Digital Marketing

RadioShack is set to debut a new advertising campaign in early February with the tag line, “do it together,” which is reminiscent of a long-running campaign that worked well for Lowe’s.

Lucky Charms cereal is marking its 50th anniversary with a 50-day celebration featuring its longtime mascot Lucky the leprechaun.

The celebration kicked off last night with a tribute ad featuring pop vocal sensation Pentatonix singing his jingle. The festivities will culminate on Lucky's 50th birthday. St. Patrick's Day, March 17. Throughout the 50-day celebration, surprises will pop up across the country and online.

Retailer assumptions that displaying faces, large text and the word “free” on their websites will draw customer attention may not be correct. Recent analysis from an eye-tracking study by neuroscience artificial intelligence technology provider EyeQuant shows all three of these assumptions are less true than many retailers think.

Chattanooga, Tenn. -- To increase control of its digital activities, SmartFurniture.com chose to implement a stable of proprietary and third-party analytics, campaign management, and optimization tools. However, the solutions lacked the functionality and flexibility necessary to capture, analyze, and transform data into actionable insights, so SmartFurniture.com expanded adoption of Adobe Marketing Cloud.

New York -- The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index, which tracks consumer cash flow as an indicator of future consumer spending, rose in December 2013. The Index, which comprises four components, tax burden, initial unemployment claims, real wages and real home prices, increased to 4.3 in December from 3.9 the prior month.

Although Starbucks’ profit in the first quarter rose a better-than-expected 25% to $540.7 million from $432 million in the year-ago period, same-store sales missed Wall Street expectations.

Same-store sales rose 5%, beneath Wall Street expectations of 5.9%. Revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 29, 2013 rose 12% to $4.24 billion from $3.79 billion.

Same-store sales in the Americas region also rose 5%, while analysts had expected a 6.4% increase.

The Michigan Retailers Association (MRA) said that Michigan's retail industry had a poor holiday shopping season thanks to damaging winter storms and “outdated government policies that favor out-of-state online companies.”

Retailers posted only a 0.1% average increase over last holiday season, according to the Michigan Retail Index, a joint project of MRA and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Toronto -- The HBC Department Store Group announced the launch of a new mobile shopping application for both its Hudson’s Bay and Lord & Taylor divisions that allows customers to instantly buy products seen in print by simply scanning an image.

HBC is partnering with Pounce, a mobile app that turns static print ads into instant digital storefronts by enabling customers to scan product images and complete a purchase in less than 30 seconds. It provides a secure, one-tap checkout, integrating with the retailer’s existing e-commerce system

Remember the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile? Well, the brand is offering a chance for people to “lease” the hot dog on wheels for eight hours via Twitter.

Participants must use hashtag #Tweet2Lease, and one winner will be chosen to get chauffeured around town for eight hours on the Wienermobile by the vehicle's drivers, known as Hotdoggers.

Wayfair, the largest online retailer of home furnishings and décor, has appointed Christiane Lemieux as executive creative director.

In her new role, Lemieux, previously founder and creative director of DwellStudio, will provide creative vision and counsel across the company’s growing portfolio of home brands, including Wayfair.com, AllModern, Joss & Main and DwellStudio. Lemieux will be responsible for developing new creative initiatives for Wayfair in the coming year.