Tag Archives: consumer
Can This Department Store Make a Comeback?
Day before yesterday, the common wisdom was locked in: department stores were dying. Old news. The last vestiges of a bygone retail era. As “yesterday” as the Sears catalogue. The evidence had been mounting for years. Store closures, massive layoffs, profit slides and stock price drops. Sears bought Kmart and almost immediately wished it hadn’t. Macy’s expanded, then got slammed with one PR mess after another. JC Penney began a slow slide into retail irrelevance. Then it tried a “radical” new marketing method that nearly Read More + Read More +
Why Walmart is Winning in Canada
By January 2016, retail market watchers in Canada are predicting that the country will be home to nearly 400 Walmart stores…and exactly zero Target stores. Ronn Torossian explains this shift and what it means for big box retail public relations. First, the shift. Many U.S based retailers have a tough time gaining ground in Canada, but Sam Walton’s brand is moving forward with plans to add 29 more supercenter locations, just one year after adding 35 the prior year. Meanwhile, Target has chosen to succumb Read More +
Nick goes Mobile, but are Customers Ready?
Perhaps sensing the changing consumer winds, Nickelodeon has become the latest major cable network to launch a direct-to-consumers paid cable channel. At this point, there are not too many other details to report, but parent company Viacom is expected to announce the launch and offer more details after meeting with advertisers in February. According to Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, the new service will be, “aimed at the mobile market” and “attractive for parents and children.” Some market watchers have called this one more defection from Read More +
Cable: Higher Prices and more Competition, how does it Survive?
The New Year dawned with some bad news for both cable companies and cable TV subscribers. If you love your cable TV, you can expect to pay more for the privilege in the coming year. Major carriers including Time Warner, AT&T, UVerse, DirecTV, and others have all telegraphed price increases in the coming year. So, if you have been considering renewing with a promotional deal, now might be the time. But if you’re not, it’s not the end of TV as you know it. The Read More +
Abercrombie Adjusts to a World Moved On
For teens growing up in the late 90s to early 2000s, Abercrombie & Fitch was THE go-to status clothing store. Preppy, sexy and insanely popular. You could lose your “cool” card if you didn’t have an A&F logo emblazoned hoodie in your wardrobe. Preferably several. But, according to sales, critics and, most importantly, KIDS, culture has moved on…and Abercrombie is desperately failing to keep pace. You don’t need to go too far back in your time machine to remember a day when Abercrombie ruled on Read More +
Saks and the Right to Discriminate
Discrimination is no new topic in either the job market or in public relations. If anything, in recent years the tide has certainly turned against businesses that actively discriminate against certain recognized groups. While that’s not to say it doesn’t happen, as Ronn Torossian reveals, companies tend to pay a higher price than they once did. Still, there are those who want this debate to continue. They argue that employers have every right to choose who they want working for them. Even if that choice Read More +
Airstream Still a Dominant Brand in Recreation
Sometimes, brand recognition is as easy as making something so unique and attractive that everyone recognizes it, and so eponymous that nobody even tries to imitate it. That, says 5WPR CEO Ronn Torossian, is something that Airstream travel trailers have in spades. RVing has been around almost as long as there have been automobiles. Since the 1930s, people have been taking family trips and going on explorations in “campers.” Then, with the advent of the interstate system and a flourishing middle class in the 1950s, Read More +
NASA, Orion and the New Age of Space Travel
At NASA, recapturing the magic of the glory days of space exploration means a look that harkens back to the days of Cowboys in Space. Glance at the new Orion craft, well on its way to Mars now, and it’s easy to see echoes of the Apollo craft that took American heroes to the moon a generation ago. Engineers will tell you the choice of a blunt-bottomed, conical capsule will help slow the craft on its descent, protect the craft from massive temperature fluctuations, and Read More +
Defending the “old” when “new” is all the rage
There’s an old Garfield comic that compares “new and improved” to “old and inferior.” To point, of course, is that, from cat food to airliners, everyone wants “new and improved” … even when they don’t think what they have is necessarily “old and inferior.” When they hit the marketplace, just about everyone agreed that 777’s were an amazing and necessary step in the evolution of commercial aeronautics. But these flying behemoths faced the same sliding scale encountered by all flying machines. New planes are just Read More +
Virgin in America, how will they compete?
Virgin America celebrated its IPO on November 14 with a major financial splash. The company saw its stock soar 30% on its first day as a publicly traded company, according to Businessweek. Some industry watchdogs are saying this is just one more reason to believe this is a great time to be in the airline business. Hey, if you look at the success of other American-owned airline companies, it’s hard to argue with that assessment. But there’s more to Virgin’s success than a warm and Read More +
