Marketing

As other retailers struggle with slipping sales, branding problems and public relations controversies — or, in some cases, all three — an opportunity emerges for the once-venerable company. Brand strategist David Brier of DBD International shows how J.C. Penney can seize it.

Webrooming is the practice of researching products online before going to a brick-and-mortar store for a final evaluation and purchase. For retailers, webrooming presents opportunities to provide shoppers with information they expect to receive online (e.g., product information, pricing, peer reviews, etc.), while maintaining control over the customer journey by showcasing the physical store experience as the consumer's final destination.

There's nothing see-through about how lululemon will overcome its recent image nightmare. Just sell more of the pants once they are no longer so sheer that nothing is left to the imagination, a Wall Street expert told TODAY on Thursday. There's no reason that the clothing maker, forced to withdraw the line because they failed the bend-over test, cannot survive that public relations disaster and also the loss of its charismatic CEO and a resulting stock plunge, Dana Telsey said.

In an effort to clean up its image following CEO Mike Jeffries' controversial comments regarding the type of people he would prefer to see donning his clothing, Abercrombie & Fitch

Niraj Shah, CEO of Wayfair (formerly CSN Stores), the Boston-based online seller of home furnishings, with 1,250 employees, a global presence, 2012 revenue of $600 million and a 40 percent growth rate, offered his four drivers of long-term retail success during a session at the 2013 Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago last week. They include the following:

A Fathead mistake turned into an opportunity for the brand. And for Reddit. Last week, a Reddit user posted an image of a Tim Tebow Fathead poster he'd purchased online. The thing is, the user ordered a Tom Brady Fathead. Naturally, he went to Reddit to complain. The post had 2,624 upvotes (the Reddit equivalent of a Facebook like) and 675 comments. It's the kind of attention a brand doesn't want to see when it screws up. 

After a disastrous rollout of an everyday low pricing model, J.C. Penney is now facing more controversy as it changes its prices yet again. The company is defending its return to coupons and discounts, saying they're popular with consumers. Yet the Plano, Texas-based retailer has been caught putting more expensive price tags on top of cheaper ones. "That's awful," shopper Sue Jackson said when News 8 showed her a men's shirt with a $50 sticker hiding a $30 price. "I never thought they would do that, especially after all the trouble they just had."

eBay is debuting new "shoppable window" virtual stores over the course of this month and next to help retailer Fifth & Pacific Companies sell its new line of Kate Spade Saturday clothing on window display screens measuring 9 feet by 2 feet, which cover the windows of closed stores and allow passersby to browse and order a catalog of 30 items for same-day delivery.

Although tens of millions of children haven't finished the school year, Madison Avenue is already feverishly getting ready for the next one. Such front-running of seasonal milestones should no longer be surprising, given how marketers, retailers and media companies have been time-shifting the calendar to stimulate business related to holidays both official (Christmas) and unofficial (Super Bowl Sunday). Still, it may startle students when they see advertising asking them to buy clothing, school supplies and other merchandise for 2013-14 while they await final grades for 2012-13.

In a sweeping move to right the ship after former CEO Ron Johnson's failed attempt to reinvent the J.C. Penney brand and inject new life into the business, the company has adopted a bold new marketing strategy — hire its retired former CEO, whom Johnson replaced just about two years earlier, and quickly return to the deep discounts and doorbuster deals that originally got the brand into this mess. Wait. What?