Digital Marketing

New York -- Polaroid has announced plans to launch a new experiential retail concept called Polaroid Fotobar, opening at least 10 locations in 2013. The stores are designed to allow consumers to take the images from their digital devices and easily turn them into museum-quality art. Polaroid Fotobar envisions the stores becoming a recreational and entertainment destination in addition to a place to shop.

Online holiday season sales grew 14% to $42.3 billion, a little short of comScore’s pre-season forecast.

The online measurement firm originally projected that online sales during the November and December period would increase 16% to $43.4 billion. However, after a strong start online sales fizzled a bit in early December and never quite regained enough momentum to achieve the firm’s earlier target.

After year of record online sales it’s not surprising that returns are also forecast to hit new highs, especially this week.

PLANO, Texas — Dr Pepper has launched its latest advertising campaign featuring real people and their “one-of-a-kind” stories.

Beyonce and Pepsi are reaching out to football fans to participate in a unique crowdsourcing initiative for this year’s Super Bowl halftime show.

Super Bowl XLVII is scheduled for February 3 in New Orleans and Beyonce is the featured entertainer for the Pepsi sponsored half time show. What’s different about this year’s event is the beverage brand and entertainer have issued an open call for fans to submit a poses that will be used in an opening video that welcomes Beyonce to the stage.

New York City -- Research results released Wednesday by Chase found that online holiday shopping sales for the season rose 15.2% year-over-year.

By event, the Chase Holiday Pulse reported that from Black Friday Nov. 23 through Friday, Nov. 30, year-over-year sales increased 22.5% and transactions increased 32.7%.

The way in which retailers market to consumers has undergone considerable change in recent years, particularly in light of the popularity of social media platforms. Indeed, social media has become essential to retailers’ marketing efforts, according to a recent BDO USA survey, which found that 86% of retail CMOs included social media in their holiday 2012 marketing plans.

Washington, D.C. -- The National Retail Federation on Wednesday was quick to shine a more positive light on holiday sales 2012, suggesting that reports of the worst holiday results since 2008 are not correct.

Matthew Shay, president of the NRF, said he's still predicting a 4.1% increase. "We're still pretty optimistic it's going to be a solid year," Shay said Wednesday on CNBC’s "Squawk on the Street." "We're still going to have year-over-year growth" of 4.1%. But that is down from 5.6% growth last year.