Chief Marketer Staff

• Agencies

  Dog Bites Man: A&F Finds Racy Catalog Still Sells

  So Abercrombie & Fitch relaunches its highly suggestive catalog/magazine

• Digital

  Why CPG Firms Need a Holistic View of Digital Spending

  CPG companies on average spend six percent of their marketing budgets on online media, half of what other companies in other industries are spending. Clearly, there is an enormous untapped opportunity for the CPG marketer who gets it right.

• Social

  Facebook Ad Spending to Nearly Double This Year: eMarketer

  Global marketers will almost double their ad spending within the Facebook social network this year, according to a new forecast from eMarketer

• Agencies

  Sears Rolls Web Site Targeting Puerto Rican Market

  When it comes to targeting Hispanic consumers, most online merchants take an approach that centers on simple translation of their Web site

• Mobile

  Retailers, Mall Group Sign on to “Walk In, Win Points” Mobile App

  Four major retail brand names and the largest U.S. mall property group have agreed to become the first clients of a new location-based shopping app that gives smartphone users points for just walking through the door

• Agencies

  Think Like a CIO: Use Technology to Improve Brand Loyalty

  Many CMOs don’t go beyond an annual customer satisfaction survey, brand study or something managed by their service/support teams. Taking this view is a mistake, and here’s why.

• Agencies

  Urban Outfitters’ CEO Backs Off Catalog Expansion, Embraces Social Media

  While direct-to-consumer sales among Urban Outfitters’ three brands jumped during its most recent quarter, a previously announced increase in catalog circulation may not have been the cause of the jump.

• True Marketing Databases Make Sophisticated Data Mining Possible

  There is a big difference between a marketing database and an operational database. A marketing database supports sophisticated data mining and an operational database does not.

• Evaluate Social Media By Listening, Leveraging and Engaging

  It may seem obvious that social media is here to stay, but roughly 20% of marketers feel that social media has no bearing on their businesses whatsoever. Yet an estimated 78% of adults online engage in social media, nearly double just two years ago. Marketers shouldn’t be asking whether they can turn this information-rich reservoir of insights into fuel to accelerate their business: They should be asking how they can do so. The approach I recommend consists of three core activities: listen, leverage and engage.

• Email

  Four Often-Overlooked E-mail Metrics

  Some metrics, such as open rates, get much more scrutiny than they arguably warrant. Others, though, are criminally overlooked.