Brand Mix

I receive quite a lot of cartoons, videos etc through email. Not many of them make me laugh out loud like this one did.

My weekly summary of interesting and entertaining posts. More at the bottom of the page in "Martin's Shared Items." This week features Starbucks and only Starbucks. As Ben McConnell pointed out in the Church of the Customer blog, Starbucks is "everyone's favorite marketing patient."

This week Starbucks announced a series of steps it is going to take to restore its luster. These range from investing in new coffee equipment to launching a site where customers can leave suggestions (My Starbucks Idea).

Here are just a few of the tons and tons of opinions generated:

1) Starbucks Transformational Agenda: Brand Autopsy
John Moore has the highest level of credibility in the world of Starbucks commentary because he used to work there and his blog is very good. This was the first of a series of posts where he described and critiqued the initiatives.

2) Starbucks embraces the 5th P: Church of the Customer
A brief commentary on the My Starbucks Idea idea

3) Starbucks Launches Its Version of Dell's Ideastorm: Mack Collier
Mack compares the new Starbucks site to Dell's already launched site. The big question is whether or not Starbucks will act on any of the suggestions.

4) Will Schultz's new plans bring back Starbucks magic? Brand New Day (Business Week)
Taking a "wait and see" stance

5) 5 Key Changes Starbucks Needs To Make - Now: Harvey Hartman
Harvey Hartman was interviewed by USA Today for his opinion about what Starbucks should do. His thoughts are repeated in full here. The one idea that USA Today reprinted was that Starbucks should give its drip coffee away for free - something that probably wouldn't immediately help the bottom line. The USA Today piece is here.