SOCIAL MEDIA
GM returns to Facebook
Facebook Inc. won back General Motors Co. as an advertising customer a year after the automaker said it would quit running marketing messages on the world’s largest social-networking service.
The test ads, running on Facebook’s mobile applications and website, will promote the Chevrolet Sonic subcompact car, GM said in an emailed statement. It’s part of a broader GM mobile-marketing effort.
Facebook has been introducing new tools and services to keep users engaged longer and lure advertisers. GM’s decision to end Facebook ads in May heightened investor concerns that other large advertisers would reconsider the website. The reversal shows the headway Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is making in getting companies to tout wares to people socializing on handheld devices.
“To Facebook’s credit, I think they also got better about understanding how to better target certain users and to get messages across in that way instead of being just a social network,” Thilo Koslowski, an auto industry analyst with Gartner Inc. based in San Jose, California, said in a telephone interview.
— Bloomberg News
RETAIL
Changes at J.C. Penney
J.C. Penney is cleaning house. The embattled department store chain has announced that two top executives, Chief Operating Officer Michael Kramer and Chief Talent Officer Dan Walker, have left the company.
Kramer and Walker were among several executives hired in November 2011 by Penney’s former CEO Ron Johnson. Johnson was ousted April 8.
The departures are the latest personnel changes from new CEO Mike Ullman, who had been Johnson’s predecessor. The departures include some of the key people who were hired to help carry out Johnson’s changes that included getting rid of most discount sales campaigns and bringing in new hip brands. The strategy was designed to attract younger, wealthier shoppers, but it alienated Penney’s loyal customers.
Since Ullman has been back, the chain also rehired Ken Mangone as executive vice president, design and sourcing. Mangone is a Penney veteran who developed store-label brands such as St. John’s Bay.
— Associated Press