Marketing Tactics

Hasbro is getting ready to host the 2014 National School Scrabble Tournament, which will be held from April 26-27 at the company’s new Providence, R.I., facility, One Hasbro Place. Scrabble enthusiasts, in fourth through eighth grades, are invited to compete for the $10,000 top prize.

Seattle - Starbucks Coffee Company has named Starbucks Canada executive VP and president Annie Young-Scrivner as executive VP and president, Teavana. Nine-year retail operations executive and employee resources senior VP Rossann Williams has been appointed senior VP and president, Starbucks Canada.

Teavana founder and CEO Andy Mack, having helped with the integration of Teavana with Starbucks, has decided to retire from the company.

Lexington, Mass. – Vertical footwear retailer Keds is launching an omni-channel marketing campaign called the “Keds Brave Life Project.” The campaign is aimed at encouraging positive development of girls and young women.

Lowe's is renewing its partnership with Habitat for Humanity International. A new five-year, $23.5 million donation will bring Lowe's total contributions to more than $63 million since 2003 and is the company’s largest corporate donation to date.

Along with the funding, Lowe's pledged the continued support of Lowe's Heroes employee volunteers. In the past decade, Lowe's employees have donated thousands of volunteer hours in support of Habitat's work.

Never one to let an opportunity to bash Walmart go to waste, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) associate director Robin Williams did just then when she was named to the NAACP board.

Williams, a 17-year UFCW veteran, was named to the 62-member board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Feb. 13. Williams leads UFCW’s civil rights and community action department and said it was an honor to join the board of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

Atlanta – More than 50% of brands don’t have a strategy in place to manage responses to social media complaints from customers. Results of a recent survey conducted by Social Media Marketing University (SMMU) shows that 58.2% of brands receive customer complaints via social media “occasionally,” 10.9% receive them “somewhat often” and 4.9% receive them “very often.”

In total, almost 75% of brands receive social media complaints. In addition, survey results show:

Vancouver, Canada – Lululemon Athletica Inc. is reportedly ending its ban on customers who have resold its goods on sites such as EBay and Amazon.com from purchasing items on its e-commerce site. According to Bloomberg, Lululemon instituted the policy to stop consumers from purchasing and reselling merchandise in bulk, but is rescinding it after a large volume of customer complaints.

Washington, D.C. - More Americans this year are expected to put their tax returns in the bank. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF)’s Tax Returns Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, 46% of those expecting a refund this year will put their money into savings, up from 44% last year and the highest percent in the survey’s history.