Digital Marketing

Sports Authority has kicked off its 2013 holiday ad campaign, “There’s Nothing Like the Gift of Sport.” The campaign’s message may resonate with those who are already athletically inclined, but will face challenges with XBox One or PlayStation4 aficionados.

The campaign seeks to persuade people to “unplug” this holiday season and embrace sports, a move which has the potential of generating traffic in stores and online as people shop for everything from sneakers and workout clothes to fitness equipment and sports gear.

New York -- The hot social-sharing site Pinterest has released its first API for developers. It will help stores and brands display which of their items were most frequently and recently pinned. The first partners for the service include Zappos, Walmart, Disney, and Nestle, reflecting how the site is looking to increase revenue generation with advertising and cross-marketing. (An API, short for application programming interface, is code that allows developers to create apps that interface with a popular web service or other software.)

Washington, D.C. -- Up to 140 million people plan to or will shop over this Thanksgiving weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday), a slight decrease from the 147 million who planned to do so last year. According to a new survey from the National Retail Federation (NRF), Black Friday will be the biggest day of the weekend: 69.1% plan to shop on Black Friday, or approximately 97 million shoppers.

Santa Clara, Calif. – Multiple media reports indicate that computer chip manufacturer Intel plans to open a number of pop-up stores selling electronic devices using Intel chips. John Wallace, business line manager of mobile and communications for Intel, announced at a Nov. 13 press event that the company will open its first “Intel Experience” store in the NoLita (North of Little Italy) neighborhood of New York City on Nov. 23.

Naperville, Ill. – OfficeMax is opening most stores at 8 p.m. local time on Thanksgiving night. OfficeMax.com will start offering online Black Friday deals at 12:01 a.m. EST Thanksgiving morning.

The OfficeMax Black Friday shopping event will take place for three days from Thursday, Nov. 28 through Saturday, Nov. 30 in stores and at OfficeMax.com. OfficeMax.com will also host a special online-only, pre-Black Friday sales event at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 27.

OfficeMax plans to open most of its stores at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving night. Meanwhile, its e-commerce site will begin offering online Black Friday deals at 12:01 a.m. EST Thanksgiving morning.

The OfficeMax Black Friday shopping event will take place for three days from Thursday, Nov. 28 through Saturday, Nov. 30 in stores and online. OfficeMax.com will also host a special online-only, pre-Black Friday sales event at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 27.

New research from the National Retail Federation sheds light on how 140 million Americans plan to shop during the Thanksgiving weekend.

According to a new survey from the National Retail Federation, Black Friday will be the biggest day of the weekend: 69.1% plan to shop on Black Friday, or approximately 97 million shoppers.

HSN is a shining example of a retailer that successfully reinvented itself to become a $3 billion interactive multichannel operator and in the process shattered perceptions about what a career in retail looks like.
 

North Plainfield, N.J. -- Forty-three percent of respondents to Levin Management’s annual pre-holiday retail sentiment survey believe that their holiday sales will peak prior to and during the Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend sales period. In other notable results, 43.6% of respondents’ companies plan to open new stores in 2014 – a significant jump from 23% in last year’s pre-holiday poll and 35.9% the previous year.

Swansea, Ill. -- CrowdSource, a leading provider of managed crowdsourcing solutions, announced it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire San Francisco-based Servio, a competitor in the enterprise crowdsourcing industry. The acquisition will strengthen CrowdSource’s client portfolio, expand its workforce and augment its current service offerings.