BrandNg

New (sort of) upscale CVS stores

Apparently, for the last year or so, CVS has been renaming its PharmaCare specialty stores as CarePlus CVS/Pharmacy.  This door in Hell's Kitchen in NYC is an upscale boutique-style pharmacy, with a holistic-medicine feel.   Obviously, it caters to a different segment than the regular CVS/Pharmacy but essentially keeps the same name.  Seems like it could be confusing to me... as it seems it once was to CVS management.

Apparently, the name of both the back end and the retail portion of the specialty pharmacy division at CVS has gone through a lot of changes, including the removal of the "CVS" moniker as seen in this 2004 press release:

PharmaCare announced today that the name of CVS ProCare, its specialty pharmacy division, has changed to PharmaCare Specialty Pharmacy. The name change will reduce market confusion and convey the synergies that exist between offering pharmacy benefit management services along with specialty pharmacy services.

I guess the 2004 move didn't really reduce market confusion in the way they would have liked...

Unlimited flying @ JetBlue

JetBlue is offering an all-you-can-fly promotion: 30 days of unlimited flying (Sept 8 to Oct 8) for $600, with last seat availability and a 3-day reservation window.  Could have been even more interesting if bundled with MLB as a baseball road trip.

All You Can Jet at JetBlue

Cake Donuts, Now in the Household and Cleaning Aisle.

In the WTF? department: Entenmann's, the pre-eminent baker of supermarket crumb cakes and chocolate chip cookies since the 50s, has decided to extend its line, from baked goods of last resort (after all, they're available at drugstores and gas stations) to

... candles??!!! Whaat?

Yes, wrapped, in these signature Entenmann's blue and white window boxes, aren't the mediocre pound cakes or cinammon rolls you might expect.  Instead, they contain fragrance facsimiles, in the form of a candles. I'm not sure this is what Martin Lindstrom had in mind when he was talking about brand smells in Buyology.  Or maybe it is exactly what he had in mind.

But even Entenmann's itself is waiting to see if this is a good licensed extension: the candles haven't yet made it to their website.

Either way, here's hoping that Entenmann's will stop short of making these scents into perfumes as I'm not sure the market can handle another food-related personal fragrance. 

One scathing review of the BK Flame Body Spray reads: "This stuff smells like a wicked lactose intolerant fart...I sprayed a little bit on my hand and I've nearly thrown up 7 times already...washing does no good. I've tried everything. I've contemplated cutting my hands off: it's that bad."