• Walgreens Offering Pet Care In Boston
    A Florida veterinary company, ShotVet, is partnering with Walgreens to offer lower-cost, walk-up clinics for dogs and cats in the parking lots of about 50 of the drugstore chain's Massachusetts stores. ShotVet will visit each participating Walgreens for an hour each month with a vet, technician and "client educator." But the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association doesn't like it. State law requires a "veterinary-client patient relationship" be established before any vaccination is given,
  • The Marketing Juggernaut That Was Prozac
    New York Times' Retro Report looks at the apotheosis of Prozac, including how the name sprang from the minds at Interbrand. At the jump, a look at how Prozac, introduced by Eli Lilly and Company in 1988, became part of pop culture, radically changed the tenets of pharmaceutical marketing, and even clinical psychiatry, and introduced the concept of cosmetic psychopharmacology.
  • Garden Fresh Names Industry Outsider To CMO Post
    Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp., parent to the Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes salad buffet chain, has appointed an industry outsider to be CMO. Julie Derry, Garden Fresh's new CMO, was previously head of Digital Commerce at See's Candies. She replaces Tammy Bailey, who was named CMO in 2012 but left the company in May.
  • IPhone Sells 10 Million Phones In Three Days
    Apple sold ten million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices over the weekend, and without the help of China. No data yet on the breakdown of unit sales between the 6 and 6 Plus. Sales could have been higher had there not been supply constraints that put a bottlenecked on deliveries. For the iPhone 5 and 5S launch last year Apple moved nine million devices over the initial weekend. The new phones are pricier and lack the scale of launch countries that the iPhone 5 and 5S did.
  • Pizza Hut To Open Delivery Units In South Africa
    Pizza Hut is returning to South Africa after a six-year absence with a focus on delivery and to-go. The company will open seven delivery-only units in the country this year starting with a restaurant in Johannesburg, per the Dallas-based division of Yum! Brands. The brand previously had dine-in Pizza Huts in South Africa, but it closed those in 2008. It is a first stop in a regional plan to roll out Pizza Hut units in other southern African countries.
  • De Nysschen Wants To Apply Audi Strategy To Cadillac
    Cadillac wants to be distinct from General Motors, though it doesn't have anything like the production scale to compete head-on with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and the others. Johan de Nysschen, the company's new global chief, and recent short-timer at Infiniti, plans to do it by taking a page from Audi, where he transformed that once-stagnant brand.
  • McDonald's Hires Customer Experience Officer
    McDonald's has hired Fred Ehle as its first VP of customer experience. Ehle, in a new role, will report directly to U.S. marketing chief Deborah Wahl. He will focus on customer insights and customer experience. The company has also appointment Mike Andres to president. The chain also named Julia Vander Ploeg its first U.S. vice president-digital. Ploeg will report to Atif Rafiq, the chain's first chief digital officer, who joined in October, but she'll also work closely with Wahl.
  • Travel Brands' Web Sites Underwhelm
    Annual research commissioned by trade body Abta shows that travel companies have a lot of work to do to turn their owned media assets into useful marketing tools to help sell destinations. Study respondents cite things like magazines, review websites, brochures and social media as useful for travel inspiration and information. Travel company websites are way down the list, with only 15% of people using them.
  • Dunkin' And Krispy Kreme Go Green With Palm Oil Sourcing
    No more "deforestation donuts" from Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts. Both have committed to source palm oil for frying from suppliers who are not clear-cutting forests. Some food manufacturers source palm oil from suppliers who have a history of clear-cutting rain forests. "The one-two punch of Dunkin' Donuts and Krispy Kreme going deforestation-free signal a rapid shift in the U.S. fast food industry," said Deborah Lapidus, campaign director of Forest Heroes.
  • German Automakers Helped By China's Lack Of Brand Loyalty
    A new study by the Boston Consulting Group finds that 40% of the owners of cars from Chinese makers planning to trade their vehicle for a global or "foreign" brand said they intend to buy a Volkswagen model. Nearly 90% of foreign volume-brand owners who are trading up said they are likely to buy an Audi, BMW or Mercedes-Benz, according to the group, known as BCG. Donald Zhang, a BCG project leader and a co-author of the report, said the stakes are particularly high in China because it tends to be a winner-take-all market.
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