Marketing Tactics

Dunkin’ Donuts creates summer soundtrack
Canton, Mass. - Dunkin' Donuts is partnering with Spotify to celebrate summer musically. The campaign kicks off July 21 with a summer concert series that will span five cities, featuring five different emerging artists at pop-up concerts in high-traffic public areas.

The first show, today in Philadelphia, features Marian Hill. Additional artists to be determined will perform in Miami, Chicago, New York and Boston throughout the coming weeks.
J.C. Penney crosses channels for back to school
Plano, Texas – The J.C. Penney Co. Inc. is launching a back-to-school marketing campaign that crosses multiple channels. The campaign will be supported by ads on TV, in Seventeen magazine, direct mail, preprints, broadcast and streaming video.

All marketing elements will be housed on a back-to-school hub at the Penney website, which includes a mix-and-match game that allows kids and teens to assemble different pieces to create their own style mash-up.

BucketFeet seeks better store understanding with RetailNext

Chicago – Specialty footwear retailer BucketFeet, which launched online in 2011 and entered the world of brick-and-mortar retailing with its first stores (called “studios” in 2013), is seeking to better understand studio shoppers. BucketFeet is partnering with store analytics provider RetailNext to help extend its brick-and-mortar service and shopper experience capabilities.
Character is key for back-to-school shoppers

Austin, Texas – Parents are always telling their school-aged children that character is key, and they also apply a version of that maxim to back-to-school shopping. According to a recent survey by RetailMeNot, parents say their kids want school supplies featuring popular characters from films and TV shows.

Respondents indicated their children want "Minions"-themed school supplies the most (33%) followed by "Jurassic World" (31%), "SpongeBob" (24%) and "Star Wars" (22%).
Parents will spend, seek savings for back to school

Grand Rapids, Mich. – Back-to-school shoppers are both willing to spend more and also seeking savings this season. According to a new survey that department store chain Meijer conducted of its customers, approximately 92% of households with school-age children plan to spend the same amount or more than the previous year for back-to–school supplies.
How retailers can avoid fake omnichannel

Retailers today are in a constant search for the industry’s Holy Grail – delivering an omnichannel brand experience across all touchpoints. Unfortunately, this quest to deliver on the promise of the omnichannel experience has given rise to a troublesome and pervasive problem known as fake omnichannel or “’fomni.”

Amid their search, retailers confront a wide array of commerce-related software solutions masquerading as omnichannel and promising to provide the type of seamless experiences shoppers now expect.
Gymboree colors the world for kids

Gymboree is launching a colorful new campaign aimed at increasing awareness of a cause near and dear to the heart of its core customers.

The retailer has started a new effort to raise money in Gymboree and Gymboree Outlet stores to fund arts and crafts requests made by teachers on DonorsChoose.org. The goal is to fulfill classroom requests in every county where there is a Gymboree retail location.
TigerDirect hosts ultimate geek contest

TigerDirect is encouraging consumers to unleash their inner geek with 18th annual PC Race.

The retailer has partnered with Intel to host the competition, which is set to kick off at QuakeCon 2015 in Dallas from July 23 to July 26. The first contestant to assemble and boot their high performance PCs in each regional race will win an all expenses paid trip to Miami to compete in the National Finals on Nov. 6 during Tech Bash.
Back-to-school is omnichannel at JCPenney

JCPenney Co. is launching a back-to-school marketing campaign that covers all the bases of omnichannel retailing.
XRC Labs: Designing the future of retail innovation

Free flowing venture capital dollars in the digital age have made business incubators and accelerators commonplace, but until now the retail and consumer packaged goods industry didn’t have one it could call its own.
NRF: Facebook ranks No. 1 for retail sales

While paid search and email marketing still top retailers’ lists of effective customer acquisition channels, social media has moved up the ranks to become an important tool for engaging with and attracting new customers.
Meijer surveys back-to-school shoppers

With back-to-school shopping on the horizon, parents are looking to get their shopping started early in the hope of getting the best deals, according to Meijer’s customer survey.