Target is announcing plans today to give customers a 5-cent discount for every reusable bag they use to pack their purchases.

"Where the Wild Things Are" is becoming the hipster equivalent of "Star Wars," writer Cliff Kuang tells NPR's Guy Raz, because the marketing "has been clearly directed to adults of a certain savvy, sort of city-centric set." If you're a fan of Spike Jonze or Dave Eggers, or are familiar with Karen O of the indie band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who wrote the score, you might be one of them. Perhaps taking a page from athletic shoe marketers who release limited-edition sneakers to create buzz, the movie's marketers have released "very, very limited-edition clothing. Actually, it's sort of …

Scott Anthony retells a back-to-basics-but-nonetheless-instructive anecdote gleaned from Melanie Healey, the group president of North America for Procter & Gamble, at a conference he moderated last week. In the 1990s, Healey was a P&G brand manager in Brazil responsible the Hipoglos brand of diaper rash ointments. The problem was that the product had 99% household penetration. So, "Healey did what good P&G people do -- she went out to talk to consumers to find out what they thought about the product, the problem it addressed, and so on," Anthony writes. It turns out that consumers weren't …

Andrea Chang takes a look at some of the pop-up stores that have appeared in Southern California recently, including one opened by Gap on trendy Robertson Boulevard to promote its new premium denim line that drew Halle Berry and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz to its launch party. And Toys R Us has leveraged the space glut caused by the recession by grabbing dozens of temporary locations around the country to launch Holiday Express toy shops. "Once we learn more about where these work and how these work, we'll be able to maintain a pop-up strategy in good times and bad," …

Todd Wasserman takes a look at the way that athletic shoe marketers have been going out of their way to stir up chatter about their brands among bloggers known as "sneakerheads" and asks if this is the future of marketing. He refers to Malcolm Gladwell's 2001 book The Tipping Point, which postulates that ideas get spread and movements grow when people who know a lot of people -- called "connectors" -- cross paths with "mavens." "Nine years down the line, it seems that the connectors are unnecessary," Wasserman writes. "Give mavens a blog and access to Facebook or …

Wal-Mart's redesigned, less-clutter-filled shopping environment may be making the aisles easier to navigate for shoppers but removing millions of square feet of prime merchandising space is also having a negative impact on sales, Jack Neff reports. "Project Impact," as the five-year push is called, includes updated signage, new layouts with wide-open aisles, more space for categories such as electronics and baby care, lower fixtures and an all-around brighter appearance. But is also removes pallet-sized merchandising displays featuring stuffed goodies like $5 DVDs and health and beauty aids, which some analysts feel is partly responsible for a substantial slowdown in …

The PepsiCo brand will replace Bridgestone beginning with the Oct. 25 game at London's Wembley Stadium between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New England Patriots.

Meanwhile, "Current TV" host Sarah Haskins' "Target Women" lampoons marketing strategies aimed at the female demographic, fragrant or otherwise (Don't miss the episode on "contraptions" currently running on the Web site.) Rebecca Roberts talks with the comedienne about why sponges in TV commercials have sexy male accents, mops end up in desperate love triangles, and all women wear pearls.