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Associated Press
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Feb 27, 08 8:10 AM CST
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Starbucks customers and competition alike got to know each other yesterday as the java giant closed for a 3-hour training break for all employee, reports the AP. "Free-market economy, baby! You've got to take advantage of what the competition throws at you," said one former Starbucks devotee swilling a competitor's discounted joe.
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CNN
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Feb 26, 08 12:20 PM CST
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Get your afternoon latte early today, because Starbucks—all 7,100 US locations—is closing at 5:30pm for 3 hours of staff training, CNNMoney reports. The company says it hopes baristas will “deepen their passion for coffee” and even “transform the customer experience,” not to speak of turning around a wicked stock slide. Smelling weakness, Dunkin' Donuts is pouncing, offering all its coffee beverages for 99 cents this afternoon.
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Los Angeles Times
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Feb 25, 08 8:15 PM CST
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If a shot of Georgi isn’t your style, Russian vodka makers are rushing to sell a new wave of premium bottles, the Los Angeles Times reports. Vodkas from France, Finland, and the US have gained popularity stateside over the past few years, but buyers couldn't find anything Russian other than Stoli on the shelves until recently.
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CNET
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Feb 25, 08 3:13 PM CST
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An online advertisers trade group has proposed guidelines for targeted advertising that don’t satisfy recent FTC recommendations. The Interactive Advertising Bureau proposal would make it harder for consumers to know if a website was storing their information; FTC guidelines suggest a “clear, consumer-friendly, and prominent statement” and easy opting-out process on websites that plan to collect data for targeted ads.
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NPR
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Feb 21, 08 3:14 PM CST
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At age 50, and after a decade in exile, the Smurfs are planning a comeback, NPR reports, with the original series coming out on DVD and a 3-D movie expected next year. Though today’s kids have more sophisticated options than watching the repair of mushroom houses, “the Smurf village can be a good place to rest," said one marketing type.
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Wall Street Journal
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Feb 21, 08 8:56 AM CST
(Newser) -
Big beer companies are facing state-led investigations into whether they're marketing caffeinated alcohol products to underage drinkers, the Wall Street Journal reports. Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing both make such beverages, but insist that "We responsibly market our products to legal drinking-age consumers," a Miller spokesman tells the Journal .
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New York Times
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Feb 20, 08 4:37 PM CST
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NBC appears to have followed through on pledges to use the writers' strike as a springboard to changing the television industry, ditching traditional fall debuts of new shows for staggered introductions throughout the year. The move is designed so the network can keep things fresh, and work more closely with advertisers, the New York Times reports.
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BusinessWeek
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Feb 20, 08
Howard Schultz is back in charge, but the coffee chain is running low on steam. We asked experts how they would perk up the ailing giant.
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Advertising Age
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Feb 19, 08 10:55 AM CST
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Absolut is selling a lot more vodka now that it's dumped one of the world's best-known ad campaigns, Advertising Age reports. The Swedish brand and its arty ads featuring the iconic bottle had been a big hit since entering the US market in 1979, but sales were flat before the launch of the "Absolut World" campaign last year. Now global shipments have spiked 9%.
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BusinessWeek
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Feb 19, 08
Key to its global expansion plan, China's leading beermaker aims to break out of the niche market in the U.S.
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BusinessWeek
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Feb 15, 08
An ambitious restructuring program, marketing, and a dandruff shampoo may take the consumer-goods company all the way to the top.
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Wall Street Journal
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Feb 14, 08 8:48 AM CST
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Women like watching network TV on the web, while men would rather click around and watch short, funny clips, a Nielsen Online study has found. The survey, Nielsen's first major one of its kind, found women are twice as likely to go to network web sites, and men in the 18-34 age bracket were more than twice as likely as women the same age to watch user-generated media like YouTube clips.
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Wall Street Journal
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Feb 7, 08 3:59 PM CST
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Drug company Merck will dish out $650 million to resolve lawsuits and probes into marketing schemes, the Wall Street Journal reports. Central to the investigations is the company’s “nominal pricing,” which slashed some drug prices by 90% for hospitals but hid the discounts from Medicaid, even though federal law demands that drug companies offer the government program their lowest prices.
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Wall Street Journal
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Feb 5, 08 3:15 PM CST
(Newser) -
Facebook and YouTube are runaway success stories when it comes to attracting Internet users, but they lag in attracting ad dollars, the Wall Street Journal reports. Advertising on social networking and video-sharing sites is relatively new, and therefore most vulnerable if economic worries lead to advertising cutbacks. Firms also worry about their ads appearing next to unsuitable content.
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Bloomberg
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Feb 4, 08 7:40 PM CST
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Super Bowl advertisers scored big last night as the Giants-Patriots match-up pulled a record 97.5 million viewers, besting the 1996 high of 94.1 million. "You could argue this might have been a perfect game from an advertising perspective,'' said a marketing analyst—who noted that the game's close score and slow pace "really put the focus on the commercials," Bloomberg reports.
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Reuters
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Feb 4, 08 10:45 AM CST
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A British retail chain has pulled a line of "Lolita" beds marketed to little girls following protests by parents. The Woolworths website staff "had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either," a spokesman said of the iconic nymphet. "We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now."
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