%) of marketers either use or intend to use personalization for online customer interactions within the next year. According to a new survey from real-time personalization provider Evergage, nearly one in two marketers surveyed (49%) intends to increase their budgets for personalization in the year ahead, with 80% planning to increase them significantly (by more than 10%).

Coca-Cola wants U.S. consumers to “Reach Up” to support the 2015 Special Olympics in Los Angeles.

The company has assembled a star-studded team to record a song for the games called “Reach Up,” which will be featured on Coke's social media channels. The song features rock band O.A.R., recording artist Cody Simpson, Breanna Bogucki, a singer and decorated Special Olympics athlete from Illinois who has Autism, and Madison Tevlin, a young Canadian woman with Down syndrome who became a viral sensation earlier this year.

St. Louis — Panera Bread has unveiled a new national omnichannel advertising platform. Developed in collaboration with the Anomaly agency, the "Food as it should be" campaign includes national television spots, billboards, radio advertising and digital and display content that will begin to air this week.