The partnership addresses the growing shift toward what First Data calls “universal commerce” as consumers look for a shopping experience that bridges online and offline channels and incorporates personalized deals and product information at all times. Increasingly, consumers are looking for deals online and through mobile channels as they look to save money. But many retailers who conduct outreach and marketing online often run into problems trying to close the redemption loop on offers. With OfferWise, retailers will be to send out a deal through an an offer provider and they can now see which deals are actually redeemed at the store through a debit, credit or pre-paid card. It doesn’t have to be a card transaction either. OfferWise can also connect to NFC-contactless payments and digital wallets like PayPal.

American Express and Visa have also tried similar efforts to connect offers and actions to their cards. AmericanExpress allows deals offered through Facebook, Foursquare and LevelUp to be connected to a card transaction, so a coupon can be processed at check-out. Visa did a test with the Gap , allowing Gap shoppers who sign up, they can get offers pushed out to them when they make a purchase on their Visa card. With OfferWise and CardSpring, all cards are accepted, making it more flexible for consumers. And merchants can also tap into First Data’s analytics engine to improve consumer targeting and get performance analysis of their campaigns.

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Could these initiatives help your loyalty program?

If you look at the behavior of the Twitter audience of one particular specialized business publication (@adage, with more than 350,000 followers) and one well-known art-rock band (@okgo, with more than 650,000 followers), you’ll see that most folks are only listening. Though Mark Naples could have reached out to OK Go or Ad Age on Twitter, he chose good old-fashioned email — wisely, I’d say.

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Agreed! Do you have all your eggs in the social media basket? How do you approach social media “conversations”?

One new product that Unilever has begun to introduce in the United States is a brand named Simple, a skin-care line that is already sold in countries like Australia and Britain. A campaign now under way promotes Simple products as “sensitive skin experts.”

Procter & Gamble, a principal competitor of Unilever’s, started last week what it described as the “intrigue phase,” or teasers, for its introduction of Tide Pods, a one-step laundry tablet that will be promoted with a marketing budget estimated at $150 million for the first year. The “reveal phase” is to begin on Sunday, with a commercial for Tide Pods during the ABC broadcast of the 84th Academy Awards.

The growth in ad spending is “a trend we started seeing about a year ago, when the economy started coming out of its deep recession,” Mr. Steinlauf said, and “I don’t think there’s any turning back.”

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For some companies, doing more has meant investing in Facebook commerce, or f-commerce as it is widely referred to. The concept is simple – instead of forcing consumers to go to your website to buy your wares, you can hawk them through storefronts on Facebook, eliminating the need for consumers to leave their favorite hangout.

But many of those storefronts are now being shuttered according to a report by Bloomberg. Major brands like Gap, Old Navy, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom and Banana Republic are among those that have decided that f-commerce wasn’t worth it.

The reason? For video game Gamestop, which has some 3.5m fans on its Facebook Page, the ROI simply wasn’t there. “We just didn’t get the return on investment we needed from the Facebook market, so we shut it down pretty quickly,” Gamestop VP of marketing Ashley Sheetz told Bloomberg.

In retrospect, the fact that some of the f-commerce hype is subsiding isn’t entirely surprising. As Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru observes, selling to consumers on Facebook is “like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.” In other words, it’s not always a good combination.

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Have you seen f-commerce success?

The list, which appears in Working Mother magazine’s March 2012 issue, highlights organizations whose policies and practices encourage the advancement of women’s careers. Results are based on factors such as succession planning, profit-and-loss roles, gender pay parity, support programs and work-life balance.

The NAFE Top 10 Companies (in alpha order)
Bank of America
Cisco
General Mills
IBM
Johnson & Johnson
KPMG
The New York Times Companu
Procter & Gamble
Prudential Financial
State Farm Insurance

Other notable consumer goods and retail companies to make the top 50 list include: Colgate-Palmolive, Kraft Foods and Walmart. Click here to access the full list.

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1. Add Pinterest Content to Your Existing Facebook Presence.

Images are more effective than text at encouraging engagement, and an effective technology platform will allow you to surface visually appealing content on one or more Facebook Tabs. This content can be presented as a simple pinboard, as part of a game, or even in the News Feed.

2. Optimize Your Web Properties to Draw People to Your Pinterest Content.

You can always put a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button on your website. But remember, a user’s choice to “Follow” may not be brand-specific, but rather board-specific. This gives you an opportunity to segment your followers in ways relevant to your business. Lowe’s does a nice job of this and has seasonal boards (the Big Game, Valentine’s Day), themed boards (Craft Ideas, Unique Pet Projects), and boards that tie to specific merchandise areas (Lighting, Bedrooms, Bathrooms).

3. Make Your Pins Work Harder For You.

This means using a URL shortening and redirection strategy, preferably one that aggregates your Pinterest analytics (views, Repins, etc.) in a central location. This will allow the metrics to be combined with, and compared to, those from your othersocial properties. You also need to combat the link rot that can occur when the source image feeding your Pin is removed from its website.

Lastly, the pinned images themselves can be set to click through to a variety of sites. Imagine a Pin of a product that, once clicked, takes you to a flash sale where the product is sold at a discount after a minimum purchase threshold is met. All of this is possible now!

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“The Checkout,” an ongoing shopper-behavior study, shows increasing comfort with shopping online among all age groups, with baby boomers taking the lead. Fifty-two percent of shoppers ages 50 to 54 buy health and beauty products online, and 29% of those ages 45 to 49 buy food and beverages online. “Grocery shopping online is a concept most shoppers have yet to adopt, which means there are conventions ingrained in their shopping behavior that must be disrupted,” said Craig Elston, senior vice president of The Integer Group.

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How moms are using Pinterest:

Women currently dominate Pinterest making up nearly 70% of their active users. Moms are using Pinterest in a variety of ways to organize and learn more about their interests. They follow experts to be in the know about trends on a variety of topics from parenting, to fashion and design, to cooking. They’re also following friends and finding Pinners with similar interests to share and be inspired by.

They’re also following brands. Retailers like Nordstrom and West Elm have significant followings on Pinterest – similar to on Facebook, moms want to connect and interact with their favorite brands.

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Throughout 2011, CPG brands spent more than any other group on video advertising — making up 24% of all dollars spent, according to new data from YuMe. Health and pharmaceutical brands came in second — with a 16% share of the video ad market– despite a 400% year-over-year increase in spending.

The 25-54 consumers were the most-requested demographic — making up 15% of RFPs — the video ad network found.  Females 25-54 were the most-requested female demographic in 2011, with 39% of requested RFPs.

In another finding, the majority of ad impressions that YuMe served in 2011 were in California at 11.0% of total volume, followed by New York at 7.9% and Texas at 6.8%.

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