• Disney Turns Off Mobile Phone Service Aimed At Families
    Walt Disney Co. is shutting down its mobile phone service that enables parents to monitor their children's phone usage or restrict the times of day or the days of the week when the phones work. The phones also use a global positioning system that enables parents to track a child's whereabouts. Launched in June 2006, Disney Mobile will close at the end of the year. The decision -- coming a year after Disney suspended a similar niche offering, Mobile ESPN -- illustrates the challenges of competing with national wireless carriers that own their networks. Disney leased its network capacity …
  • Wal-Mart Targets Younger Demo With Latest Rx Cuts
    Wal-Mart yesterday added seven new compounds to the list of drugs it sells for $4 that may give a glimpse of the future at its pharmacies. The company seems to be reaching out to a younger and broader clientele as it tries to expand its presence in the $250 billion retail drug market beyond its current share of 5% to 6%. Many of the drugs previously on the Wal-Mart plan were heart, high blood pressure and diabetes drugs commonly used by older people. But now it is adding methylphenidate -- a drug for attention deficit and hyperactivity …
  • Reebok Gives Playing Time To Yao Ming
    After having lured Houston Rockets star Yao Ming away from Nike in 2003 with a 10-year contract paying up to $10 million a year, Reebok is now utilizing the standout center in an advertising campaign in his native country. Using a theme called "Fuel Yao's Unlimited Power," a slew of television and digital ads encourage Chinese consumers to support their hero as he prepares for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Four years after signing Yao, Reebok is in sixth place in China's athletic-shoe market, far behind rivals, including the leader, Nike, Puma AG Rudolf Dassler Sport and …
  • Chevron Launching $15-Million Integrated Image Campaign
    Chevron is launching a $15-million integrated global corporate marketing blitz--"The Power of Human Energy"--that aims to humanize the oil giant and its employees. A series of TV commercials breaks this Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes" with a 2:30 spot dubbed "Untapped Energy" with a montage filmed in 13 countries. The spot discusses the debate over oil, energy and the environment. It also shows snippets of Chevron's 58,000 "citizens of the world," who are "husbands and wives and part-time poets" and ultimately "the greatest source of energy in the world." Helen Clark, Chevron's manager of corporate brand and …
  • Home Depot Gift Cards Incorporate Instructional DVDs
    Home Depot is entering the holiday shopping season with a broad gift card initiative that includes rectangular plastic that double as DVDs and holiday themes. The pre-paid cards will feature 25-minute how-to-videos of home improvement tasks, like how to install a faucet. Graphics on the cards will flag one of seven do-it-yourself projects demonstrated by an employee. Home Depot's gift card rack also will include Coca-Cola's Polar Bears. Once activated, the cardholder can redeem the plastic at the store for a free 20-ounce bottle of Coke products. The pre-paid card lineup also will sport religious themes, such …
  • In-Store Spending Is Fastest Growing Medium
    A new study by Deloitte Consulting says that retailers and package-goods marketers have doubled their expenditures in "shopper marketing" during the past three years alone, making its compound annual growth even faster than Internet advertising. Despite the growth, shopper marketing still lacks any generally accepted definition, a draft report notes. Views vary on whether trade promotion, private-label marketing by retailers or advertising that occurs outside the store but directed at a retailer's shoppers should be included. Officially, the report opts for the broadest possible definition: "All marketing stimuli designed to engage the shopper, build brand equity and lead him/her …
  • Cell Phone Will Allow Cheaper International Calling
    Cubic Telecom, a small Irish company, is releasing what it's calling the first global mobile phone in early October. It makes calls to or from 214 countries for 50% to 90% off what the big carriers charge. Cubic is also offering a service at MaxRoam.com, where consumers can obtain phone numbers in up to 50 cities that overseas friends can use to call their cell phone at local rates. Cubic's cheap global dialing has nothing to do with the $140 phone. The magic is in the SIM card, the memory card that determines a customer's account information. For $40, …
  • Pharma Firms, FDA Form Group To Study New Drugs
    Several of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration are setting up the nonprofit Serious Adverse Event Consortium to study why some people are predisposed to dangerous drug interactions and serious illness when taking new prescriptions. Founders of the organization include Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. Its office will be based in Deerfield, Il. Drug companies, which have large databases of reports from patients and doctors on how their drugs interact with patients, say they will use information to conduct studies to map "genetic markers" linked to serious adverse events. But because …
  • Nolita Campaign Featuring Nude Anorexic Draws Fire
    An ad campaign from the Italian label Nolita that is using images of a nude, emaciated 27-year-old woman with the line "No. Anorexia" is cranking up the volume in a debate that many in the fashion industry have tried to keep silent. A number of fashion trade groups have been trying to clean up the industry's image by pushing designers to use healthier, heavier-looking models. But the Nolita campaign has alienated some of the very people who champion the cause. It has also stirred up controversy over whether the brand is raising awareness about anorexia or just profiting …
  • Study: Best CMOs Share 6 Traits
    An ongoing study conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) demonstrates that growth in revenue and profitability is strongest among those companies that elevate marketing's role to the strategic level. In interviews with 15 chief marketing officers from some of the top marketing organizations worldwide--captured in the recently published "CMO Thought Leaders: the Rise of the Srategic Marketer"--six common themes emerged. The best CMOs: 1. Put the consumer at the heart of marketing 2. Make marketing accountable 3. Embrace the challenges of new media 4. Recognize the new organizational imperative 5. Live …
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