Just when you thought that America had sustained the biggest blow to traditional sensibilities about retailing, with the encroachment of Black Friday on Thanksgiving Day, comes this news: Macy's is opening 24 hours a day for Christmas shopping!

That's right, the venerable retailer — one of the last remaining stalwarts of the mainstream-department-store business — is going totally mass-merchandiser on us by caving to the manic demands of U.S. consumers. Macy's will open most of its stores for 48 hours straight for its last scheduled One Day sale in the weekend before Christmas. The sale will start at 7 a.m. on Friday, December 21, and run through 7 a.m. on Sunday, December 23.

"We hope to make it easy for our customers across the country to finish their shopping at any time of day or night," stated Peter Sachse, Macy's chief stores officer. You've got to believe, kids!Continue reading...

This holiday season, there are about a bazillion pop-ups sprouting up in New York and London, such as one at NYC's Ace Hotel for Krochet Kids International, the organization that teaches Ugandan and Kenyan women to knit, and the Santa Baby cocktail bar in London's Shoreditch area. Tech lovers and brands will no doubt be rejoicing at one particular pop-up that spans the Atlantic to both cities.

For eight years now, Wired magazine has been wowing tech-lovers with an annual pop-up shop stuffed with whatever the latest and greatest happens to be. This year, the magazine is not only back with a Big Apple pop-up stuffed with gadgets, gear, brands and cultural happenings, but also taking the fun to London. 

The London store features products from such companies as MakerBot, Arcbotics Hexapod, Hiut Denim, Makie Lab, Zboard, and plenty of others. Orders could be made on-site for the products to be delivered.Continue reading...

The folks that make Peeps, those little marshmallow-chick candies found nesting in Easter baskets each year, have tried to market their product to fit other holidays such as Christmas (snowman and Christmas tree Peeps!), Valentine’s Day (heart Peeps!), and Halloween (Guys: there are pumpkin, ghost, and cat Peeps!) Nice try, Peeps, but the enduring image of the candy is still poking out of Easter baskets, no matter what Just Born seems to do. After all, 700 million of the sugar-beeked things are sold around that time of year.  

Undeterred, Peeps is soldiering on and making another effort this year to break the wall down and market itself as a year-round sweet treat. The brand's holiday 2012 collection includes a new Peeps on Earth line of T-shirts, infant clothing, and water bottles, according to a press release.Continue reading...

The White House today was the scene of the annual pre-Thanksgiving turkey pardon, with Cobbler and Gobbler getting a reprieve — along with a shout-out to New York Times stats-cruncher Nate Silver ("once again, Nate Silver completely nailed it") and Facebook, the platform on which (in a first this year) the turkey pardon was opened to public voting. Portlandia-ready infographics (below) gave more details on each turkey's background to help voters decide. The First Family then went to Martha's Table, a food pantry in Washington, D.C., to help assemble Thanksgiving meals to be distributed to the less fortunate this holiday.Continue reading...

As holiday season is now upon us, the two major U.S. shippers are gearing up as e-commerce and mobile access portend a healthy economic surge this week, through Grey Thursday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and into full-fledged holiday shopping mania.

According to the National Retail Federation, overall holiday sales are expected to rise 4.1% compared to last year – a bellwether for the health of the economy, with electronic items, apparel, and luxury comprising a significant portion of total holiday shipping volumes.

Both UPS and FedEx have delivery contracts with most of the biggest e-tailers including Toys R Us, Kohl's, Walmart, Macy's, eBay and Amazon.

UPS (the brand formerly known as United Parcel Service) expects shipments to hit record levels up 10% from last year and plans to hire 55,000 seasonal workers, and estimates it will deliver 527 million packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas, topping last year’s record of 480 million.

Their busiest day will be Dec. 20, with an estimated 28 million packages delivered, up from the regular 15.8 million packages daily.Continue reading...

Cartier's panther is back — 16 million views (for "L'Odyssée de Cartier") later — for the luxury brand's holiday campaign.

It might seem a little strange to see Infiniti ads with snowflakes already swirling around a spiffy new JX SUV, when the only notable snow so far this season has been on top of tippy-top mountain peaks — and in parts of West Virginia and Virginia, thanks to Sandy. But you're going to be seeing that ad for a while, at least through the end of the year.

And welcome to the auto-advertising "holidaze," the annual two-month, end-of-the-year promotional bonanza in which car brands in the U.S. market use holiday-themed promotional incentives and other marketing to attempt to reach their year-end sales and profit goals, or just try to make sure they're not left out of the scrum.

Or, as in the case of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, they feel compelled to use the promotions to get the better of a particular competitor. The two leading-volume German auto brands in the U.S. market once again are locked in a neck-and-neck race to secure the 2012 luxury-sales title, just as they conducted last year.Continue reading...

On the day after Super Bowl Sunday, 7 million Americans don’t show up to work, according to the hard-working folks at Coca-Cola. Another 4.4 million arrived at their places of business late this morning, according to Coke estimates.

So the brand's marketing team (and agency team at CP+B) figured that if 11.4 million people are already not showing up or not really serving their businesses at full throttle on the Monday after Super Bowl, why not call it a day (off) and let the entire American workforce stay home for the day?

Coke Zero would like to name the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday Magnificent Monday, according to a company release. “Coke Zero believes that people can more thoroughly enjoy the big game knowing they have Magnificent Monday off,” a press release notes. “This holiday is essentially already happening, but Coke Zero is leading the charge to make it official.” And what could be more important to our national wellbeing than making sure that people are thoroughly enjoying the big game?Continue reading...