Marketing

How’s this for marketing genius? Archeologists are reasonably certain they’ve discovered one of the lost ships of infamous privateer Henry Morgan — in an expedition financed in part by Captain Morgan rum.

Whole Foods introduced a special promotion for the month of Ramadan, featuring special recipes and product giveaways for the month. Unsurprisingly, the campaign garnered the notice of right-wing bloggers who promptly branded Whole Foods as "jihadist" and "anti-Israel." The absurdity of this position may have been easily dismissed if not for the subsequent reaction by leadership at the company.

Despite leaving the company five weeks ago, Shoebuy.com founder and former President and CEO Scott Savitz led a session at this week's eTail conference in Boston where he detailed the steps the online footwear retailer took to grow into one of the most successful online brands, averaging more than 8 million visitors to the site monthly and realizing gross margins in excess of 43 percent for those visitors.

Ball Automotive Group (BAG), an automotive dealership based in San Diego, wanted a new and fun way to drive foot traffic into its dealerships. Citing Mashable's 2010 Omnicom survey, BAG noted that 75 percent of likes on Facebook come from some form of advertising and 20 million people like a brand page each day. With this information in hand, the company launched an out-of-home campaign to capture some of this market.

To bring its 1969 Premium Jeans line closer to the heart of the designer denim industry, Gap opened a creative design office in a gritty section of downtown L.A. last year. Now the company is putting its L.A. vibe at the core of a global marketing campaign that launches today, complete with food trucks and a dog.

Target, Kohl's and J.C. Penney ranked highest among discounters in consumer perception in the first half of 2011, according to YouGov BrandIndex. The company interviews 5,000 people each weekday from a representative U.S. population sample, more than 1.2 million interviews per year. Here's YouGov’s Retail Buzz scores for discounters in the first half of 2011: Target (33.9), Kohl's (29.5), J.C. Penney (23.9), Costco (23.3), Dollar Tree (16.2), Wal-Mart (15.7), Sam's Club (15.4), Big Lots (15.4) and Dollar General (13.8).

A new study titled power2thewomen2.0: the Shopping Trend Revolution Continues looks into the buying power of women and explores the similarities and differences in the shopping behaviors of Gen X, Gen Y and Baby Boomer women and the media channels that influence their buying decisions.

Forrester Research Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru was on hand at the Retail Email Exchange symposium in San Diego last month to offer best practices for four current trends in the e-commerce space. Looking to debunk conventional wisdom, Mulpuru advised that things often turn out to be different than they initially appear. With that in mind, here are the four trends that Mulpuru addressed:

H-E-B has signed on celebrity spokesperson Jennette McCurdy, co-star of Nickelodeon’s "iCarly," to star in its new Gear Up for Back-to-School ad campaign. The campaign launches on July 13 and runs through Aug. 31 in Texas.

Want to know how cross-channel retail giant Target is managing its mobile marketing program? Listen in to this three-part podcast from Retail Online Integration's Spring Retail Marketing Virtual Conference & Expo where Dan Fine, director of digital experience at Target, discusses the retailer's mobile strategies, including its view of mobile coupons, the value of aligning…