Online Black Friday

Online retailer Amazon says it had its biggest sales day in the UK as shoppers rushed to buy bargains on Black Friday. The UK version of the website sold more than 7.4m items while other retailers had problems with web sales due to huge demand. Retail analysts said online sales were estimated to have passed £1bn on a single day for the first time. Many big stores have opted for a week long sales period this year and IMRG predict figures will reach over £3bn by Monday - which retailers refer to as Cyber Monday. The popular card game Cards Against Humanity collected £42,200 after asking people to pay them $5 on Black Friday, for nothing in return. The company explained '11,247 people gave us $5 or more, and this led to us making a profit of $71,145.

Black Friday

No Mog For Christmas

Shoppers have been left furious after Sainsbury's stores around the UK ran out of stock of cuddly Mog toys - with the cuddly teddies selling for up to £90 on eBay . Sales of the popular moggy have left Sainsbury’s chiefs struggling to keep up with demand - with some punters making nine times more than its £10 retail value selling it online. The toy - which accompanies the hit supermarket advert, shows Mog the cat ‘save christmas ’ after wrecking its owners’ home - has been a surprise hit since the ads hit our screens earlier this month. Shoppers have bought tens of thousands of the toys and the accompanying book Mog’s Christmas Calamity by author Judith Kerr for £3, with profits going to Save the Children. But bosses at the store, which has 12,000 stores in the UK, have now admitted that it only had a ‘limited supply’ and that stores which have run out will not be getting any more of the cuddly toys - leaving thousands of punters disappointed. Writing on Sainsbury’s Facebook account Joanne DeBarro wrote: “What a shame Sainsbury’s you have upset hundreds of children every time I see your Mog advert will make me think about how many children you have let down this Christmas. What a shame.”

All out of Mog

Be Safe, Be Seen, Be Fined

Poundworld has been fined over £63,000 for selling non reflective hi-vis jackets, sporting the logo "be safe, be seen". Tests conducted by trading standards on one of the jackets revealed its reflectivitiy was no more than 2.4 per cent of what it should have been. The discount retailer had already sold more than 95,000 vests for £1 each. Prosecutor Andrew Johnson said Joe Taylor, from Hertfordshire Trading Standards, had carried out tests on a hi-vis jacket purchased from PoundWorld. Judge John Plumstead fined Poundworld £15,000 and ordered it to pay £42,395 in an agreed confiscation order, along with £6,123 in prosecution costs. He said: "People would have gone out of the shop believing they had improved the safety of their children or themselves when out after dark on foot or on a bicycle. "The fine demonstrates the court’s disapproval of those who put on the market safety aids that are not safety aids at all."

Not So Safety Jackets

Black Friday

Britain is poised for its biggest ever day of shopping next week, with consumers set to mark the Black Friday sales spree by spending as much as £2bn in a single day. Retailers across the country will cut prices on 27 November, as a shopping tradition launched in the US becomes a fixture in the British high street calendar. Spending nearly £2bn in a single day is equivalent to £83m every hour, £1.4m every minute and more than £23,000 every second. Amazon is offering 7,000 deals on Black Friday, more than double last year, when it generated 5.5m orders in a single day. A number of smaller retailers are also responding differently in order to protect their margins and business models. Anthony Thompson, chief executive of FatFace, has said that instead of discounting the casual clothes retailer is donating 10% of net profits to local charities. Others are choosing to espcae the Shopocalypse by following the trend of Buy Nothing Day which aims for people to not buy anything on Black Friday.

#Cadvent Countdown Begins

Cadbury has announced its plans to construct an advent calendar out of 24 branded trucks, one for each 'door' of the calendar, in the lead up to Christmas.Each truck will showcase a number from 1 to 24 on its exterior, which will determine the day it is to depart from the advent calendar in Bournville, the home of Cadbury. In a bid to showcase the joy that Cadbury brings in the countdown to Christmas, the trucks will travel to locations throughout the UK and Ireland to greet consumers with Cadbury treats and other surprises.Claire Low, marketing manager at Mondelèz International, said: "Through this ad, we wanted to capture the huge anticipation felt by consumers during the Christmas countdown. 

Cadvent

Toys R Not Just For Boys or Girls

One of the world’s best-known toy retailers has stopped telling girls and boys what they should be playing with, in a victory for parents upset by gender-based marketing. Toys R Us has dropped gender filters from its UK website following complaints that such signposting puts off girls from playing with trains and construction sets. Shoppers are instead invited to browse depending on the child’s age group, brand, or type of toy they are after. But Christmas shoppers will find that aisles devoted to pink and blue, even if the signage is no longer there, remain the norm.

Toys R Us

Personalised Pots

Coca-cola started it but the personalised trend is now spreading to more areas. Nutella and Marmite are now both offering customers an opportunity to get personal with their products. Brands have huge emotional attachments, and as previously reported, personalised Coca-Cola bottles were used for a wedding proposal. Philippa Atkinson, assistant brand manager for Marmite, told marketing and design magazine The Drum: "We're delighted to be entering the growing market for personalised products. Marmite has an innate ability to create talkability and we believe our personalised jars will do just that."

Personalised Products

The 25p Store

A social supermarket selling surplus items for a bargain 25p is offering an alternative to food banks. Entrepreneur Charlotte Danks is now hoping to help others struggling to feed their families all across the UK after the success of her first store in Cornwall. The Bargain Brand Food Outlet in Newquay stocks food that has been rejected by supermarkets, allowing her to sell it at a discount price.She stocks products nearing their sell-by date or that have been rejected by supermarkets due to manufacturing faults, such as damaged packaging or incorrect labelling. The businesswoman says supermarkets get in contact when they have stock they are unable to sell before she collects it in her van. Charlotte said that ‘Everything is perfectly fine, but the supermarket has to get it off its shelves and it would otherwise end up straight in landfill. ‘It’s really taken off. Hopefully in the next six months I’ll have another two shops.’

The 4th Edge

The Serafino 4th EDGE has been designed and researched through 32 prototypes over the last 6 years. Now ready to be unveiled – and compared – and to defeat players using conventional boots not using Serafino 4th EDGE . The boots offer an 33% increase in kicking zones over standard boots. They have 3 conventional surfaces, left side, right side and laces that perform every bit as well as any other boot on the market. They are supremely comfortable to wear that players believe to be safer and more comfortable than other boots available. They help protect footballers from ever more common metatarsal injuries that can keep players on the side lines for months at a time. Plus, and a very big plus, it will turn you from a one-footed to a two footed player.  Uniquely the Boot has a 4th lethal kicking surface, our specially moulded toe to ensure you can kick with it with complete accuracy, more power and a faster strike.

Serafino Boots

Amazon Begin A New Chapter...

Amazon is opening its first physical bookstore, 20 years after the world’s biggest online retailer started selling publications on the internet. The company will unveil a shop called Amazon Books at University Village in Seattle, its home city, on Tuesday. Amazon will stock about 6,000 titles, with the selection based on reviews and sales data from Amazon.com. The price of books in the store will be the same as on the website. Richard Mollet said Amazon was following in the footsteps of Apple as well as traditional bookshops. Apple has opened shops across the world to sell technology, and it also uses the physical locations to bolster its brand. The store includes a shelf holding the bestselling books on Amazon.com and another with books that are rated 4.8 stars and above by customers. Comments from reviews are also shown next to each book. Can this prove a success?

Amazon Shop

Jumping For Joy

The 'Burberry Festive Film' this year pays tribute to the iconic BAFTA-winning British film Billy Elliot, which this year celebrates its 15th anniversary, and sees the cast - including Romeo Beckham - leaping in the air while wearing a scarf in the signature print. See how many other stars you can spot in the advert. Why do you think that Burberry would spend so much money on an advert? Inspired by the production of the original film's charitable support the local community Easington, County Durham, where the film is set, to make a donation of £500,000 to be split between two charities. Also, none of the stars involved took any pay, they instead decided to donate their fees to charity also. All if the festive spirit of goodwill!

Burberry Festive Film

Man On The Moon

 

The two-minute production – which cost £1 million, with a further £6million going on booking TV slots - features a six-year-old girl who is determined to get a message to a lonely old 'Man on the Moon'. It has trounced last year's production with more than 23,000 social media mentions in the first two hours - compared to Monty's 14,000 in the first 24 hours last year, according to Brandwatch. In the first hour of it being teased on YouTube, there were 16,396 mentions of #manonthemoon and #onthemoon - which was used as the teaser hashtag. Follow the link to watch the advert.

Man On The Moon

Spectre Product Placement

Spectre is believed to have more product placements than any of the 007 series' previous 23 offerings, with at least 17 brands plying their wares on screen. One of the more blatant scenes sees Bond handed an Omega watch by Q only for the camera to zoom in on the item, clearly making sure viewers could see the brand name. The filmmakers have previously defended product placement, claiming it is the only way to fund the stellar budgets they need. Spectre is reported to have cost £226 million to make. Some of the less-than-subtle sales pitches in the new film include a close-up of a Sony phone, and the back of a Land Rover needlessly lingering in shot to make sure the name is clear.  Bond namechecks Rolls-Royce when a vintage model picks him up from a desert railway station, and Sig Sauer guns when he is trying to teach Bond girl Madeleine Swann how to shoot. As always, Bond has a penchant for Aston Martin cars but other makes also get a prominent showing.  The simple shot of Bond glowering outwards sees him wearing a polo neck from N.Peal. The fashion brand has signed a deal to dress Bond in its £200 cashmere jumpers. Craig's Bond continues to be fitted out in Tom Ford suits, with the fashion label also providing sunglasses for a range of characters. Ben Whishaw's scientist Q is also shown in a Missoni striped sweater.

Bond Placement

Retailers Spooked by Halloween Frenzy

Supermarkets are banking on a sales surge this Halloween, with one City analyst calculating shoppers could spend up to £460m on fancy dress, food and decorations. The celebration is the UK’s second-biggest party night after New Year’s Eve, say analysts at Conlumino, and some supermarkets expect a sales boost of up to 20% this year because the event falls on a Saturday. Halloween has grown in popularity in the UK and easily accounts for more spending than bonfire night. Parties were once focused on children, but Watson said adults were increasingly prepared to dress up. Asda said it had more than tripled its stocks of costumes this year and bought nearly 60% more makeup as it expected Halloween sales across all categories to rise by 20%. Sainsbury’s said it had bought 30% more adult costumes than last year and 22% more non-food Halloween-related products.

Halloween Frenzy

A Brand New Brand Phone

Rumours have been bubbling away that Pepsi is set to launch a smartphone – and now the fizzy drinks firm has confirmed they are true. Leaked image and details of a budget Android handset called the Pepsi P1 emerged earlier this week and PepsiCo have said that a 'line of mobile phones and accessories' will launch in China in just a few months. One handset, the P1, is predicted to boast features including a 5.5-inch screen, fingerprint scanner and 13-megapixel camera. Available in China only, this effort is similar to recent globally licensed Pepsi products which include apparel and accessories. Pepsi has no plans to get into the mobile phone manufacturing business, but we are committed to engaging with consumers in innovative ways to grow our brand.

Pepsi Smart Phone