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Would you give up your spouse just to keep your status in a loyalty hotel program? Would you choose your hotel loyalty card over your wife if you pick choose just one thing to travel with? If you’re married, you may not like the answers. Some 73% of frequent travelers said “they would” to both questions.

The report, from the Starwood Preferred Guest program, only got worse for the sanctity of marriage. Some 70% of these frequent travelers said these relationships with hotel loyalty programs might even outlive marital unions or even their current jobs (no surprise there considering our economy). That there elite status would be more important than even their smartphones, tablets or even personal assistants in a travel emergency. And these travelers said they would outright lie to get an upgrade, like saying they were on their “honeymoon.” more

Depending on your viewpoint, JC Penney announced Wednesday that it is migrating down—or up—the multibrand retail chain. In the course of announcing some poor quarterly results covering the holiday season, CEO Ron Johnson said the retailer will remake itself to look less like a standard department store and more like a big-box retailer. The change includes everything from a “boutique” shop merchandising makeover, to a simplified “everyday low pricing” strategy, and even to a logo redesign that, to my eyes, resembles that of Target: the brand initials inside a geometric shape, in this case a square rather than a bulls-eye.

Put aside the Old-Glory-meets-Tommy-Hilfiger logo change, Penney’s second in a year. And put aside the “store within a store” orientation. To me that simply makes Penney more like every other department retailer, but then I prefer my clothes and kitchen goods without ads on them, whether Ralph’s or Martha’s.

What do you feel about the pricing philosophy? more

There are various modalities and senses of urgencies that flow through the upper echelons of executives at major corporations. Most of these individuals realize there is a time to grab market share as well as a time to plan a strong counter defense to against any and all plausible business, nuclear scenarios. Sometimes they’ve got to get into the boardroom and realize that the strategical direction that they are taking their company is concretely and 100% absolutely even more vital than the sugar coated, feel-good marketing messages that they continue to beam out into the ethos for all of the letdown customers to hear. Thus, drawing an even bigger divide in customer’s thought space re: the brand and what it really is vs. what they’re getting told it is. more

Finally, for all those couch potatoes around the country who continually fend off advice to get up, drop to the floor and do 20, help has arrived. A new app, Viggle, is designed to reward us lay-abouts with points for checking into our favorite TV shows.

This is all new and untested, so whether TV viewers, and maybe more importantly, network partners, actually buy into the idea of rewarding loyalty to broadcast programming is yet to be seen. more

As can be seen from Erik Hauser’s post below, Walgreens is dealing with a problem that could have a serious financial impact on a large portion of its customer base: a cancelled contract with prescription benefits company Express Scripts that could wind up reducing the number of prescriptions filled annually by the nation’s top pharmacy chain by as much as 1% to 3%. That could cost the company up to $4 billion in annual revenue and a sizeable portion of its customer base, who are already being courted in ads by other pharmacies that remain in the Express Scripts system.

In drug retailing, when people move their prescriptions, they also move a lot of their other healthcare and beauty buying. And having moved away once, they tend to stay away. more

Time magazine has several elements that reinforce its brand. Its distinctive red cover border, the central positioning and font of its logo and its reliance on single, full-page cover images all evoke the Time magazine feel.

Since 1927, Time has linked another element to its brand – its annual Person of the Year issue. While the idea of awarding an individual annual honor is widely duplicated, the concept is tied more closely to Time magazine than any other entity.

The key aspect of this element is selecting a person. Marketers immediately grasp the benefit of choosing an individual: It’s the resulting discussions. Love the pick, hate the pick. Water-cooler conversations over a specific person incorporate the magazine’s name. Reinforce the idea of a person of the year and build that brand, baby. more