JAKKS Pacific Inc., appointed Carmine Russo president of its international division with responsibility for growing international sales and overseeing marketing, advertising, promotions and distribution operations across all product divisions.

RadioShack has selected Grey New York as its lead advertising agency of record, concluding a review process that first launched last November.

Target has brought in someone with both advertising and retail experience to oversee its marketing efforts.

Walgreens is following in the footsteps of the likes of Target and Walmart in offering a digital edition of its weekly advertising circular that will offer additional items through Walgreens.com and the company's mobile applications.

Mobile marketing has been the “next big thing” long enough that it almost seems like old news. Mobile advertising is projected to reach $55 billion in 2012, and has the distinction of being the fastest medium to reach $1 billion in spending; it took only five years, versus 16 years for the Internet to hit that level of investment.

Following a wild ride during Black Friday, the last month of the year in 2011 saw most retailers maintaining similar levels of promotional activities when compared to 2010. The majority of advertisers either saw slight increases in circular and page counts or stayed flat. When looking at both page counts and circular drops overall there was not much change, with a 2% decrease in number of pages and a 1% drop in number of inserts per market. 

The Holiday Shopping Season got off to a fast start with sales numbers increasing by 6.6% compared with last year, according to Shopper Trak. Promotional activity started earlier than usual and helped shoppers stay in the know as to where they could find the best deals. Leading up to Black Friday, increases were seen in print for both page counts and circular drops in many instances. In digital there were increases in volume and frequency of online, email and social promotions.

During Lowe's annual conference Tuesday, SVP marketing and advertising Tom Lamb defined the company's target customer by first breaking down home improvement consumers into four distinct groups.

Target failed to crack a ranking of the top 10 most effective back-to-school ads compiled by Ace Metrix that was dominated by retail competitors and technology companies.

The most recent Leading National Advertisers annual report from Advertising Age shows Target posted the biggest increased in ad spending in 2010 among conventional retailers.

A whole lot of uncertainty now hangs over Target’s April same-store sales expectations, as Walmart this week began a major advertising offensive to regain customers and restore sales at its U.S. division.

Target forecast April comps would be in the mid-teens due largely to the late arrival of Easter on April 24, coupled with ongoing food and consumable gains related to expansion of the PFresh format to more stores and increasing penetration rates for the REDcard rewards program. Suddenly though, Target’s April expectations appear to be in jeopardy as Walmart is poised to inundate the marketplace with messaging around low prices, breadth of assortment and a hassle-free price match policy with the bulk of spending related to Easter yet to occur.

Tim White, SVP marketing at Fashion Bug, and a 30-year retail industry veteran, this week was inducted into the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association’s Advertising Hall of Fame.