Their marketing presumes that they’ve never before met their customers, and as if this year is the first time their target audiences have gone shopping for school stuff. The ad creative is frighteningly similar across brands, evoking variations on the theme of “we have low prices on whatever you’re looking for.” The fashion offerings are also quite similar, as buyers have spent the past year studying the same trends, interviewing the same third-party factories and otherwise chasing the idea that they can somehow exclusively address the identical buying whims of the same would-be customers.

I just don’t get it. Offering such true relationship marketing would constitute a far better loyalty program than any CRM email campaign or pointless chat on a social-media platform. Back-to-school shoppers must shop — it’s not an impulse or option, but rather more like taking the car in for a yearly checkup — so why don’t retail brands re-imagine their strategies and recognize the dimensions of that behavior? Low prices? Come on, now. Where are the agencies and consultants with the guts to propose some real, large-scale innovation? Read more at adage.com

Coming soon: credit and debit cards that cut you off when you disregard your own monthly budget.

In the next couple of days, MasterCard is expected to announce that Citigroup will be the first company in the United States to issue MasterCards with special features intended to protect consumers not only from thieves but also from themselves. Read more at www.nytimes.com

There is a wicked new marketing strategy currently sending shock waves through the high-stakes competitive world of luxury fashion. It’s devious, delightful and deliciously dirty.

Remember how Snooki, drunk or sober, was never seen without that Coach bag dangling from the crook of her arm? Snooki and her Coach were as synonymous as The Situation and his six-pack. But then the winds of change started blowing on Jersey Shore. Every photograph of Guido-huntin’ Snooki showed her toting a new designer purse. Why the sudden disloyalty?

Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here’s the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other’s bags! Competitors‘ bags! Read more at www.observer.com

Between 2007 and 2012, advertising’s slice of the total marketing pie is forecast by Jack Myers Media Business Report to decline from 30.7% to 25.9%. That represents more than $100 billion that is shifting away from traditional media spending to alternative marketing options during this five-year span. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in effectiveness, engagement and emotional connections™ research studies by media companies and agencies, advertising remains a cost center that is increasingly subjected to procurement oversight and intensifying cost controls. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

However, the survey found wide discrepancies between the tactics being used by media companies to market custom content and their effectiveness.

For example, while 79% of respondents are using social media tools to market custom content, just 25% said those tools are effective. Additionally, 51% use blogs, but only 25% said they are effective; 75% use article postings, but only 40% said they are effective.

The biggest challenges to custom media players are producing “engaging” content (36%) and producing enough content (21%), the survey found. Read more at www.btobonline.com

It’s clear that custom content is growing. A survey by the Custom Content Council found that spending on custom content in 2009 was higher than in any other year in the history of the survey, which was first conducted in 2003. The survey found that branded content accounted for 32% of overall marketing, advertising and communications budgets last year. Additionally, a recent report by McKinsey & Co. found that traditional marketers, which in general have not yet embraced online custom content, typically spend about 60% of their budgets on paid media and about 20% on content creation. At the same time, marketers that are embracing custom content— especially online—are shifting their spending. “Active digital marketers tend to devote about 30% of their marketing budgets to paid media and 50% to content,” according to the McKinsey report. Read more at www.btobonline.com