Packaging

Burberry is teaming up with top-flight partners including movie studio Dreamworks and Google to deliver next-generation marketing campaigns that include interactive 3-D displays and real-time video promotions. [Media Post]

Life could be so much simpler for retailers and suppliers – and better for most consumers too – if federal lawmakers could find a way to grant the industry this one, not-so-simple, holiday wish.

Social commerce is evolving, which means the omnichannel world is changing, too. Even the mere definition of omnichannel is in flux as the lines between commerce and communication blur and new platforms proliferate.

It’s been a slow evolution, with many attempts to perfect social commerce resulting in failure. Will consumers ever have a world where commerce is one with their social experience? Right now the experience is a lot like being at a party, talking with friends, only to be interrupted by an uninvited guest trying to sell you fabric softener.

Lillian Vernon, who grew a home business selling monogrammed pocketbooks and belts, into one of America's best-known mail-order businesses, died on Monday. She was 88.

Vernon and her family came to the United States in 1937 as Jewish immigrants from Germany fleeing Hitler. She was newly married and pregnant with her first child when she started her business in 1951.

The Lillian Vernon Corp. was the first company owned by a woman to be listed on the American Stock Exchange, in 1987, according to the New York Times.

Consumer packaged goods companies eager to keep pace with shoppers’ desire for product ingredient transparency have embraced a major initiative branded as SmartLabel.

SmartLabel is the name given to an initiative spearheaded by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) that is designed to give consumers easy access to detailed information on ingredients and hundreds of other product attributes, such as whether food items contain ingredients from genetically modified sources.

Retailers and brands are increasingly going on YouTube and posting “unboxing” videos of happy customers opening products and then examining and celebrating their features and functions for the camera, says the New York Times. [New York Times]

Target is looking to generate excitement online this holiday season with a just-launched promotion aimed at shoppers who love subscription services like Birchbox.

Target has just launched a specially designed collection of boxes called Wonderpacks, which the retailer says are “meant to inspire and capture family fun.”

The kits, available on target.com, are curated and contain a combination of products to create experiences, from a game-packed road trip to sledding after sunset, the retailer says.

The man who built a retail empire by inspiring a generation of shoppers to stock their kitchens with garlic presses and soufflé pans has died.

Charles E. “Chuck” Williams, founder and director emeritus of Williams-Sonoma Inc., died of natural causes over the weekend, the company announced. He was 100 years old.

Retailers and brands are increasingly going on YouTube and posting “unboxing” videos of happy customers opening products and then examining and celebrating their features and functions for the camera, says the New York Times.

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