Starbucks VIA instant coffee taste test. Is it as good as they say?

Photo: me

It's the Starbucks VIA Italian Roast vs. Starbucks Ground Italian Roast vs. Taster's Choice Original taste-off. Via was launched earlier this year with a bold claim--that it tastes as good as fresh-brewed coffee. Let's just see how this claim stands up shall we?

First a note about the two judges: Me and my wife. We're biased. We both worked at Nestlé on its instant coffee business (which includes Taster's Choice). Before taking the test, we promised not to let our undying loyalty for our old employer impair our judgment. Honest. (We did blind tasting to compensate for bias.)

The results: The VIA claim more or less stands up. In terms of appearance, aroma, mouthfeel and taste, VIA is pretty close to the Ground Italian Roast and miles different/better than Taster's Choice. Lots of body, no off-notes and no artificial flavor. We both agreed that sample #2 (the Ground sample) had a slightly richer and more distinctive taste than sample #1 (VIA) but nothing that either of us would have picked up without a side-by-side comparison. I think it's fair to say that Starbucks has successfully reinvented the instant coffee category and shown what's possible.

The problem: So what? How does Starbucks benefit from having the best instant coffee on the market? One reviewer said that he really liked VIA and would be sure to take it with him the next time he went camping. Ouch! Is that the market? Overseas will be a better opportunity. There are many countries (mostly the original tea-drinking countries like England, Japan, China and Korea) where instant coffee is a much more important category than it is in the States. But what's the angle in the States?

Pricing, another problem: VIA is quite extraordinarily high-priced. Its cost per cup is 83 cents vs. (roughly) 32 cents for the ground coffee and 21 cents for Taster's Choice. Is this price point an attempt to signal quality? Or is it a reflection of production costs? I can't imagine that such a price point would work in supermarkets which would otherwise be a natural outlet for distribution.

The potential winner: Instant coffee and, curiously enough, Taster's Choice. If VIA makes enough of an impression to change consumers ideas about what's possible with an instant coffee product, then all the players in that category can benefit. Nestlé has succeeded with more expensive blends in other markets but those same products have failed here. Perhaps VIA will open the way for another try?

Notes:

On the technology: VIA is described on the label as "soluble and microground" coffee. What that means to me is that the product is a mix of traditionally-prepared instant coffee (which is brewed and then dried) and some coffee beans that have been ground but not brewed. These "microground" beans may not add significantly to the taste but they will add mouthfeel - the undissolved solids provide a thickness to the coffee that typical instant coffees lack. (You can actually see the grounds in the cup after drinking.) I imagine that the other way they improved the taste was by having a much lower extraction level than is typical for instant coffees (which does drive the cost up).

On other reviews: There are many other reviews of VIA. Most of them say the same thing: surprisingly good for an instant coffee.
1) Hivelogic
2) Viewpoints
3) WalletPop

On the new Taster's Choice packaging: Sorry, gang, I hate it. Not only have you killed the Taster but the cup of coffee itself looks like a grey, solid slab of cooking chocolate with zero appetite appeal. It's Tropicana-bad. Sales down 20%?

Six of the Best: Farewell edition

Thank God, I hope you're not saying. But I don't mean me. I mean farewell to some brands and businesses that bit, are apparently about to bite or are predicted to bite the dust. Here are the farewell stories of the week:

1) So Long, GeoCities: We Forgot You Still Existed: Yahoo! Tech
Ironic that this story from PC World was also published on Yahoo! Tech. Because GeoCities was Facebook and MySpace years before either existed but never saw the light of day after Yahoo! acquired it for a crazy $4.7 billion back in 1999. For some examples of the GeoCities classic member homepages, see here.

2) GM Ready To Scrap Pontiac Brand: NPR
Frank Langfitt and Michelle Norris discuss GM's expected elimination of Pontiac: "its next most vulnerable brand." Poor sales, low prices, condemned to "niche" brand status with no long term development plans, this was all but inevitable. The days of the GTO and TransAm long gone. Yet more bad news for Michigan and especially, in this case, the town of Pontiac.

3) The Top 12 Brands Likely to Disappear: Seeking Alpha (via @russhmeyer)
As the recession continues, an analysis by 24/7 Wall Street predicts that a number of well-known brands are likely to disappear before the end of 2010, based on current business performance. The top three on the list are #1 Budget, #2 Borders and #3 Crocs. Followed up later with the top 12 brands likely to survive despite present troubles. that list includes: Sears, The New York Times and Skechers

4) The Kindle—friend or foe? Landor.com
This was quite the week for predictions about the end of eras. I wrote about how Google, in one single day, had announced plans that will 'kill' newspapers, Facebook and all corporate home pages. Meanwhile, here's Ann Evans wondering if Kindle will do away with books and libraries. The New York Times was also considering whether Kindle is a good or bad thing for the publishing industry.

5) White Space is to make money - GE Homeland Protection: The Phoenix Principle
GE has announced that it's selling 81% of its Homeland Protection business to Safran, a French company. As Adam Hartung comments, the market for airport security has not developed the way it was expected to post 9/11 so GE has pulled the plug. The lesson: "When you have White Space projects, you have to manage them for results, not just let them run." GE could have continued trying to make this business work but it decided the better course was to exit and try something else.

6) The Mainstream Adoption Curve: Logic+Emotion
David Armano charts the path from OMG to :-(

That's it! See you here on the blog or on Twitter (@martinjbishop) for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

Googlefication update

Here's just one day's worth of Google news, with a little melodrama thrown in:

1) Google kills home pages: "A company's corporate home page is Google.com," says Dell’s VP of Communities and Conversations, Bob Pearson. By which he means that the way that most people look for a company is by typing its name into Google rather than trying to guess the url. Len Kendall explores the implications in this post, pointing out companies need to become active participants in providing content that makes to the search pages. Or others will be there instead.

2) Google kills newspapers: Now you can see your news in a visual timeline:

Screen grab from: brandflakesforbreakfast

3) I'd kill to be on Google: No killing required. Just a little bit of work and you can make it onto the front page. A Google profile:"allows you to control how you appear on Google and tell others a bit more about who you are." People are arguing whether this will or will not kill Facebook.

Pricing strategy: Bread and rollercoasters

Photo: (obviously) me

We made our annual, I was going to say pilgrimage but that doesn't sound right so, trip to Discovery Kingdom on Sunday. We always enjoy our visit and this year was no exception. I think that the park manages to stay the right side of the experience delivery vs. revenue extraction equation. Providing some restaurant-branded (Johnny Rockets) food choices has helped because this was one area in big need of improvement.

Anyway, what caught my attention from a pricing perspective was the extreme incentive offered to buy a season pass. As you would be able to see from the photograph if I'd taken a better shot, the price for a season pass is $49.99 and general admission is $44.99. For only $5 more you can go an unlimited number of times to the park. That's a big difference from other venues like ski resorts where the season pass only pays out after the fourth or fifth visit.

I assume that this pricing incentive comes from the fact that, like movie theaters, the park makes most of its money from concessions and gift shops and therefore wants to cram as many people in as possible to maximize revenues. I wonder if they do, or even can, work out how much people's experience of the park is affected by having to wait in longer lines for the rides or having to pay exorbitant amounts for the food, the two downsides to this strategy?

On to bread. Back in the city I went to Lightening Foods for lunch, an eaterie known for its extremely garlicy Caesar salad. It used to offer an individually wrapped Italian roll free with the salads. No more. Now those same rolls cost 10 cents which the cashier has to tell every single person who picks one up to make sure they know the change in policy. As he told me, rather than increase the price of the salads: "We decided to do away with all the free stuff."

I think that was a bad idea for three reasons: a) I imagine that the price increase on the salads which would have generated the same revenue as the 10 cents on the rolls would be hardly noticeable (especially since most of the salads are sold by weight; b) People love free stuff. These free rolls sent a strong message and c) I feel bad for the cashier.

For both the park's season passes and the eaterie's free rolls, the pricing decisions taken have hard-to-measure downsides. I don't know about these two cases specifically but my experience has been that things not easily quantified are easily discounted, often leading companies to make decisions that look good on a spreadsheet but not so great on the ground.

SunChips green hotness: what it really takes to earn eco-credentials

Earth Day is just around the corner, a can't-miss opportunity for more and more companies to talk about their green credentials. But if everyone is doing it, as Landor's Allen Adamson points out in the WSJ and USA Today, how can anyone stand out from the crowd?

If there's one brand that does deserve to be in the limelight, it must be SunChips which has gone way beyond a single day tie-in. It has made a commitment to the environment the core idea for its brand. Here are some of the things that it has done:

1) Its name: Perhaps someone from the brand can confirm this for me but I believe that the brand name SunChips pre-dates any specific commitment to the environment. So call this a lucky break but the name provides a connection between the brand and its eco-friendly activities that others don't have. It makes its green activities make sense.

2) Its products: Are all (relatively) healthy. So there's no inconsistency between what you're eating and what they are saying about the environment. Healthy inside and out.

2) Its manufacturing process: Back in 2007, I posted that Frito-Lay was planning to create an eco-friendly chip by taking its Casa Grande plant in Arizona off the power grid, running it on renewable fuels and recycled water. And, yes, this is the plant where SunChips are made. SunChips are made by solar energy. It can't get much better than that.

3) Compostable packaging: But now, with the name, product and manufacturing process all in place, the brand team is off to the races. What to green light next? So, for this Earth Day, SunChips has announced that it will rollout compostable packaging. This ad below shows a time lapse of how the 100% biodegradable bag decomposes in 14 weeks. It's a first for the industry:

4) Marketing: They've not forgotten about marketing either. This new ad links to the greeneffect.com which talk about a competition launched in partnership with National Geographic to support the best green ideas.

It's the whole package from manufacturing all the way through to sales and marketing that gives SunChips eco-credentials almost impossible for competitors to match. As a branding guy, I just have to root for SunChips to be successful (even though I don't actually like the chips all that much myself). I sure hope that lots of people buy the new packages. Otherwise, it's going to be one hell of a mess in the stores.

Six of the Best: Glitchmyass edition

Wow! What a week for social media firestorms. First, Amazon. Then, Dominos. All accompanied by the incredible voice of Susan Boyle. Here are the stories of the week:

1) Amazon and the hero's journey: Church of the Customer
A nice recap (with diagrams!) of the Amazon debacle that spawned #glitchmyass t shirts and a torrent of tweets on that hash as well as #amazonfail. Amazon just couldn't catch up with what it had wrought--perhaps it hadn't had enough practice being the villain? As Russ Meyer commented on the Landor blog: "Hashtag. If you don’t know what that word means and you’re a marketer, you'd better go look it up in the Urban Dictionary—quick."

2) You got three minutes...to destroy your brand: Landor.com
The other social media firestorm of the week was unleashed when two renegade Domino's Pizza employees videoed themselves doing disgusting things to pizzas and uploaded this to YouTube. The company was slow to react initially (and slow means not instantaneously) leaving too much time for the brand to be damaged. Finally, it got on track, got the video (and copies) removed and replaced with a video of its own from the CEO. David Kiley's BusinessWeek post on the same topic shows what happened during the week to the company's quality and buzz ratings. It was bad.

3) Susan Boyle - Britains Got Talent 2009 Episode 1: Britain's Got Talent
From Bathgate to everywhere. An epic story which, as Dan Heath points out, had all the right sticky elements to go supernova. It's been downloaded around 25 million times this last week. If you are not one of the 25 million, it's well worth a look.

4) Lindsay Lohan's eHarmony profile: Funny or Die
Meanwhile, Lindsay Lohan showed some media savvy of her own this week by recording this spoof dating ad after her widely reported break-up with Samantha Ronson. Her pitch: "I'm a workaholic, a shopaholic and according to the state of California, an alcoholic."

Lindsay Lohan's eHarmony Profile from Lindsay Lohan

5) How to Become a "Death of Newspapers" Blogger: Huffington Post
If you are looking for your own opportunity for social media stardom, here's a "how to" guide for one increasingly popular path. Paul Dailing describes the process for becoming a fully-fledged newspaper death blogger. "Apparently, it's very simple. The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you're doing. If you make it sound like you're the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win."

6) Pixazza: A price tag inside web photos: Thought Gadgets
Ben Kunz points to Pixazza, a photo-ad integration company that just got $5.8 million worth of VC support. It embeds ads into photos so when users scroll over things like clothes being worn by an actress, little price tags appear. Move to that price tag and a window pops up explaining the product and where to buy it. As Ben says: "Clever. Unobtrusive."

That's it! When I'm not blogging, I'm sometimes Twittering as #martinjbishop. See you here or there for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

Wait, Mr. Retailer, you do need my manufacturer brand.

The Private Label path to retail dominance continues apace, now with even more pace since the economy started tanking. Vast swathes of manufacturer brands are at risk as their share of shelf space is squeezed to make way for the latest retailer own-labels.

The U.S. is, by no means, the leader in private label sales. Many countries in Europe, especially Switzerland which has almost a 50% Private Label share, are further down the path.

But now, here's news from one retailer in Spain, one of those highly developed Private Label markets, that gives manufacturers a new line of argument about why their brands should stay on the shelves, albeit not a particularly attractive one.

Mercadona is Spain's leading grocery chain and reported strong sales growth in 2008 as it drove down prices to put the squeeze on the competition. As part of its cost-cutting program to support this strategy, Mercadona has been focusing on private label and aggressively cutting back on manufacturer brands. At the end of 2008, it cut its product lines by a further 8%.

The removal of so many manufacturer products did provoke somewhat of a consumer backlash with complaints that the choice available was now too limited.

But also (and finally), here is the interesting point noted by Ugo Ceria posting on JWT Anxiety Index: With so few manufacturer brands left, smart shoppers don't feel so smart any more because they can't see how much money they are saving by buying private label.

So there you have it, manufacturers. Your new argument is: "Please, Mr. Retailer keep us on the shelf. Perhaps no-one will buy our product but all those who buy yours will feel so much better for it." As I said, not attractive but if it works, it works.

Six of the Best: Easter Egg edition

Photo: me

Here's my summary of interesting things I read (or saw) this last week. I'm spending practically the whole weekend supervising egg hunting so I thought I'd leave an Easter egg for you as well. It takes to you one of the most incredible wild life videos I've ever seen. Buffaloes vs. lions and more. Good luck finding it!

1) Zappos Map: Susan Nelson
This map went viral around our office on Thursday. Another great idea from Zappos and one that could have some interesting applications for insight development. As I watch now, Omaha seems to be going big on Vans.

2) Ford creates a Social Media Movement with Fiesta: eyecube
The big social media story of the week. Ford is giving away 100 Ford Fiestas to 100 people to test drive them for six months. The agents are all social media heavy hitters and they will be telling their "Fiesta Movement" stories on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter etc. Reviews for the car and the idea mostly positive.

3) Enough With the Value Messages Already: Brandweek
Must be a story of the week if it includes a quote from me. Todd Wasserman has had enough of the abuse of the word "value" as every brand out there is trying to attract recession-sensitized consumers to their products without dropping prices. Trouble is there's not much in the way of attractive alternatives.

4) Tina Fey on Amy Poehler on branding now: Grant McCracken
This week saw the first episode of Parks & Recreation starring Amy Poehler. (I watched the show and I didn't think it was all that great.) Anyway, Tina Fey says of Amy: "Amy is funny because she doesn't care what you think, but she does want to make you laugh. It's a complicated and important combination." Grant thinks that new brands are like her: "less agreeable, less eager to please, less unapologetically pleasant" unlike the the old bland brands.

5) Burger King Introduces the Booty Call to 5 Year Olds: BiG



Scott thinks that this ad promoting 99 cent SpongeBob kid's meals is terrible on every level including the fact that it's completely inappropriate for 6 year olds. So I tested it out on my own 6-year old (Emmi). I can report that the only thing she saw or reacted to was SpongeBob himself (and Squidward) which suggests that the main problem with the ad is that the rest was just so much wasted space.

6) MP shames chocolate makers who over-egg Easter packaging: The Herald
Brands are being named and shamed for their excessive use of chocolate Easter Egg packaging. (For those in the States, this is what a chocolate Easter egg looks like in the UK.) Anyway, Jo Swinson, a Liberal Democrat MP, has compiled a list of worst-offender firms and has named Lindt as the company: "whose packaging is the most excessive with an Easter egg, which takes up only 9% of the volume of the packaging."

That's it! See you next week for more stories from the world of brand strategy. If you can't find the Easter egg and want a clue (or the answer), email me or Twitter (martinjbishop).

Twitter first impressions: 5 things I like, 5 things I don't

I'm not the early adopter type generally. I like to wait for bugs to be figured out and the format standard to be decided before I take the plunge with a new technology. So take these comments about my first impressions of Twitter as coming from someone who has arrived at the party earlier than he usually would. I know that many of Twitter's quirks and bugs will be fixed sooner or later and that, one day, the fail whale won't be needed anymore and will be released back to the ocean whence it came.

5 Things I Like

1) Quick capture: The main reason I started my blog was as a way to record ideas and observations. But there are plenty of mini-ideas that don't warrant a whole post. Twitter is perfect for recording those, especially when I'm traveling and can quickly type something into my Blackberry.

2) The 140 character limit: I think the 140 character limit forces efficiency, encourages creativity and makes Twitter unique. But perhaps Flutter would be even better?

3) Information finding and sharing: I'm using Twitter more and more both as a source of interesting things to read and as a way to find out what people are thinking in real time about an issue or a company. I'm not ready to give up on Google quite yet but Twitter has given me a new source of information that's already eating into my Google usage.

4) Events: I started using Twitter at the Economist Marketing Forum (#ecsf09) and it's perfect for events like these. I'd previously tried blogging live but that didn't work out very well. Twitter works because it's fast and immediate, plus I got to meet the band of fellow Twitterers.

5) The Twitter revolution: It's fun being part of a social media phenomenon. Twitter is growing at 1382% right now with over six million more users joining in the last year. I've already connected with some great people with interesting things to say about brands and business.

5 Things I Don't

1) Reply all: Twitter is set up so that the default reply goes to all followers. You can send a direct message but that requires an extra step making it the less chosen path. So, you end up seeing a lot of tweets that don't make any sense because you didn't see the original message. (Made-up but realistic example: "Thanks @xyz I agree with you. Brilliant idea. 46 sounds right.") Overall, I think that Twitter's format encourages poor netiquette and the only recourse is to remove frequent offenders from the people you are following.

2) Chaos and disorganization: There is very little and not enough organization: no way to group people and no easy way to classify or categorize tweets. There are some workarounds and perhaps some applications I haven't discovered yet but, overall, it's a big mess, and a mess that gets in the way of efficient use.

3) Tweets about twitterers who tweet about tweeting: The self-referential dial on Twitter is turned all the way up to eleven, past the point of comfortable and easy listening. (And, yes, I know that the content of this post takes away my right to criticize but I'm doing it anyway.) Also, while I'm at it, I'm no big fan of The Great Twitter Race where people are trying to amass more followers than anyone else. Quality over quantity, my friends.

4) Boosterism: Ever been in an audience where the people in the front lead a standing ovation and you're not quite sure that you want to join in but then you have to because everyone else is? To switch analogies, Twitter is sometimes too much like the Mexican wave.

5) Empty Calories: The key question is: Do the benefits of Twitter outweigh the inevitable distraction of having another application open which entices you to click on it and see what's happening. With the current level of chaos, there's a lot of time wasted making the cost side of this equation higher than it needs to be. That said, I'm still giving Twitter the benefit of the doubt for now. I'll keep you posted.

GM: Total Confidence with an *

Can a company in GM's current parlous condition credibly launch a "total confidence" customer care program?

If it launches such a program (with a press campaign), how undermining is it to qualify "total confidence" with an asterisk where the asterisk means "Restrictions Apply"?

Six of the Best: The All Twitter edition

Here's my summary of interesting things I read (or saw) this last week. Usually the six things I pick come from blogs I follow or from news stories or articles I happen to see. But now I've taken the Twitter plunge, I have a whole new source of material. These are some of the stories tweeted by people I'm following in the last week:

1) More of less stuff: the armory (donnawhite)
"Brands can leverage this new frugality to their competitive advantage by actually enabling the concept of simple living in their marketing and social-networking efforts."

2) Report: Users Expect Brands to be on YouTube - But Don't Want to See More Ads: ReadWriteWeb (danschawbel)
"YouTube is a perfect playground for marketers who are looking to engage teenagers and young adults. These users are extremely loyal to YouTube, and, according to this report, the majority of this demographic believes that it is a good thing that brands use YouTube. They also believe that brands who have a presence on YouTube are 'forward thinking and innovative.' At the same time, though, users also don't want to see any additional ads on the service."

3) Best Buy vs. Wal-Mart: Is There Room for Both, and Others? Knowledge@Wharton (bestbuy)
Best Buy tweets a story about Best Buy. Story includes reference to the demise of Tweeter. It's all very confusing.

4) Tropicana Line's Sales Plunge 20% Post-Rebranding: AdAge (Fritinancy)
A lot of people tweeted about this story from AdAge. Sales of Tropicana were down 20% in January and February after its new design hit the shelves pointing to a more concrete reason for the quick decision to go back to the old design than the critical media commentary.

5) Why Brands Love Mommy Bloggers: Adweek (GabrielRossi)
The mommy blogging elite attracting agents, online ads and Caribbean cruises. This Adweek article explores why mommy bloggers have become so important to advertisers like P&G and Walmart.

6) Biz Stone: The Colbert Report (Fresh Peel)
Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone takes on Colbert. "I assume that the Biz in Biz Stone does not stand for business model." Colbert scores! But Biz held his own pretty well.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Biz Stone
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

That's it! See you next week for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

What a difference a little intonation makes

Subtle difference between:

"Why is it so hard for you guys to see things my way?"

vs.

"Why is it so hard for you guys to see things my way?"

The one, accusatory. The other, exploratory.

A little more exploration, please.

The truthiness and silliness of green-guising

Photo: shikeroku (Flickr)

"Your American Express Corporate cards are turning “greener.” Effective June 4, 2009, American Express is moving to online statement delivery for Corporate cards." Company announcement.

"With about 8,000 guests that visit the hotel each year, hotel managers said, that’s a lot of dirty sheets and towels and a lot of plastic water bottles. Now guests can find a message in their bathroom that gives them the opportunity to reuse their bath towels if they so choose to help the environment. Individual plastic water bottles have been eliminated and guests both in their guest room and in all meeting rooms are provided with filtered water in renewable bottles." Hotel announcement

OK. We know that green is good but we also know that companies are always looking for ways to cut costs. So companies should be careful when they launch initiatives that are definitely in their interest but take away a customer service or add an inconvenience under green-guise.

Even I, as an already paperless and stingy-towel-using guy, get irked by these true but incomplete announcements. What they should do is go on to say is something like: "In launching this initiative, we also estimate that we will save $xx/year which we will use to do something good for you, the customer, like reduce costs, upgrade service etc.

On a related front, with a story you simply wouldn't believe if had been first published today, California is now backpedaling on a plan to ban black cars to reduce emissions. Like California needs this kind of publicity. Apparently, The California Air Resources Board was seriously considering effectively banning black cars on the basis that they take more energy to cool but backed off "after facing global ridicule." Wouldn't they be better to try and find ways to harness the solar power being absorbed by cars rather than prescribing which colors people can buy?

I think that most people have a reasonably high level of goodwill towards green initiatives but that goodwill is not unlimited. Better to work with them than try and beat them into submission.