Tesco made headlines a year ago when its HomePlus retail subsidiary in South Korea tested a virtual store in a Seoul subway station, showcasing items that could be scanned and ordered by smartphone for home delivery, while Peapod is testing virtual grocery shopping in the U.S.

Now Walmart is testing a similar idea in Toronto in partnership with Mattel. The retail and toy giants are teaming up on what's described as Canada's first pop-up virtual toy store, enabling QR code-based shopping of Mattel brands — including hot toys from Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price and Thomas & Friends brands — to holiday shoppers.

The pop-up is located in the city's massive PATH underground walkway, a retail concouse that connects downtown buildings and and an array of businesses to Toronto's Union Station rail commuter hub. It may find a ready pool of virtual shoppers, as it will run for four weeks in the same location where Wells.ca tested a QR-enabled store in April.Continue reading...

AOL faces crossroads with shareholders at annual meeting.

Airbus may take eight weeks for A380 wing fix.

Apple rumor mill churns ahead of WWDC announcements this week as it beats Google for loyalty of app developers.

BBC hires marketing chief from Diageo.

BMW and Audi post record sales as China boom continues.

CNN reportedly close to acquiring Mashable.

Domino's overseas business now beats U.S.

Facebook already appears past days of wild user growth.Continue reading...

As Target prepares to expand to Canada in 2013 by taking over Zellers stores coast-to-coast, the retailer brought Torontonians a taste of its latest designer collaboration on Thursday — the red-hot Jason Wu lin which sold out on the eve of New York Fashion Week.

Its one-day (and first-ever) pop-up store in Canada saw another first for the market: a charitable donation to the United Way that matched 100% of sales that day. Bullseye, the Target mascot, also made the trip north with Wu.

Some snooty New York types may think Toronto is too square. The city "has no passion, no ambition," wrote one columnist recently, in a much-circulated Toronto Life Magazine essay.

The Drake Hotel is challenging that notion.

Opened in 2008, the Drake Hotel's Drake General Store has "played with the notion of taking the traditional hotel gift shop and re-imagining it in a contemporary and varied urban context." The General Store's latest campaign does just that. Marvelously. Continue reading...

Brands concerned with internal brand engagement would do well to heed what's going on at Whole Foods right now.

The upmarket grocer is lambasted as is more of a “faux hippy Wal-Mart than an 'earth-and-body-friendly organic foods paradise” by a disgruntled employee of five years in a 2,343-word resignation letter to former bosses in Toronto, where there is one Whole Foods Market location, in the tony Hazelton Lanes retail complex in Yorkville.Continue reading...

Everybody is hurting for cash — even the largest city in Canada.

Last week, Toronto politicians were presented with a proposal to “revise and ramp up its corporate naming and sponsorship efforts,” according to the Toronto Star.

The city’s budget committee had asked for the report this past January. In the report, the authors point out that Calgary, Winnipeg, Chicago, and New York “proactively solicit offers to buy naming rights,” the Star reports.

Toronto currently only has a few named spaces, including Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, the Franklin Children’s Garden at Centre Island, and the BMO Field soccer stadium. In March, an offer to rename the city hall "Tigits Hall" made the local news — alarming residents in the process.Continue reading...

There used to be an arena in Vancouver called General Motors Place, but a certain little recession and difficulty in the auto-selling marketplace caused that deal to be cut short and naming-rights to be available again. So last July, Rogers Communications, the Canadian telecom giant that also owns the Toronto Blue Jays and has its names on various properties in Toronto, pulled off a double whammy in Vancouver.

Not only did Rogers suddenly gain a major springboard for young telecom users to be exposed to their growing brand in western Canada, the company also knocked out competitor Telus from having the naming rights (which it was also competing to obtain) and to continue as the official telecom company of the arena.Continue reading...

To promote UFC 129 on Saturday, April 30, UFC decided against showing breaking bones, and instead appealed to fans' funny bones. The video, starring UFC legend "Executive Iceman" Chuck Liddell, features inside jokes about Liddell's earlier knockout and longtime rival Tito Otiz. And, as you'll see above, it features a great deal of Apple product placement.Continue reading...