Easton's Milestone Year

This summer Easton celebrates its 10 year milestone as well as its evolution into one of the top retail destinations in the U.S. Since 1999 more than 156 million visitors have shopped till they dropped in addition to enjoying plenty of entertainment along the way.

Throughout the years, Easton has given back millions of dollars to the community through the Easton Community Foundation. Programs like Cornerstone Events, Change for Charity and Community Foundation Scholarships have provided funds to hundreds of non-profit organizations and graduating students.

Change for Charity

Change for Charity selects six different non-profit organizations each year to receive proceeds from Easton's parking meters. This month's 2009 beneficiary is Buckeye Ranch Foundation.

Cornerstone Events

Since Easton began hosting Cornerstone Events over $8.7 million has been raised. The next Cornerstone Event is the New Albany Classic on Sunday, September 27th.

Community Outreach

Since the inception of the community outreach program, 34 students from Northland, Mifflin, Brookhaven and Gahanna Lincoln have been awarded the $2,500 renewable two-year scholarship.

Happy milestone year Easton! Thanks so much for giving back to Columbus!

Poppy: Coach Budget Friendly Line

The luxury brand for working, fashion-conscious women has adapted to the economic times. Meet Poppy, the new brand of purses and accessories from Coach priced for today's frugal customer.

Poppy has a youthful feel and is about 20% less than the original coach purse making the average price about $260. Here is a description for Poppy I found on the Internet:

The schoolgirl chic accessory line is handbag heavy using classic shapes with retro pop art colors like bright blueberry, daisy yellow, pale chalk gray, slick spearmint, and black licorice. The Poppy Girl has a little pep in her prep and sass in her class. This is what separates her from the expected Upper East Side boarding schoolgirl. Fresh and affordable (everything is under $400!), Coach’s new line appeals to a youthful audience.

Sure I love Coach and think Poppy is energetic, chic and artsy. But I do have a few issues with it:

1. It is clearly targeted to a younger demo so I'm not sure I'll be rushing out to get one anytime soon.
2. Fresh and affordable? The 20% savings is really not that reasonable for the majority of their younger target audience.
3. My teenage daughter has already strongly hinted how much she loves this new line so the pressure to purchase one for my daughter has already started.
   Perhaps if Coach wanted to make an economic line targeted to teens and 20-year-olds they could have been a little more generous on the pocketbook. I'm just sayin' . What do you think? Am I being to stingy?
   
   
   Coach is using social media for Poppy promotion. You can become their fan on Facebook here.

Girl Scout Cookies Are Here!

Today my Girl Scout Cookies arrived.  Oh how I love those thin mints!  As I enjoy almost half a sleeve, yikes, I am inspired to write about the recent restructure of the Girl Scout brand.

Girl Scouts is 97 years old.  Over the years girls worked to earn badges, wore polyester vests camped and sold cookies.  The cookies are still in but almost everything else is out.  Because enrollment keeps dropping every year, the Girls Scouts are changing their brand image and trying to become cool.

Going hi-tech, troops are into blogging and life on-line. Going hip, teen troops are being led my college students instead of moms. Going curriculum, badges are gone and journeys are in focusing on teamwork and making a difference.  Going fashionable, polyester has been replaced with hip t-shirts, hoodies and hats.  Going multi-cultural troops are twinning - video conferencing with troops in other countries.

Being true who they are girl scouts will still camp, sing and sell cookies.  Leaders of troops can select which new options they would like to incorporate into their troop.

Only time will tell if these brand changes will start to increase enrollment.  Hats off to Girl Scouts for embracing the times and changing their structure to meet the needs of today's girl.

Keep selling those cookies.  I'm off to finish the rest of my thin mint sleeve. Yum!

It's Barbie's World We Just Live In It

Happy Birthday Barbie!

This year Barbie turns 50 and to celebrate the doll and her brand, Mattel will be rolling out the "pink" carpet.  Various year-long events will be used to refocus the Barbie brand.  They want to bring back the attributes that Barbie is a fashion doll reflecting the current trends,  an inspirational doll showing girls they can be anything they want to be, and a doll with cultural relevance.

One of the first events will be during Fashion Week in February.  There, 50 designers will show off their Barbie inspired designs on life-sized models at a runway show.  You don't need to be in NYC to see the designs because Barbie.com will stream the runway show February 14th.

March 9th will be the actual birthday.  Of course the venue will be decked out just like a Malibu Barbie Dream House.

A bunch of corporate partnerships are being made as well.  Sephora and Bloomingdale's are just a couple who will be celebrating with Barbie.  

We think they should consider a cause-marketing campaign.  If they are rolling out the pink carpet maybe some of the proceeds could go to a breast cancer organization.  Barbie would teach the girls the importance of philanthropy and giving back and help a worthy cause in the process.  

After all Barbie has gotten so much over the years, it would be nice to see her celebrate by giving a little back.

Brand Advertising on Tees

This week was my daughter's 14th birthday.  It was no surprise to me that some of the hot items on both her birthday and Christmas lists was apparel from some of her favorite stores. It's crazy to think how popular t-shirts labeled with store names are.  

I wondered how, what started out as an undergarment, became such a broadcasting fashion statement.  I did a little research on how and when t-shirt advertising started.  It appears t-shirt advertising started with rock n' roll.  In the 1960's and 1970's rock and roll bands realized they could make quite a bit of extra money selling t-shirts with their bands name on them while further promoting their band.  It wasn't until the 1980's that designers and stores started placing their brands on t-shirts as a status symbol.  

T-shirt status symbol is still important to teens.  More than half of my daughter's closet is filled with Pink, Abercrombie, Hollister, and American Eagle.  All the kids proudly display them daily.  Pretty smart idea, people are actually buying clothes from your store (for a pretty hefty price too) and then wearing it all over.  Teens are actually paying to advertise for their favorite stores.  What a good gig!

Any idea what store was the first to advertise on their t-shirts?  My guess is Gap but not sure. Feel free to comment any ideas.

Some of our favorite rock t-shirts.

Hey 30 Rock Fans

Love 30 Rock?  Like Jane Krakowski?  You can vote for which Nicole Miller dress Jane will unveil at the Women's Day Red Dress Awards February 11th.  Place you vote at the site here.

For every vote Campbell's will donate $1.00 to the American Heart Association Go Red For Women Campaign.  This is through the Campbell's adDress Your Heart cause marketing campaign. 

Social Media, Is it the New Marketing?

The other day I had lunch with a friend who I haven't seen in quite some time.  It was great catching up and sharing stories about our families and busy lives.  Also, because we are both in marketing, we spent quite a bit of time talking about marketing and social media.

My friend is the marketing director for The Diamond Cellar.  Over the years The Diamond Cellar has relied heavily on traditional media, mostly radio to market their message.  While this has been successful, they are now beginning to look at non-traditional avenues, mostly social media.

The Diamond Cellar is experimenting in Facebook and just recently built a products page.  You can see it here.  While there, why not become a fan, we did.  They are linking their page with the Facebook pages of the product lines they carry in their jewelry store to maximize their exposure.  Smart move!

I told her about Twitter and the benefits it has brought columbus imPRessions.  By burning our feed through twitterfeed, we direct more visitors to our site, and create awareness to our media followers on stories we want to get in the news.  It's almost like having a PR coordinator on staff sending out press releases on our behalf.  I highly recommended it for the Diamond Cellar.

I also talked to her about having a blog.  We strongly feel blogs are important for business. Because of the economy, potential client's are becoming more cautious about signing a contract so quickly.  With this in mind, we always encourage potential clients to visit our blog.  This is where they learn more about us.  Not only professionally but personally as well.  On our blog we share our personality, our styles and our feelings.  Potential clients start to develop a personal relationship with us on-line which makes them more comfortable and confident to do business together.  

I think a blog would be a great opportunity for the Diamond Cellar too.  They could include personal stories from customers, introduce staff, highlight product lines and the designers, use polling to get customer feedback, advertise exclusive promotions, and provide special offers to blog followers.  This would develop deeper customer relationships, give customers an interactive experience and can also serve as great market research.

We both left the lunch charged and ready to tackle the social media world. So charged it prompted this post and the word of mouth marketing for The Diamond Cellar.  The opportunities are endless and we continually learn new things each day.  

Jen, if the Diamond Cellar needs some social media pointers, let me know.  Would love to help and learn of other social media opportunities with you along the way.

Know Any Brides? ....

Isn't it amazing how so many in the online world "check out" for the holidays... blog hits are down, emails slow, and you hear a lot of "we'll look into that after the 1st of the year."  It is truly wonderful that some take time to focus on non-virtual friends and family, but I also want to make sure none of our readers missed the announcement about... the Sample Sale at La Jeune Mariee this weekend!

So many  engagements happen  between Thanksgiving and New Years (why is that, dudes?) and the 40 - 60% discounts on designer gowns should not be missed by any those new brides to be!  I won't even mention terms like "brides on a budget" or "recessionista",  as so many (including the media) are inundated with these "econonowns." (I clearly just made that one up).  But see our La Jeune Mariee Dispatch mention on Jan. 1 -fashion reporter Kristy Eckert explains this trend and mentions the sale at our favorite Worthington boutique.

Even if you are not a bride, doesn't everyone love to give useful advice when it comes to weddings, or is it just the ladies who are reminiscing their own wedding planning days? Anyway,  hurry and send this link to any brides you know- they'll be so happy you may be invited to be in the wedding party....  http://www.LaJeuneMariee.com/samplesale

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Macy's is 150 years old.  This retail store started out as a fancy dry good store in 1858.  Today they are a leading retail store with hundreds of brands including celebrity branded merchandise. We're pretty sure everyone has seen the nostalgic advertising campaign they've been running the past few months.  We really like how Macy's has captured iconic moments mentioning Macy's over the years.  For us it resonates long-standing comfort and trustworthiness.

In 1924, the Macy's Day Parade was born.  Originally known as the Macy's Christmas parade, employees of the store and animals from Central Park Zoo started this holiday tradition.  The world famous giant helium balloons were added in 1927 and in 1948 the parade was televised.

A holiday tradition for our family, we will be watching the parade while making Thanksgiving dinner.

Little trivia. . . Did you know how Macy's got their branded iconic star?

Answer:

˙ɐǝs ʇɐ ɯıɥ pǝpınƃ ɥɔıɥʍ sɹɐʇs ǝɥʇ oʇ ǝʇnqıɹʇ ɐ sɐ ɯɹɐ sıɥ uo ɹɐʇs pǝɹ ɐ pǝooʇʇɐʇ ʎɔɐɯ ˙ɥ ˙ɹ 8581 uı 'pןɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ƃuıןıɐs ǝןıɥʍ

Burberry Brand Comes to Columbus

Start saving your money now. A Burberry store is opening up in Easton this spring. Burberry has 50 U.S. stores, the closet to Columbus being Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.

This British luxury brand has been around for 152 years with their signature being tan plaid. Known for their trench coats, a raincoat is priced around $1,450. For "cheaper" merchandise you can find handbags averaging $1000, fragrances averaging $80 and button down shirts averaging $200.

Very stylish, very expensive but it should fit right in with neighbors Henry Bendel and Tiffany & Co.