Marketing

Since February, CVS Caremark has been pushing its pharmacists to enroll customers in a prescription drug rewards program. The benefit to customers is the opportunity to earn up to $50 a year in store credits that can be used to buy shampoo, toothpaste or other products. The benefit to CVS is persuading pharmacy customers, through questionable means, to give up federal privacy safeguards for their medical information and permitting the company to share people's drug purchases with others.

A J.C. Penney back-to-school ad that implies kids will be friendless unless they wear the right clothing is promoting bullying, charged a flurry of critics on social media this week. "Your ad about cool kids wearing J.C. Penney clothes, showing a child sitting alone at lunch is despicable," fired off one Facebook user. Another added, "How clueless are you? What a horrible bully-promoting commercial." Twitter users have called it "tone deaf" and "more self-immolation" for the company. The ad was posted online by the retailer in late July and aired as part of a TV campaign earlier this summer. 

Apparel brand Hanes is asking women a question that might get it smacked in a bar: What color underwear are you wearing? According to the brand, the question is part of a campaign that taps into a millennial desire to share while also ensuring consumers know about a new range of color, pattern and silhouette options. The discussion, Hanes’ Undercover Color campaign, takes place on Twitter. The Undercover Color website also showcases underwear color trends by region and individual color pages for yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue and green. It launched July 29.

Those beer-crate nightstands and makeshift curtains are starting to disappear from U.S. colleges as retailers push more-upscale dorm furnishings for the back-to-school season. Dozens of retailers, from Target Corp and Williams-Sonoma Inc's Pottery Barn to boutique website Dormify.com, are marketing aggressively to the college crowd this year. Using oversized catalogs, social media and temporary stores set up near colleges, they are offering everything for the picture-perfect dorm room, including monogrammed towels, state-of-the art storage containers and color-coordinated curtains and pillows.

Target has begun a full-scale push to promote its mobile app, which touts features such as daily deals and product reviews. In this recent video, the retailer uses a busy mom scenario to explain the ways the app can make shopping easier, like built-in shopping lists as well as store and item locators.

Consumer spending is a key indicator of the nation's overall economic health. It's also acutely important for the financial health of retailers, who faced a tepid first half in 2013 and now turn their hopes to the back-to-school season — their second busiest time of year after the holiday season. "We thought there would be pent up demand in the second quarter of 2013, but we didn't see that demand manifest," says Jan Rogers Kniffen, CEO of J Rogers Kniffen WWE.

To capture and capitalize on mobile traffic growth, retailers are eagerly looking for ways to optimize their digital marketing campaigns across various devices. As a result, top investment priorities include a few tried-and-true favorites: email and paid search. According to the Shop.org/Forrester Research study, The State Of Retailing Online 2013: Marketing & Merchandising, nearly nine in 10 (87 percent) online retailers surveyed either already have implemented or are planning to implement mobile email optimization in in 2013, and seven in 10 will optimize paid search for smartphones and tablets (71 percent and 73 percent, respectively). 

Office Depot is directing its back-to-school marketing efforts at teachers by offering them an online tool to help them plan and prepare for the academic year. The retailer is

Competing with an e-commerce Goliath like Amazon.com can be a daunting task, but specialty merchants have some distinct advantages, including the capacity to forge strong ties with shoppers through a brand community. Amazon's online warehouse of products offers little to unite customers around a common lifestyle or passion. By focusing on a particular product category, value proposition or audience, you can provide meaningful interaction and a shopping experience to connect your customers with other like-minded consumers.

Making the most of peak selling seasons today requires technologies that not only simplify store shopping, but also tightly interweave it with omnichannel retailing's digital touchpoints. Major retailers including Sears, DSW, Cabela's and Pier 1 Imports have made significant IT investments that are designed to provide a big return on investment during the 2013 holiday season.