Since 1936, Radio-Canada has been the pride of national broadcasting, but last week it chose to rebrand to "Ici," the French word for "here." Needless to say, listeners and politicians alike were irate.  

“Ici” has been used as a "tagline in Radio-Canada’s radio and TV reporting” for many years, according to the CBC, so the transition must have seemed like a natural for some executives in a boardroom. Unfortunately for everybody who signed off on the rebrand, it wasn’t taken too well. 

The Toronto Sun reports that most people were upset that the word “Canada” was going to be removed from the title of Radio-Canada, which costs taxpayers about $1 billion annually.Continue reading...

The death toll has passed 700 in Bangladesh, where recovery efforts continue to locate the rest of the victims of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse. Amid the devastation and grief has emerged strong accusations of blame that have fallen on the shoulders of the Bangladeshi government and worldwide retailers who rely on Bangladesh factories to supply their "fast fashion." 

Nearly two weeks after the disaster—which is the deadliest in the history of the garment industry—the United Nations International Labor Organization is calling for new global labor safety policies to be adopted by brands and governments. “The tripartite partners (Government, employers and workers) and the ILO stand united in their resolve to do everything possible to prevent further tragedy... and acknowledge that the challenges are daunting but believe that, if international buyers and brands take increased responsibility for improving working conditions and safety and health and with the active support of development partners and donors, safety can and must be improved in all workplaces throughout Bangladesh.” 

The ILO is one of many organizations lobbying major retailers like Walmart, H&M and Gap to sign the legally-binding Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement, but those holding out have maintained that they have made improvements and implemented processes on their own to improve safety in Bangladesh's factories.Continue reading...

The death toll from the factory building collapse in Bangladesh could reach as high as 1,400, with at least 900 workers still missing six days after Rana Plaza in Savar crumbled and the owners facing possible prison terms for not protecting the tenants or workers.

The Dhaka collapse is the deadliest to hit Bangladesh's garment industry—worth upwards of $20 billion—but little has changed since last November's Tazreen factory blaze that killed 112 workers despite public outcry and pledges to improve safety standards. 

However, the cumulative effect of such tragedies, which have been magnified through the power of social media and the internet, is forcing major Western retailers such as Britain's Primark, Canada's Loblaw and Spain's Mango to admit involvement and ultimately offer up aid or a solution.

But for every brand that steps up and admits fault, another places blame elsewhere or remains mum. Italy's Benetton acknowledged that their products were made in Rana, but claimed it was a "one-time order," while Walmart has maintained that its third-party supplier was not authorized to outsource manufacturing to the Bangladeshi factory.Continue reading...

If observers of Canada’s fashion industry have learned anything over the last 30 years, it’s this: don’t bet against Joe Mimran.

The brains behind Joe Fresh, which just celebrated its first anniversary of bringing contemporary styles and affordable prices to the US with an exclusive fashion show at its flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York, continues to be a fashion force and is showing no signs of getting stale.

The 61-year-old is currently overseeing a major country-wide expansion south of the 49th parallel. Joe Fresh’s “store-within-a-store” concept opened up to rave reviews in nearly 700 of JCPenney’s 1,100 locations a few weeks ago. Amidst JCPenney's ongoing retail debacle, much of the media attention had centered on now-ousted JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson hitching perhaps his last cart to Mimran. It's obvious that if Joe Fresh and the sampling of other top designers can't pull through with improved sales figures for the chain, JCPenney's days will surely be numbered.

“If Joe Fresh doesn’t work, this could be the worst ides of March since Brutus greeted Caesar on the floor of the Senate,” Maxim analyst Rick Snyder told Business Week. “(Joe Fresh) is kind of a microcosm of what they’re trying to do, and if it doesn’t work, I think it’s going to get really ugly.”

Nevermind Martha—if Joe Fresh can't boost JCPenney—whose shares jumped five percent on Joe's debut weekend—then nobody can. All it takes is one quick look at Mimran’s resume and it’s plain to see—the Moroccan-born fashionista knows his stuff and he’s got the marketshare, revenue and real estate to back it up.Continue reading...

It's Day 2 of the post-Johnson era at JCP—or JCPenney (or is it back to J.C. Penney now?)—and it isn't at all clear how the venerable American retailer is going to recover from what just-sacked CEO Ron Johnson did, and didn't, do.

But JCPenney, now back under the leadership of pre-Johnson CEO Myron "Mike" Ullman, is going to try. Wall Street has been tapping down Penney's stock in the wake of the board's decision to oust Johnson earlier this week, but it isn't because investors believe that Johnson should have stayed. It's because they fear that the former head of Apple retail operations did so much damage during his short tenure at the helm that the company isn't salvageable.

Ullman is at least going to give it everything he's got in his second shot at the job. The retailer is still fighting a 10 percent sales drop during its ongoing fiscal first quarter, the Wall Street Journal said, on top of a 19 percent drop during the same quarter a year ago and the overall 25 percent dip in revenues during 2012.Continue reading...

HTC One, a.k.a. the Facebook Home phone that's coming to AT&T and other carriers, is just one focus of the company’s impending brand refresh and aggressive marketing campaign to get better market placement against competitors like Samsung. 

HTC has been known for good hardware and not-so-good promotion, but squaring off against marketing-savvy Samsung requires the former to up its game. "It's one thing to make a great device—HTC has done that before," Mike Woodward, president of HTC America told the LA Times. "What is a little different this time is the way that we're going to market. We want to really get that down to the streets and get that down to consumers." 

HTC had been using “quietly brilliant” as its slogan, but the brand is looking to step out of its shell with a new marketing message that has “bold,” “authentic” and “playful” themes. The new tagline, "Everything Your Phone Isn't," is courting "Generation Feed" (what HTC calls tech-savvy, early-adopters). "Tech millennials are hard to connect with," Erin McGee, HTC North America VP Marketing told Ad Age. "We wanted to create a closer connection by targeting passion points."Continue reading...

A Canadian beer brand (ostensibly), in a stroke of marketing genius, has major alcohol brands jumping on its ad bandwagon promoting “Responsibly Beer.”

It’s actually an ad campaign by the Alberta Liquor and Gaming Commission and there’s no actual beer brand—just pure advertising to influence drinkers to do so responsibly.

The provincial AGLC went all-out with the ploy, creating an age-verification splash page, a Facebook page, Instagrammed "Responsibly" beer cans on Twitter and a Pinterest, too.

“The idea was to play on the very common slogan ‘drink responsibly’ to catch people’s attention, which will hopefully get them to our website enjoyresponsibly.ca to find out more about the concept behind the fictional product," said AGLC spokeswoman Michelle Hynes-Dawson, FoodBeast reports. It's "about giving a definition to 'responsibly' and moderation.”

“In terms of Facebook and Twitter, it worked well with the campaign concept and the demographic we are trying to reach," she added of the focus on young adults between 18 (the province's legal drinking age) and 24 years-old.Continue reading...

Need to ship a panda? No worries! FedEx has you covered. The company seems to have cornered the panda-transport market, moving its first back in 2000 from China to Washington, D.C. 

Since then, it has moved pandas to Paris, Edinburgh, Memphis and, as of yesterday, Toronto. The zoo there is now the proud owner of two pandas thanks to a deal signed by China’s former President Hu Jintao and Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The bears will stay there for five years before moving to the Calgary Zoo for another five years and then returning to China. Researchers and zoologists and romantics across the panda-loving universe are hoping the pair will breed and birth a few cute little pandas along the way.Continue reading...