Cara Wood

Calvin Klein and perfume company COTY are using an increased amount of social media and Internet marketing to promote CKFree, a cologne aimed at men ages 18 to 34 who identify themselves as independent, modern thinkers.

While the social media channel provides a glut of data for those listening and participating, marketers have struggled to find relevant ways to tie time and money invested in the channel to ROI and sales objectives. DMNews asked marketing experts for advice on making social media more accountable.

Juice maker Welch's, which spent $4 million online last year, launched its "Real. Grape. Goodness" integrated effort, November 12. It includes TV, online and print components.

When Bigelow Tea wanted to attract more visitors to its Web site and better engage them, it launched the Tea Talk blog and corresponding social network presence on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. The social media presence especially came in handy last year, when a subset of customers was outraged at the discontinuation of the Fruit and Almond Tea, and Bigelow — the person — answered.

A troubled 2009 has seen cutbacks and ad budget freezes across all industries. Both consumers and executives have dithered in purchase decisions, absorbing information, coupons, custom content, product reviews, free trials and freebies before signing the check or invoice.

The University of Missouri just released an interesting study about the emotional impact of search content versus Web site content when surfing the Web. According to the findings, users retain the emotional content of an item far better when they've searched for it rather than clicked on it through other content searching.

US online retail spending totaled $29.6 billion in Q3 2009, according to a e-commerce sales estimate released on November 5 by ComScore. The period, down 2% versus a year ago, was the second in online shopping history in which sales figures had a downward trend in consecutive quarters. However, the projections for the holiday season are healthier.

Mobile commerce provider Digby announced the acquisition of mobile software company Movaya Wireless on November 4. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Stanley Wang, Movaya co-founder and CTO, has joined Digby as VP of engineering.

Online holiday sales will increase this year, but marketers will have to work harder for each buyer than last year, according to the 2009 US Online Holiday Retail Forecast, released by Forrester Research on November 2. The research company's report, based on an online survey fielded in August of 4,723 US adults, projects an 8% growth rate for November and December US online retail sales.

The American Heart Association next week will launch a viral video called "Hand-walker," which follows a man walking through a New York neighborhood on his hands. The video is part of an ongoing effort by the nonprofit to build awareness for the hands-only CPR technique, a two-step process that does not include mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.