Sales & Marketing

Coca-Cola wants U.S. consumers to “Reach Up” to support the 2015 Special Olympics in Los Angeles.

The company has assembled a star-studded team to record a song for the games called “Reach Up,” which will be featured on Coke's social media channels. The song features rock band O.A.R., recording artist Cody Simpson, Breanna Bogucki, a singer and decorated Special Olympics athlete from Illinois who has Autism, and Madison Tevlin, a young Canadian woman with Down syndrome who became a viral sensation earlier this year.

New York — Gap stores have failed to keep up with the fashion tastes of millennial shoppers, who have a much different fashion sense than the generation before them, according to the Washington Post. Read the full story here.

Armonk, N.Y. — Retailers looking ahead to meeting the needs of holiday shoppers should be aware of the continuing growth of mobile’s importance as a consumer channel. According to IBM’s Eighth Annual Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report, mobile accounted for 23% of sales and 45% of traffic in November and December 2014, respectively.

Los Angeles - Marketing services company Connexity Inc. has acquired the PriceGrabber retail lead generation platform and network. The company will provide shopping leads that result in more than $2 billion in annual sales for retailers and brands.

PriceGrabber's shopping-focused publisher network offers more than 2,000 retailers marketing access to tens of millions of shoppers each month from online shopping destinations such as Yahoo!, Ask.com and PriceGrabber.com. Retailers will manage a single lead channel.

Retailers looking for ways to enhance the customer experience could learn from a new attraction at Hershey’s Chocolate World.

This summer, guests at Hershey’s Chocolate World will be treated to a delicious new Chocolate Tasting Experience, find their favorites in Hershey’s Largest Candy Store and mix their favorites at the new Amazing Candy Machine.

In the new Chocolate Tasting Experience, guests can immerse themselves in the flavorful world of chocolate tasting.

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Some people love pizza so much they get emotional about it. Now Domino’s Pizza is letting them express those emotions by placing preset delivery orders via pizza text emoji.

Customers who opt into Domino’s new mobile text ordering service and add their mobile number to their online “pizza profile” can also reorder their established Easy Order by texting the phrase “Easy Order.”

Shopko is continuing on its growth path with the opening of 15 new Shopko Hometown stores across eight states this July.

The new locations join 20 stores Shopko already opened earlier this year and more than 15 additional stores the company plans to open in October.

Seattle — Amazon.com is reportedly expanding the assortment of items eligible for free two-day shipping for members of its Prime paid subscription. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is now listing items shipped directly from third-party seller warehouses for free Prime two-day shipping, without any publicity.