Kimberly-Clark is hiring Naked, New York, to help it and its agencies identify the best communications channels it can leverage to execute specific brand programs. Naked is media-channel neutral, so it will be able to assist K-C in exploring the best channels and outlets for specific brands, says Joey Mooring, a K-C representative. Tony Palmer, CMO at K-C, says that producing marketing efforts built around TV commercials is no longer relevant in today's business environment. "It is incumbent on clients to take an active role in reshaping the model," he says in a statement. Naked is not replacing …

Several dealership chains have begun giving their luxury-car showrooms multimillion-dollar makeovers with the goals of creating the look and feel of five-star hotels for customers, increasing the dealerships' car allocations and even making it less likely that rival dealerships will pop up nearby. AutoNation, for example, recently opened a gleaming glass-and-stone Lexus store in Palm Beach with a sales floor made of polished porcelain tile. Walls and counters are accented with cherry and bird's-eye maple veneer. "Guests"--as Lexus calls its customers--leave their cars with a valet and are then guided by a personal concierge to a European-style coffee bar …

Mickey Mouse and other Disney animated characters like "Cars" star Lightning McQueen and the Disney Princesses will beat the drum exclusively for Rayovac batteries as part of a wide-ranging deal between Rayovac's parent, Spectrum Brands and the Walt Disney Company. As part of the deal, Disney will buy millions of Rayovac batteries, which will become the only battery brand that can be bought by visitors at the six Disney theme parks and water parks in the United States. Spectrum will license from Disney the rights to use the animated characters on packages of Rayovac batteries sold at the …

Nanosolar--a San Jose maker of thin-film solar cells whose backers include Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page and eBay founder Jeff Skoll--will announce today that it has shipped its first product. The company, along with Beck Energy of Germany, won a competitive bidding process to create a solar farm on the site of a former landfill owned by a wastewater treatment plant in Luckenwalde, Germany. The facility will generate 1 megawatt of electricity, enough to power 750 California homes. Nanosolar creates a copper-based semiconductor compound to print a thin film of ink on foil. It's much cheaper than …

Americans are still the world's greatest consumers--they shell out four trillion dollars a year in retail spending--but it's surprisingly hard to make a lot of money selling them stuff. Retailers are undeniably good at the tricks of their trade. So why has retailing gotten so hard? In part, it's because of imitation: When one store hits on a useful gimmick, competitors copy it. But it's the Internet that's made the biggest difference, albeit not in the ways we often think. The Internet has changed how we shop by creating informed shoppers. In the past, retailers could make …

More than Valentine's Day and Mother's Day combined, Christmas is the season when scents translate into cents for the $3.96-billion fragrance industry. It pulls in one-third of its annual revenue in December, says Karen Grant, a beauty industry consultant for NPD Group. Women are the big spenders, buying perfume or cologne for other women or the men in their lives. Men account for less than one-quarter of fragrance purchases, Grant says. Few scents have a more faithful following than Chanel No. 5. First introduced in 1921, it's still among the five top-selling women's scents, according to Kline & Co. …