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MARKETING NEWS 4 Million Consumers became first time QR code scanners in Q2 ............................................................ 1 Augmented reality is the new QR code ................................................................................................... 3 Direct mail still the best method to acquire new donors ........................................................................ 4 JCPenney to cut TV spend ........................................................................................................................ 5 CPGs step up their mobile marketing game ............................................................................................ 6

PUBLISHING NEWS With redesign, Glamour ditches fashion title sameness ......................................................................... 8 June ABC figures reveal recovery in men's lifestyle magazines ............................................................... 9 Lucky launches mobile and web shopping within its magazine ............................................................ 10 ASAE’s Associations Now magazine set to relaunch in October ............................................................ 11 Cosmopolitan legend Helen Gurley Brown dies at 90 ........................................................................... 12

RETAIL NEWS July retail sales rose more than forecast ............................................................................................... 13 Most back-to-school shoppers headed to mass merchandisers ........................................................... 14 A strong showing from Sam’s in 2Q ....................................................................................................... 15 Import numbers show signs of stronger holiday season in 2012 .......................................................... 16 Dollar Tree grows 77 more stores .......................................................................................................... 17

ECONOMIC UPDATE

GDP: 2nd quarter 2012: 1.5 percent

Unemployment Rate: the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 8.3 percent.

Consumer Confidence: which had declined in June, improved slightly in July. The Index now stands at

65.9, up from 62.7 in June.

MARKETING NEWS 4 Million Consumers Became First Time QR Code Scanners in Q2 Staff Writer , Print In The Mix . 8/15/2012

According to the latest quarterly report from ScanLife, a global provider of mobile barcode solutions, Q2 2012 saw consumers perform over 16 million QR code scans with the highest scan month ever in June.

August 20th, 2012

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ScanLife's Mobile Barcode Trend Report, analyzes data and processes traffic from over 5 million ScanLife users and thousands of unique QR Code campaigns from around the world.

Additional findings:

Over 4 million consumers became first time scanners in Q2.

The single largest QR Code campaign saw over 2 million scans. At this time last year, the largest campaign saw 30,000 scans.

Seven out of 10 (69%) mobile barcode scanners in Q2. To date, the trend continues to favor male usage of QR and other 2D barcodes.

Among mobile barcode scanners, exactly half were ages 25 to 44. Breakdown: The 25-34 demographic make up the largest portion of users (26%), slightly ahead of ages 35-44 (24%), followed by scanners ages 18-24 (16%), 45-54 (15%), 55+ (11%) and under age 18 (8%).

The most popular content QR Code marketing campaigns deliver video and apps to download.

Last quarter, Quick-Service Restaurants (QSR) made its debut in the "top five" industries using QR codes to offer consumers promotions, deals, and more. In Q2, it has jumped to the number two spot, behind beverages.

Methodology: ScanLife analyzed data from the ScanLife Reporting Platform, which represents a broad look at the entire market for this report. It represents traffic from both 2D (QR) Codes and UPC barcodes. The 2D barcodes may have been generated on the ScanLife Platform, or from 3rd party generators. The 2D barcode scanning traffic may come from either the ScanLife app or 3rd party apps.

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Augmented reality is the new QR code

Rimma Kats , Mobile Marketer . 8/14/2012

Last year, QR codes were the go-to technology that marketers used to connect with tech-savvy consumers. While the medium is still a big force in mobile, augmented reality is increasingly making a name for itself and marketers are embracing all forms of the technology to offer a new type of engagement.

Although augmented reality has been around for a while now, it is more popular in Europe than it is in the United States. Marketers need to continue to embrace the technology and persistently implement it into their day-to-day initiatives to stay on trend.

“QR codes are quickly being replaced by augmented,” said Vivian Rosenthal, founder/CEO of GoldRun. “There are two main types of AR – GPS-based and computer vision.

“GPS-based AR works simply through geo-fencing a location and having the content visible to you by being in that location without needing to scan anything, whereas computer vision AR requires you to scan a product or logo,” she said.

“We’re seeing augmented reality being used in retail, entertainment, sports and CPG.

New vision

Nowadays, marketers are implementing all forms of augmented reality because it offers a new type of engagement that moves beyond the Web and into users’ lives.

This makes the experience more immersive, experiential and shareable.

“Brands and agencies will increasingly use augmented reality platforms to create deeper engagements with consumers that go beyond a "Like" or comment on Facebook and instead create a call-to-action that allows users to interact with their products and characters in a more personal way,” Ms. Rosenthal said.

“Users are then offered rewards for sharing their photo on social networks, leading to revenue for the brand, either by driving foot traffic to a brick and mortar or offering a coupon on an ecommerce site,” she said.

Augmented reality helps bridge the physical and digital world.

According to Trak Lord, a spokesman for metaio, augmented reality helps marketers take visual recognition and search and apply it to a more immersive experience in which the user can experience digital in the real world, rather than essentially literring the world with anonymous hyperlinks.

“It’s less that augmented reality is the new QR code than it is the evolution of mobile camera technology,” Mr. Lord said. “The QR code is really just a very base form of computer vision.

“QR codes are actually extremely simple for the camera to recognize and take an action, which is why they’re probably integrated into so many campaigns,” he said. “Every day there is a new marketing campaign that uses augmented reality as part of its promotion.

“Macy’s recently launched an in-store AR campaign that let mobile users interact with 3D jungles, soccer players and Brazilian dancers and IKEA just released their 2013 catalog, with 43 instances of image recognition and augmented reality experiences.”

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Seeing clearly

Augmented reality is a way to visualize information in the real world.

“It’s a technology with almost limitless applications in a variety of industries and sectors,” Mr. Lord said.

When evaluating an augmented reality campaign, the most important aspect is the user experience.

If marketers add an AR element to their campaigns, they should make sure that it will compliment the campaign rather than just be there for the sake of being there.

Additionally, the augmented reality element should not overly complicate and distract from the purpose of the campaign. It is crucial that the technology is implemented seamlessly.

“Augmented Reality has always had strong roots in industrial applications, but engineering projects are rarely used for promotion and are often below the public’s radar,” Mr. Lord said.

Image recognition and augmented reality is a destroyer for QR codes, per Jessica Butcher, marketing and founding director at Blippar, London.

“No longer do you have to have a black and white ugly square to drive engagement,” Ms. Butcher said. “Augmented reality has become a trigger for interactive engagement.

According to Ms. Butcher, marketers have not fully-embraced AR, but are dabbling in the technology and trying out different things.

“Augmented reality and image recognition provides marketers with a way to enhance the real world,” Ms. Butcher said.

Direct Mail Still the Best Method to Acquire New Donors Staff Writer , Printing Impressions . 8/15/2012

A study carried out by research company Campbell River on behalf of the non-profit advisory body, Dunham+Company, found that people were more than three times as likely to donate after being contacted by direct mail than by email.

The researchers asked people making a donation what had prompted them to make a contribution to the charity. The portion of people who were donating after receiving a direct mail appeal was 17 percent, more than three times higher than the 5 percent who had been prompted to donate by an email.

Rick Dunham, CEO of Dunham+Company, described the results of the study as “a bit of a shock.” But perhaps there is a simple explanation: we pay more attention to a physical object that comes into our mailbox than electronic email, which is easily deleted with the click of a mouse.

Analyzing the results of the study, it was found that donors in the 40-59 categories are the most responsive to direct mail—47 percent of them responded to receiving a letter by making a donation in 2012, which is a dramatic increase from 34 percent in 2010. Donors over 60 also respond well to direct mail—24 percent of them donated in 2012 after receiving a letter, an increase of 6 percent since 2010.

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Direct mail is particularly effective at getting people to make their first donation to a charity. According to the Blackbaud “2011 DonorCentrics Internet and Multi-Channel Giving Benchmarking Report,” three quarters of new donors were prompted to donate by direct mail, compared to just 17 percent by email.

Direct mail is more expensive as a campaigning tool than electronic methods—such as email and social media—but it also brings in a lot more revenue. The 2011 Blackbaud report revealed that the typical charity in the United States receives 75 percent of its funding through the mail. In comparison, online giving accounts for 10 percent of the total revenue. Moreover, it was revealed that the majority of donors make donations purely through direct mail.

Although electronic campaigns are a good way to raise awareness and increase a charity's visibility, non-profit organizations looking to raise funds should be wary of relying too heavily on online campaigning. Many of the boomer generation who are most likely to donate still are not internet savvy and can appreciate the thought time that goes into direct mail ads. Not engaging in physical mail when searching for donations is simply neglecting some rather large segments and as the research shows, some responsive segments at that.

JCPenney to Cut TV Spend Anthony Crupi , Adweek . 8/13/2012

In a bid to reverse some major losses in the second quarter, JCPenney is cutting back on its television spend.

Speaking to investors during the company’s earnings call last Friday morning, JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson acknowledged that while the retailer’s marketing push “got a lot of attention…in many ways, it overreached.”

Penney in the first half of the year “spent [its] marketing money in the wrong way,” Johnson said, adding that the media fix included “too much TV [and] not enough print.” The retailer essentially went dark in July, canceling a catalogue that was printed and set for distribution, and yanking its scheduled TV run.

“We turned off television,” Johnson said. “The whole goal was to pause, take a moment, rethink how we communicate our value strategy and how do we get the customer to love where we are headed.”

Print will be the biggest beneficiary of Penney’s new media strategy as the company shifts from building its brand to drawing more people into its stores. “In the entire spring season, we only ran 11 preprints in the newspaper. We have eight for August and have 30 for the back half,” Johnson said.

The pumped-up print budget will necessarily take a bite out of the retailer’s TV spend. “We’re reducing the money on television,” Johnson said, before adding that a new back-to-school spot will promote an offer of free haircuts for kids in kindergarten through sixth grade.

“We re-edited all of our television from August in a call-to-action,” Johnson said. “So, if you look at our television commercials, they announce things like free haircuts or they include the brands…like Levi’s.”

In September, the company will roll out some new TV spots designed to communicate its new pricing model. While Johnson mentioned the plan to reduce TV spend more than once, he did not elaborate on how deep those cuts would go.

Penney in 2011 invested $289.1 million in TV inventory, a figure that amounts to 65 percent of its overall measured media spend. In the same period, the company spent another $124.5 million on print.

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By comparison, Penney rival Macy’s last year spent $263.7 million on TV and a whopping $506.5 million on print. Newspapers accounted for 85 percent of Macy’s print budget.

The retailer reported a Q2 net loss of $147 million, off from a profit of $14 million in the year-ago period. Revenue tumbled 23 percent to $3.02 billion, marking the lowest quarterly sales in more than 20 years.

CPGs step up their mobile marketing game Chantal Tode , Mobile Marketer . 8/17/2012

Consumer packaged goods companies are starting to get more innovative in using mobile applications, rich media ads and QR codes to have a more direct relationship with consumers.

For the most part, CPGs have been slow to adopt mobile marketing with the exception of some a few visionaries such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever. This is starting to change, with a wider group of marketers starting to embrace mobile while some of the early adopters are stepping up their game.

“A majority of CPGs are slowly experimenting with mobile while others who started early are seeing the return and continuing to invest heavily in the channel,” said Dirk Rients, management director for mobile at Draftfcb, Chicago.

“CPGs are taking a closer look at mobile because consumers are constantly turning to their mobile devices to make purchases or help them shop while in-store,” he said.

“Unfortunately we still see a majority of CPG brands view mobile as its own separate channel while others are integrating mobile into their overall strategy allowing for an engaging experience at scale.”

App happy

It is because of the growth in smartphone adoption and the strength of initial results that companies such as Kraft, Johnson & Johnson and Kellogg are beginning to take a more active role in mobile.

One of the areas where these brands are most active is in developing mobile applications that engage consumers with their brands in value-add way and help develop a more direct relationship between brand and consumer.

This spring, Johnson & Johnson introduced the Magic Vision app for its Band-Aid brand. The app enables children with a booboo and wearing a Band-Aid bandage featuring the Muppets to launch an augmented reality animated show designed to help them forget all about their booboo.

Another innovative example is the Aquafresh Time2Brush app, also directed at kids. The app provides directions on how to brush teeth in a fun, interactive way and counts down from two minutes to insure kids brush for length of time recommended by dentists.

“There are a growing number of examples of CPGs doing a good job leveraging mobility to develop a direct relationship with consumers,” said Dan Israel, Atlanta-based strategy lead for mobile practice at SapientNitro.

“Brands are getting into this game and providing something that is of relevance to consumers,” he said. “The next step is making these experiences more contextually relevant based on location and frequency of use.

“What mobile is doing is it making it much easier to get front and center and to have that direct relationship with consumers without an intermediary."

Embracing QR codes

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CPG brands are also particularly enamored of QR codes and other 2D bar codes, putting them on packaging, ads and elsewhere to engage in-store shoppers and provide a value-add via product information, coupons or recipes.

These initial efforts are starting to give way to more innovative use of QR codes.

In June, Walmart and P&G placed QR codes on bus shelters and trucks to encourage on-the-go consumers to scan and instantly buy products from brands such as Tide, Pampers and Gillette. The campaign targeted shoppers in Chicago and New York.

“CPGs have the most to gain from mobile because now they can have a direct relationship with consumers and have an opportunity to make themselves contextually relevant and intertwine themselves into that person’s lifestyle,” SapientNitro’s Mr. Israel said.

“Brands have an opportunity to have a much bigger impact through new brand ambassadors by having that direct relationship,” he said.

Following the audience

Advertising is another area where CPG brands are beginning to get more innovative with rich media ads and in-app ads targeting specific groups.

Mobile offers brands key benefits such as the ability to target an audience based on a variety of criteria. Additionally, mobile increasingly offers rich media ad units based on HTML5 technology that can help drive engagements.

Jumptap reports that CPG marketers see an average 34 percent lift in click-through rates when applying data targeting and engagement rates for CPG marketers using HTML5 average 17 percent.

P&G reportedly spends more than $10 million on mobile advertising annually. Other CPGs are not spending at the same level in part because measurement and metrics in mobile need to improve before they will be willing to allocate more spend to mobile.

Another challenge for CPGs that is getting in the way of them allocating more of their marketing budgets to mobile is figuring out how to integrate mobile with their other marketing efforts.

Despite these issues, there is no denying that consumers are increasingly engaging with their mobile devices for a variety of activities, from consuming content to comparing prices in stores.

As a result, it makes sense for any major brand to be where their consumers are.

“Advertisers need to follow their audience,” said Paran Johar, chief marketing officer at Jumptap, Cambridge, MA. “With 50 percent of the US owning a smartphone, consumers are dictating to all advertisers how they want to receive their message and where.

“At Jumptap, we’re seeing mobile click-through rates that are double and triple internet click-through rates - those numbers are a big factor in a brand’s decision to leverage mobile,” he said.

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PUBLISHING NEWS With Redesign, Glamour Ditches Fashion Title Sameness TJ Raphael , Folio . 8/15/2012

In the summer of 2011, Glamour’s editor-in-chief Cindi Leive was having trouble at a newsstand in downtown New York City.

“I could not find Glamour to save my life,” she says. “Every single magazine was a girl on a white background. I could not find my own magazine. That shows the homogeneity out there. It was time to mix it up.”

Magazine covers are constantly analyzed by publishers, and Condé Nast’s Glamour seems to have created a winning formula, just in the nick of time. While overall retail sales for the magazine were down about 7 percent for the first half, it was actually up 5 percent starting with the redesign's March-issue debut.

“This is a difficult time to compete on the newsstand,” says Leive. “The gospel of how to sell a cover on newsstands used to be a girl on a white seamless background with her hand on her hip and a big smile. It’s appealing to break out of that mold—and for us what was becoming the same old, same old. It was important for us to make sure the cover looked different from moment-to-moment. It’s important for us to arrest a reader in the two seconds that you have at newsstands—if she’s very sure this is not the same magazine she saw last month, that’s incredibly helpful.”

Leive says the idea for the redesign came from a need to update the magazine to reflect the desires and personalities of contemporary women. That thinking, she says, drove the publication to make significant changes to not only the cover, but the rest of the magazine as well.

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“It has a more raw, real and unfiltered vibe,” she says. “As for images, we’re living in a culture that gives way to the rise of the personal. Our readers care about celebrities, but we also showcase clothes in the fashion pages featuring our own editors. I see our fashion assistants walking around the office looking amazing in an outfit they put together themselves at home. We started taking pictures and posting them to our website and we saw readers really responding to them, so we’ve done that in the magazine as well. What’s aspirational to women now is much more individual, personal and idiosyncratic than it may have been ten years ago.”

A driving factor behind the changes has been what Leive calls a culture that is much more focused on moments. After analyzing digital channels, Leive noticed that pictures of products photographed with a real Glamour editor—which included her dress, nail polish and jewelry—performed better than high production value, standalone studio images of the same purse.

The studio photo, she says, is “the way a still-life picture might have run in a magazine five years ago. It’s all of the context and story surrounding the bag and the personal elements of it [that make it more successful]. It gets five times as many comments or re-pins or notes than the more antiseptic shot from a studio. We’re living in a culture of personal storytelling.”

Glamour has also incorporated more reader contributions from real women into its pages. More relationship stories are told in the first person instead of the voice of the magazine, and celebrities speak directly to the reader more often instead of having stories merely written about them.

“The M.O. of the redesign was to make the magazine feel a bit fresher and real,” she says. “We got rid of anything that felt like magazine speak. Women today have become highly allergic to anything that sounds fake, processed or unreal. Because of technology, the rise of social media and the general first-person culture that surrounds us everyday online, on television and elsewhere, they’re very used to a more conversational way of speaking. It was very important the whole magazine feel that way.”

So far readers have been receptive, says Leive, and new advertisers are signing on to the magazine for the first time. Additionally, according to Leive, readers that hadn’t picked up Glamour in several years or those that normally don’t buy women’s magazines have started to come back to the brand or interact with it for the first time.

“The fact that we might be getting a girl that spends her entire day on Pinterest or Instagram and is occasionally buying Glamour—we’re now getting her on a more regular basis, which is satisfying,” she says. “For us, the new way of shooting covers came from a realization that most magazine covers were starting to look exactly the same every month. There was also a realization that the way people react to images and media is much more personal and our old way of doing things, which worked well for a number of years, was starting to look antiseptic. If this magazine is really the conversations girls are having when guys aren’t around, those conversations take place in real places, and not against a white backdrop with the exact same logo color every month.”

June ABC figures reveal recovery in men's lifestyle magazines Pamela Mardle , PrintWeek . 8/17/2012

Free magazine Shortlist led the sector, ranking 10th overall in the highest circulating magazines following a 1% growth since June 2011. Men’s Health reported a less than 1% decline, an improvement on its 10% year-on-year drop in December.

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While the magazine remained 3rd highest circulator in the men’s lifestyle print sector, it was overtaken in the digital stakes by fellow Hearst publication Cosmopolitan, which distributed over 1,000 more digital editions (13,298).

Cosmopolitan more than doubled its digital circulation, distributing 13,298 editions this period compared to 5,675 in December. Men’s Health also boosted its digital presence with increasing demand for digital editions of nearly 5,000 more than last period at 12,142.

However, the number of digital editions reported in the ABC figures had dropped by 10 to 71.

June’s ABC figures also revealed that circulation of pre-teen magazines was the fastest growing in the consumer market, with a 537% year-on-year increase.

Moshi Monsters magazine led the way for the sector, which averaged a circulation of 227,958, a 34.1% increase for the sixth months since December. This moved it up 16 places to rank 36th highest actively purchased magazine for the period.

The magazine experienced the biggest growth for the period except Virgin Media, which increased its circulation by 100,000 copies, all of which were paid for.

Printed titles aimed at primary school children also experienced exponential growth of 183.9% since June 2011, helped by the launch of Club Penguin Magazine launched in February this year.

The debut title, which averaged 49,100 copies, was joined by three other launches aimed at young people: Bin Weevils, Girl Talk Art and Rastamouse.

New title Women’s Health, launched in the UK in February and already published in 12 countries, shot into the top 100 highest circulating magazines with a 100% purchased net distribution of 100,289.

Women’s interest magazines continue to dominate the industry, despite all taking a tumble since 2011, including a 10.9% decline for weeklies. Customer publications led the way in the sector: the top seven cookery and kitchen magazines were attached to a supermarket or the BBC, while John Lewis Edition lead lifestyle and fashion.

Customer magazines continued to lead the consumer magazine sector, with five titles featured in the top 10 highest circulating publications.

Asda overtook Tesco with the highest circulating magazine, but Tesco Real Food jumped two places to rank 4th this period. TV and radio listings magazines TV Choice (1,227,850), What’s on TV (1,215,609), Radio Times (865,562), and Take A Break (786,849) also appeared in the top 10 this period.

Lucky launches mobile and web shopping within its magazine

Amy Dusto , Internet Retailer . 8/16/2012

In the latest example of a fashion magazine turning itself into a shopping portal, Lucky magazine plans to launch tomorrow a new service called MyLucky that will allow readers of the online version of the magazine to buy from such brands as Macy’s, Sephora and Armani.

A shopper logged into MyLucky who sees and likes a dress from Macy’s Inc., for example, will be able to either ‘sticker’ the dress—digitally tagging it with the ability to add it to a wish list—or click through to buy it. The latter option will display the Macy’s product page for the dress through the MyLucky platform. If she buys, the sale will go directly through Macy’s e-commerce site, though in the future MyLucky will facilitate the entire purchasing process through its own shopping cart, the company says.

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A page of stickers that readers can use to mark items they want to buy in the magazine rather than dog-earing pages began appearing in Lucky magazine 12 years ago, says Maura Randall, the magazine’s digital marketing director. “Digital stickers will duplicate that experience and elevate it,” she says. Wish lists generated from stickers can be set as public—viewable by other members of MyLucky--or private, adding a more social slant to the magazine shopping. Readers may create multiple lists. They may pick an item’s size and color before adding it, and sign up to be notified and when it goes on sale or is about to go out of stock.

“I think that the most brilliant utility offered is that readers will then be able to recall these lists from any mobile or digital touchpoint to inform or complete shopping both online and in-store,” Randall says. “Mobile is an area of strong growth and we’re very invested in offering a deeply engaging experience for the growing number of mobile readers.”

Digital stickers will roll out this fall, along with links to social networks and personalized product recommendations via MyLucky, the company says. Eventually readers will also be able to ask the magazine’s editors for shopping guidance.

Content from the digital magazine is exclusive to subscribers. Beginning with the October issue, it will include product selections from editors that will be updated daily. Later MyLucky will integrate with the soon-to-launch Lucky Community that will feature content written by influential bloggers chosen by Lucky editors. Additionally, MyLucky will roll out brand-specific shops as another method for readers to shop Lucky’s digital content, the company says.

"MyLucky is the next step in our ongoing mission to create the most engaging content about shopping by integrating an e-commerce program into the ongoing conversations our editors and readers are having about shopping,” says Lucky editor in chief Brandon Holley. “We are thrilled to have pioneered a platform that directly connects those conversations to a broad network of retail and brand partners, creating a shopping experience abundant in choice led by editorial guidance."

Tablet shopping platform developer Revel Touch provided the mobile technology for MyLucky. “This is the future of content merging with commerce, and a huge win for retailers and shoppers alike,” says Revel Touch’s founder and CEO Mar Hershenson.

American Express is partnering with MyLucky to provide special offers to members of the magazine’s online community and exclusive benefits to American Express cardholders. Brand partners launching with MyLucky include Macy’s, No. 14 in the Internet Retailer Top 500; Sephora USA Inc., No. 136; Dior; A/X Armani Exchange, No. 293; and Lancome-USA.com, No. 413.

ASAE’s Associations Now Magazine Set to Relaunch in October Caysey Welton , Folio . 8/15/2012

ASAE, The Center for Association Leadership, has announced plans to relaunch its publication, Associations Now, which will also coincide with the launch of a mobile app, a dedicated online news site, and a daily email newsletter. The relaunch is slated for October, and ASAE has aligned with TMG Custom Media to assist in development and strategy.

ASAE is targeting a 360-degree approach for offering its association members relevant content. Editor-in-chief Julie Shoop describes the changes as “an extension of a really strong brand.” While the publication is redesigning its print product, Shoop indicates that what is significant is the addition of digital products. She says that, “Like every

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other publisher out there, we understand that the world has changed, as has the way we consume information. We were not in the digital space as a magazine, so the expansion into the digital world is a big step here.”

In addition to the new digital products, organization was also vital in the relaunch. “In the past, people found it hard to find what they were looking for in the magazine, so we are going to have five standing sections, in addition to features, that cover major topic areas—leadership, technology, membership, money and business, and meetings. All of that content was in the magazine before, but it wasn’t organized,” says Shoop. She also says that organizing content in this manner will work well in the digital space. “The strength of the content is what brings people to it. Our current audience will find this really engaging and easier to use,” she adds.

Associations Now previously did not have its own website, separate from the association. Shoop hopes that this new offering will not only enhance the existing reader’s experience, but also attract a new audience. “This is truly a launch, it didn’t exist before” Shoop says, adding, “[The site] will offer fresh online content every day, and is a new kind of content that ASAE has never provided.”

For the time being, Associations Now’s app will be a digital replica of the print publication. However, Shoop suggests that the technology does allow for interactivity within the content and for adverters. She describes the app as “pretty basic,” and states that, for now, they “are not putting a lot of bells and whistles in it.”

Associations Now is still finalizing its relaunch elements before the October release. However, Shoop discloses that the preliminary “buzz is good,” from those who have seen design mock-ups and strategy plans. She describes the ASAE community as “very engaged” and thinks the audience will embrace the publication’s new methods for delivering content.

Cosmopolitan Legend Helen Gurley Brown Dies at 90

Steve Cohn , Folio . 8/14/2012

Helen Gurley Brown, who made Cosmopolitan an American and worldwide institution during her 1965-1997 stint as editor-in-chief, passed away this morning (Aug. 13) at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. She was 90 years old.

Hearst Corp. president/CEO (since 1979) Frank A. Bennack, Jr., said in a statement that "it would be hard to overstate the importance to Hearst of [Brown's] success with Cosmopolitan, or the value of the friendship many of us enjoyed with her. Helen was one of the world's most recognized magazine editors and book authors, and a true pioneer for women in journalism—and beyond.

Below is the tribute that FOLIO:'s sister publication min paid to Helen Gurley Brown when she turned 90 on Feb. 18:

It is well-known that the Arkansas-born Helen Gurley Brown's "résumé" when hired in 1965 by the late Hearst Magazines president Richard Deems (1913-2009) was her seminal Sex and the Single Girl (Simon & Schuster/1962), but what is less known is that Brown had zero editorial experience when she first met Deems and the Hearst hierarchy. As min reported (April 11, 1990) at Brown's 25th anniversary:

She went to Hearst with the idea for a new women's magazine...one that would be sexy, uncompromising, and with an editorial philosophy of women to fulfill themselves in all aspirations from career to fashion to home life to relationships.

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Impressed, Hearst executives reasoned that instead of starting something new, why not adapt Brown's innovative approach to a magazine that needed an infusion of fresh thinking—their own [since 1886] Cosmopolitan. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Indeed. In 1965, Cosmo's circulation was 782,000; ad pages, 355; and ad revenues, $1.5 million. The latter was chump change next to the $159 million generated in 1995, so who would argue that Brown is the greatest magazine turnaround artist in history?

Under current Cosmo editor-in-chief (since August 1998) Kate White, the 2012 rate base has soared to 3 million (nearly half from the newsstand) and the $390 million ad revenues reached last year makes the 1995 sum look like chump change. But the soul of the Fun, Fearless Female branding by White and publishing director Donna Lagani (whose since-1995 tenure intersected her with Brown) in print, digital/apps, events (Fun, Fearless Males/Females, Bachelors, etc.), radio (Sirius XM), television (Canada), and more is Brown's Cosmo Girl.

The magazine's candidness about sex and relationships has gone from Brown's one-of-a-kind (remember the Burt Reynolds pictorial in 1971?) to many imitators, but there is only one Cosmo.

And only one Helen Gurley Brown. That Cosmo International has expanded to 60-plus editions in such heretofore unthinkable places as Armenia, Israel, Malaysia, Mongolia, and Vietnam gives true meaning to Make Love, not War. Sex and the Single Girl was the first of 11 books by Brown (many were best-sellers), and she serves as a role model and inspiration for women throughout the world.

Now, she is a philanthropist, with the $30 million donated by her in the memory of her late husband David Brown (the Jaws/Cocoon/Driving Miss Daisy producer was a legend in his own right) to the journalism school at Columbia University and to the engineering school at Stanford University. The David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute of Media Innovation is quite a legacy to a woman whose influence will be long remembered.

And we are honored to step into her parlor.

RETAIL NEWS

July retail sales rose more than forecast Katherine Field Boccaccio , Chain Store Age . 8/14/2012

Fueled by strength from department stores, electronics and the automobile sector, retail sales advanced 0.8% in July, the first gain in four months, according to a report released Tuesday by the Commerce Dept.

The bigger-than-expected increase followed a 0.7% decline in June that was weaker than first reported. Bloomberg forecast a 0.3% rise in July. The results have buoyed feelings overall that the economy may be improving, albeit at a moderate pace.

“We’re looking for consumption to pick up,” Credit Agreicole CIB chief economist Michael Carey told Bloomberg. “There was improved consumer confidence in July plus job gains that were a little better than expected, which is certainly constructive for the household outlook.”

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Retail sales, which climbed the most since February, followed a quarter in which household spending grew at the slowest pace in a year. Consumer purchases, about 70% of the economy, increased at a 1.5% annual rate from April to June, according to the Commerce Dept.

All 13 major retail categories showed a gain last month, led by a 0.8% jump at auto dealers, a 0.6% increase at department stores that was the most since September, and a 0.9% rise at electronics and appliance outlets.

Spending increased 0.8% at clothing stores and 0.7% at general merchandise stores. Health and personal care sales jumped 1.1%, the most since May 2011.

Industry data also showed that same-store sales at the more than 20 retailers tracked by Retail Metrics Inc. gained 4.4% in July, almost four times analysts’ estimates, after a 0.3% rise in June.

Sales excluding automobiles and service stations advanced 0.9%, the most since January.

Most Back-to-School Shoppers Headed to Mass Merchandisers Staff Writer , Marketing Charts . 8/13/2012

3 in 4 back-to-school shoppers will be shopping at mass merchandisers such as Target, Walmart, and Kmart, motivated by selection rather than pricing, with just 26% of parents seeking to shop only where the best promotions are offered, according to an August 2012 study from WSL/Strategic Retail. A distant second in popularity among the nationwide survey respondents were department stores (34%), followed by dollar stores (30%), and internet sites (29%). Drug stores and warehouse clubs are comparatively less popular, with 24% of respondents choosing each.

Online Shopping Estimates Differ

The online shopping figure (30%) found by WSL/Strategic Retail differs from other studies, which show a wide range of online shopping preferences. For example, it is higher than reported by NPD Group in a July survey, which found that 16% of parents were planning to shop online for their back-to-school needs, with department stores (26%) their primary destination. A separate study from the NRF, also released in July, found that almost 2 in 5 back-to-school shoppers would shop online, with discount stores (67.6%) being the leading destination.

And per results from a Brand Keys survey of 10,000 US households with school-aged children, 54% cited online shopping as a preferred retail category this year, up 33% from last year, though discount stores (92%; -3%) and department stores (50%; -8%) were also preferred by many.

Online retailers certainly appear to be targeting these potential customers: according to the Retail Email Blog, the top online retailers sent each of their email subscribers an average of 3.6 promotional emails during the week ending August 10, 2012, up 19% year-over-year.

Some Parents Holding Off On Shopping

Meanwhile, an Ipsos and RetailMeNot.com survey released in August found that while 14% of parents say they typically start shopping in June or earlier, a plurality (32%) said they wait until August, with just 6% waiting until school begins to decide what will be in their basket. The Brand Keys survey found more patience among shoppers, with three-quarters saying they were planning to wait until the end of August and shop just before schools open.

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The NRF survey also found a plurality (47.8%) of back-to-school shoppers saying they would shop 3 weeks to 1 month before school starts (thus, in August), though the trend from last year appeared to see families intending to shop earlier. That finding aligned with PriceGrabber survey results, which found 46% of respondents waiting until August or September to shop, down from 56% last year.

Other Findings:

The WSL/Strategic Retail study found that the most commonly sought items in shoppers’ baskets this year are school supplies (84%) and clothing and fashion accessories (76%). The Ipsos study also saw clothing and school supplies taking up the majority of parents’ budgets, while the NRF and PriceGrabber surveys both revealed these to be popular items. The Brand Key results showed clothing ($426) as the top budget item by average spend, with computers/electronics ($220) and shoes ($130) ahead of supplies ($97).

According to the Ipsos survey results, among parents who are back-to-school shoppers, 4 in 5 plan to spend up to $500 per child.

Per the Brand Keys survey, 4 in 5 parents say the economy has an impact on their overall spending, though this is down 7% from last year.

The Brand Keys survey found that Amazon was the top retailer in terms of increase in consumer intent-to-shop from last year.

About the Data: The WSL/Strategic Retail survey was conducted as a nationwide survey of men and women 18+ in June, 2012. The Ipsos poll was conducted July 12-17, 2012. For the survey, a national sample of 1,041 adults aged 18 and older with a child under the age of 18 from Ipsos’ U.S. online panel were interviewed online.

A strong showing from Sam’s in 2Q Mike Troy , Retailing Today . 8/17/2012

Same-stores sales increased 4.2%, total sales increased 4.6% to $12.5 billion and operating profits advanced 10.1% to $536 million. Impressive is how Sam’s Club president and CEO Rosalind Brewer characterized the warehouse club operator’s performance during the second quarter.

"We grew the top line, delivered positive comps, and most important, grew operating income faster than sales," she said during a pre-recorded message. "We continue to deliver steady traffic to the clubs. We believe that the improvements in our quality and overall merchandise offerings are key to driving these results."

Sam’s is eyeing a 3% to 5% increase in third quarter comps and also expects to open as many as seven new clubs, a rate of growth Sam’s hasn’t experienced in more than a decade.

According to Brewer, member engagement scores are at record levels and Sam’s is investing in price to offer more compelling values on an upgraded product offering. As a result, the same store sales increase of 4.2%, on top of a prior year gain of 5%, was driven by an increase in member traffic and average transaction size. The improved engagement scores could be the result of the addition to self-checkout at more clubs. Self-checkout will be in half of Sam’s Clubs location by the end of the third quarter, eliminating a potential pain point for members as Sam’s looks to improve labor productivity.

Brewer, like her predecessor Brian Cornell and other executives before him, offered limited disclosure around membership renewal rates and upgrade activity. Primary member renewal activity was said to be, "steady," while Plus membership sign ups continued to grow to an unspecified penetration rate.

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In terms of category performance, Brewer said grocery produced high single digit comps while beverages and the fresh, freezer and cooler areas produced mid single digit comps. A category defined as "table top" and personal paper categories experienced high mid single digits comps. Tobacco sales produced an unspecified drag on comps, according to Brewer.

Technology, entertainment and office categories achieved low single digit comp growth with performance strongest in portable electronics such as tablets, but challenged by continued softness in video games, movies, and books.

The apparel and home categories produced high single digit comps while the health and wellness area advance in the high mid single digits. Hearing aid centers achieved double-digit comps for the quarter with a high mid single-digit comp in the nonprescription drug department and a low single digit comp in prescriptions.

Import numbers show signs of stronger holiday season in 2012

Craig Shearman , Retails BIG Blog . 8/16/2012

With retailers smack in the middle of back-to-school, it’s way too early to predict what will happen during the holiday season. NRF’s annual forecast doesn’t come out until October, and lots can happen between now and then. But one set of numbers released this week could give some insight into what retailers are expecting.

NRF’s Global Port Tracker report is showing a strong increase in imports for August, September and October – the three key months of the year when retailers import the bulk of the merchandise they will sell during the holiday season.

August imports are expected to be 6.3 percent higher than last year, September should be up 7.3 percent, and October is forecast at 13.2 percent above last year. Averaged out, that’s an 8.9 percent increase over last year.

Imports fall off in November and December because most holiday merchandise is already on the shelves, but each of those months is, nonetheless, expected to be 2.4 percent above last year.

One factor to keep in mind so we don’t get our hopes up too much: Those numbers don’t translate directly into sales. Port Tracker only counts the number of cargo containers coming into the country, not the value of the merchandise inside. Additionally, the October percentage is artificially high because of low import levels last year. And existing inventory levels aren’t considered. Last year, the same three-month period saw a 4.2 percent decrease in imports, but holiday sales were up 4.1 percent at $471.5 billion.

Nonetheless, the Port Tracker report is a good barometer of what retailers are thinking. It is produced for NRF by Hackett Associates, whose economists examine a number of factors to forecast how much cargo will be imported through a dozen key U.S. ports each month. Retailers don’t import merchandise unless they believe they can sell it, so import numbers are considered a good leading indicator of future sales. So good, in fact, that the Federal Reserve is one of the subscribers to the report.

The bottom line? It’s too early to put a number on it, but if imports are up, sales are likely to follow.

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Dollar Tree grows 77 more stores

Mike Troy , Retailing Today . 8/16/2012

Sales for the second quarter ended July 28 increased 10.5% to $1.7 billion thanks to a 4.5% increases in same store sales and the addition of 77 new Dollar Tree stores, the company announced Thursday. Net income increased 25.6% to $119.2 million and earnings per share increased 30.8% to 51 cents. The profit performance met analysts’ estimates, but guidance for the third quarter in the range of 47 cents to 51 cents was a penny less than the 52 cents Wall Street expected and shares of the company sold off sharply after the earnings report.

“I am pleased with our second quarter performance,” said president and CEO Bob Sasser. “Dollar Tree continues to deliver consistently strong sales and earnings. I am particularly proud of the increases in operating margin and inventory turns.”

At the midpoint of the company’s fiscal year, the operating margin rate of 10.9% is 70 basis points higher than the 10.2% figure from the comparable period the prior year.

“We remain focused on providing great values for our customers and superior returns for our shareholders,” Sasser said. “Our stores are well-stocked with a terrific, balanced assortment of relevant merchandise for our customers and we are ready for an exciting fall season.”

Given the current state of the U.S. economy, a lot of retailers would love to produce a mid-single digit same store sales increase on top of a similar increase the prior year gain, but in the case of Dollar Tree the top line performance was regarded as disappointing.

Dollar Tree said it expects full year sales in the range of $7.36 billion to $7.45 billion and same store sales to increase in the low to mid single digit range. Full year profits per share are expected to range from $2.45 to $2.54. The company’s 2012 fiscal year includes and extra week that is expected to add $120 million to $130 million in sales and between seven and eight cents of earnings per share.