Aeropostale is going hard after the Millennial market by using digital technology to attract young consumers.

After redesigning its stores last fall, Aeropostale is now adding in-store iPad kiosks as well as a new mobile app in the hopes that the Touchscreen Generation will fill up both their online carts and in-store baskets with their goods. "This is the future," said Jacob Hawkins, Aeropostale's vice president of e-commerce, according to Business Insider. "This is the way [teens are] going to interact with our brand."Continue reading...

Adobe confirms its CTO Kevin Lynch has left the company for a job at Apple. 

Chipotle is risking its brand by venturing into the public debate about gay rights, LGBT community says #ThanksChipotle.

NBC to NYT: Jimmy Fallon is expected to succeed Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show" by fall 2014 as NBC struggles with weak ratings.

Aeropostale targets millenials with new in-store #tech. 

Aldi and Whole Foods to boycott genetically modified salmon.

Apple's plan for augmented reality amidst another lawsuit on patent infringement.

Barclays announces massive bonuses on UK budget day.

BlackBerry denies report that BB10 failed UK government security test. 

Global airline profits are flying high.

Harvard researchers have linked sugary drinks to 180,000 deaths a year worldwide.Continue reading...

One trick of the high-school set when writing what they believe to be a ridiculously long paper is to just change the margins. Push things in a little and it makes it that much easier to achieve the required number of pages. Some never leave this little trick behind. A judge in Manhattan, Paul A. Engelmayer, who is hearing a trademark suit involving Gap Inc.'s flagship Gap brand, requires that all documents put before him be double spaced. But lawyers represent the mega-retailer have been accused of adjusting the spacing in such a way that they achieved “four extra lines per page,” the Wall Street Journal reports. 

The lawyers in question work at Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu PC and they are working on a case about “a trademark dispute involving T-shirts labeled with the phrase ‘Lower East Side’ and ‘LES NYC,’” the Journal notes. Their adversaries, the legal team at Patterson Belknap Webb Tyler LLP, took a recent brief sent by Gap lawyers and “used a computer program to determine that the line spacing on Fross Zelnick’s reply brief was ‘1.75’ instead of double spaced.” Because of this, the judge allowed Patterson Belknap to “file a 30-page, instead of 25-page, brief on Thursday” so that the two sides would be given equal space to express themselves. 

As for the suit itself, it was filed by New York-based designer Robert Lopez of LES Clothing Co, who has quite a track record taking on big brands.Continue reading...

Apparently, half-naked models aren’t enough to entice customers anymore -- at least in the case of upscale retailer, Abercrombie & Fitch. Their once-enticing skimpy image is now resulting in nothing more than skimpy sales.

The trendy teen chain has again reported a troubling decline in sales -- 21 straight months of declines, actually, in stores that have been open for over a year. Reports showed a 19 percent drop in December, a month that most retailers depend on to bolster their year-end profits.

Even with last year’s decline worse -- at 24 percent -- analyst Eric Beder of Brean Murray, Carret & Co. described the last two years as a “jaw-dropping 40 percent” decline. He also added what many of us had suspected all along: the store's "business model now appears fully broken."

With stock prices that once topped $80 a share, today it's worth nearly a third of that, which doesn’t come as any surprise. What is surprising though is the retailer’s response to the crisis: Nothing.Continue reading...

Text messages aid in Haitian philanthropy efforts. [WSJ]

Gotham hired to take over 1-800-OK-CABLE creative duties. [Brandweek]

FocusDriven created to prevent texting while driving. [Consumerist]

Japanese cosmetic brand Shiseido to buy Bare Escentuals. [NY Times]

New Oscar Mayer campaign isn't just about hot dogs. [NY Times]

Layoffs hit the music industry: 50 fired at Universal Music Group. [LA Times]Continue reading...

If Mom's told you once, she’s told you a million times: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

Of course, some teens have trouble accepting the value of this age-old adage. But in today’s economy, as the Wall Street Journal reports, teen-clothing retailers like Aeropostale, Buckle Inc., and Old Navy are listening to Mom, their primary customer, and even catering to her shopping needs.

It makes sense to “TTM,” or target the mom, a term internalized by Aeropostale, as reports show teen spending power rapidly shifts from allowances to parents’ budgets. "You need to make that mom feel comfortable, because ultimately she's writing the check," says Richard Jaffe, apparel and softlines director at brokerage firm Stifel Nicolaus & Co.Continue reading...