AT&T executives set up a 100-day plan in mid-December to dramatically improve its much-criticized network in major cities, sources tell Niraj Sheth, hoping to improve coverage before Verizon comes out with its own iPhone.

So far, the plan seems to be falling short in meeting consumers' expectations. "They haven't fixed the network and they're going to see a huge exodus to Verizon" when it gets the iPhone, says Charter Equity Research managing director Edward Snyder.

But AT&T says its past problems with the iPhone have been a learning experience that any new carriers also will have to go through. AT&T is "managing volumes that no one else has experienced," points out CTO John Donovan, and he says it will continue to make improvements in coming months. Apple itself has re-jiggered the iPhones so that they put less of a load on the AT&T network for some simple but frequent tasks such as finding the closest tower. Read the whole story...

The Chicago area is turning into a test ground for drive-through shopping, Sandra M. Jones reports. Analysts predict that the concept will be moving into the mainstream as baby boomers age and the Internet changes the way people shop.

Kmart turned a store in Joliet into a drive-through warehouse that it renamed MyGofer. Meijer has installed GroceryExpress drive-up windows at stores in St. Charles and Aurora. In Mount Prospect, a recently remodeled Walmart also has a drive-through.

Shoppers are comparing prices on the Internet and shopping 24 hours a day, says Rob Fleener, vp of business development at Meijer, and brick-and-mortar stores need to finds ways to compete against virtual merchants such as Amazon and eBay. A report from E-tailing Group last September found that 32% of shoppers ranked in-store pickups as valuable, up from 22% in 2008. Read the whole story...

Twin sisters in London have started an advocacy group called Pinkstinks to call attention to girls' toys that puts them "into a pretty little box" from birth while boys toys encourage them to explore and get dirty, Beth Gardiner reports.

Abi and Emma Moore, 38, are pressuring retailers to abstain from stocking traditional stereotypes. For example, they successfully pressured supermarket chain Sainsbury's to repackage a doctor Halloween costume that was labeled for boys and a nurse's outfit labeled for girls and to abstain from gender labeling in the future.

The issue clearly resonates beyond Britain, Gardiner points out. In the U.S., "it's kind of reached ridiculous proportions," says Lyn Mikel Brown, a Colby College professor and co-author of the book Packaging Girlhood. Pinkstinks, she says, "is using the color pink to get at something more complex, and that's the way girls are being packaged and sold, and sold out through marketing."

While Pinkstinks agitates online, a sister website, Cool To Be Me!, seeks kids' views on who their role models should be and highlights adult women's achievements. Read the whole story...

Transparency and corporate responsibility have become far more important to consumers, according to a recent survey by Landor Associates, Penn Schoen Berland and Burson-Marsteller. Despite the recession, 75% of consumers believe social responsibility is important, it found, and 55% say they would choose a product that supports a particular cause over similar products that don't.

"[Corporate social responsibility] can be the olive branch between struggling industries and consumers in cases where consumers are experiencing the highest expectations and the biggest let-downs," Scott Osman, global director of Landor's citizenship branding practice, tells Elena Malykhina.

Although the survey found that 70% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for products from socially responsible companies, there's a way to go in communication. More than half of consumers are unsure about the meaning of "corporate social responsibility." Of those who say they know what CSR means, 20% define it as "giving back to the local community" and 19% as "self-regulation and accountability." Read the whole story...

If Procter & Gamble continues to do what it has done to succeed in the past, it will not succeed in the future. That comes from no less an authority than president/CEO Bob McDonald in a video interview prior to P&G becoming the first corporate inductee to the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame. That's why P&G is always looking to lead change within the industry, McDonald says.

The next big thing? No real surprise there: Digital. "The end-point of marketing, or at least on the journey of marketing," McDonald says, "is a one-on-one relationship with any consumer." In the end, he'd like to be able to customize offerings for every one of the world's seven billion consumers, he says.

P&G group president-North America Melanie Healey amplifies that message by pointing out the emerging influence of social networks, not only among the young but also with their parents. "We're having some great successes across Facebook, across Google, across several other areas," she says. Global brand-building officer Marc Pritchard was also interviewed. Read the whole story...

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