Digital Marketing

By Joe Tichar, senior VP of corporate operations, DDR, Beachwood, Ohio

Forward-thinking retailers are increasingly leveraging their brick-and-mortar locations to establish omnichannel models that meet the growing consumer demand for a more convenient, more cost-effective and more personalized shopping experience.
 

Under Armour has enlisted Gisele Bundchen for the latest chapter of its “I Will What I Want” campaign. Bundchen is making her debut for the brand in a film and interactive digital experience.

The brand said that its campaign continues to celebrate women’s inner and outer strength and highlights its commitment to design innovative products for female athletes and athletic females.

New York - Saks Fifth Avenue is launching a user-generated content hub on Saks.com called #SaksStyle. Created by Curalate on its Fanreel image integration platform, #SaksStyle will function as a daily go-to guide for fashion inspiration created solely by Saks customers, highlighting products purchased from Saks Fifth Avenue locations nationwide and online.

Amazon has rolled out KDP Kids, a program designed to help children’s book authors prepare, publish and promote both illustrated and chapter books in Kindle Stores worldwide.

Children’s book authors can use Amazon’s new Kindle Kids’ Book Creator tool to create illustrated children’s books that take advantage of Kindle features like text popups. Once the book is ready, authors can upload it to KDP, and use KDP’s category, age and grade range filters to help Amazon customers choose the right books for their kids.

New York -- With U.S. social commerce sales expected to reach $14 billion by 2015 and social networks like Twitter and Facebook ramping up their commerce capabilities, a survey by global marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi, and conducted online by Harris Poll, shows that while only 5% of Americans have made a purchase on a social media site, 20% would consider doing so.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. - Kmart is offering a no-money-down layaway program to members of the Shop Your Way loyalty program for the holiday season, starting Sept. 4. Kmart's layaway program includes both online and in-store contracts for coveted items across dozens of merchandise categories, including apparel, home, toys and electronics.

Kmart is also running a new ad for the program both on TV and YouTube.

Saks Fifth Avenue continues to step up its digital efforts with its launch of a user-generated content hub called #SaksStyle.

Created by Curalate on its Fanreel image integration platform, #SaksStyle will function as a daily go-to guide for fashion inspiration created solely by Saks customers, highlighting products purchased from Saks Fifth Avenue locations nationwide and online.

Sterling, Va. - Neustar Inc., a provider of real-time information services and analytics, has entered a partnership with comScore Inc. that will give marketers a unified marketing solution incorporating comScore’s validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) ad validation metrics in its offering. The partnership builds on Neustar PlatformOne’s capabilities and partner ecosystem and enhances its ability to provide marketers with the visibility needed to measure and optimize digital campaigns.