Really smart idea for UNICEF
For every misspelled word you generate in Google Chrome, there’s an option for you to donate that word. Those misspelled words reinforce the idea that somewhere kids cannot spell because they do not have access to an education. Misspelled words turn into action and, hopefully, access to education.
And what makes this idea even cooler? The idea was developed by students @ Miami Ad School Hamburg.
Last week Starbucks unveiled their new logo:
It’s a streamlined, wordless version of a brand that used to be. No copy, no color, no brand heritage.
The president and CEO said “Throughout the last four decades, the Siren has been there through it all. Now, we’ve given her a small but meaningful update to ensure that the Starbucks brand continues to embrace our heritage and also ensure we remain relevant and poised for future growth.”
Translation = we’re dropping the “coffee” because we’re going to do much more than coffee in the future.
We’ve been hearing rumors of Starbucks “bars” for quite sometime and this recent branding move makes me believe those bars are right around the corner.
I am not a loyal grocery store shopper. Our small little DMA is surprisingly crowded with stores: Publix, Food Lion, Piggly Wiggly, Bi-Lo, Whole Foods, Earthfare, Wal-Mart, Target…not to mention local favorites like Veggie Bin and our amazing Farmers Market.
We have plenty of options and outside of specific items from specialty stores (I’m not finding my fancy cheese @ Bi-Lo), each grocery chain does not offer any real competitive advantage against the next.
When my pantry is bare and my fridge is scary, I ask myself two questions before heading out to the store:
1) Which store is closest?
2) Which store has what I need?
If I’m stocking up I’m most likely headed to Wal-Mart. While slightly terrifying/overwhelming, Wal-Mart is the option that has staples I need @ the competitive price I want. They surprise me by offering local produce and excite me with roll-backs (yay for cheap cereal!) They don’t always have what I need — terrible wine selection, weak health food — but price and convenience rules my day. I can knock out my grocery shopping AND pick up the million other things I need. There is no other store that lets me buy bananas, shower curtains, printer cartridges, milk and christmas lights in one foul swoop.
Until now.
Target is a bit of a wild card. No doubt it’s a big box store but for some reason it feels cleaner, fresher, hipper and, dare I say, more lux, than its competitors. Like Wal-Mart, Target sells everything from flat screens to cereal but unlike Wal-Mart, Target never ventured into the fresh food game. That all changed in 2010.
In 2010 Target aggressively shifted into the fresh food game with a major, nationwide campaign and retro-fit grocery aisles in almost 400 stores.
Looking to grab consumers from Wal-Mart and grocery stores, Target entered the grocery game by adding fresh produce and meats to its list of low price point offerings.
But how do you enter the consideration set of smart, budget savvy grocery shoppers when you’ve essentially ignored their needs for years?
You go big.
The nationwide campaign took various shapes and sizes throughout 2010 but one major theme played consistent — Target went big. They decorated a food truck to look like a bag of groceries and parked it on Michigan Avenue. They handed out hundreds of bags of groceries and recruited A-list Celebrity Chefs to give live cooking demonstrations. Target ran ads in local newspapers, sent direct mails and placed door hangers on homes. They also took to the streets and distributed 10,000 samples of produce in Philadelphia using branded bicycles and trucks with the Target bull’s-eye logo and “Get Fresh Philadelphia!” messages.
Target won’t reveal how much they spent on the “Get Fresh” campaign but industry experts put the figure in the high 200 millions.
They certainly bought my attention.
Me: Hello?
Mom: Hi, it’s me. How do you right click?
Me: …
Me: Hello?
Mom: Hi, it’s me. I’m trying to attach something to an email but it’s taking forever. By the way, what does GB mean?
Me: …
Me: Hello?
Mom: Hi, it’s me. I think I broke Word. Can you do that?
Me: …
Sense a pattern? Google did too.
Their solution? The launch of a new support site, www.teachparentstech.org, designed to help teach technology to our parents.
Intended to provide a “tech support care package” for parents, the site allows you to select and send video tutorials to any needy recipient. Topics range from basic computer skills (copy/paste, change your desktop, etc) to photo sharing and internet (aka world wide web) guides.
Each topic comes with a “How to” video that simply explains the topic in 2 minutes or less. It’s step by step, includes guiding visuals and best of all, each tutorial can be replayed as many times as the recipient needs it.
And isn’t replay a better option than your mother calling you again?
Smart. Very Smart.
What happens when you give a consumer a voice?
They’ll most likely tell you what they want…which, to be fair, is not always what brands/companies want.
They voice their wants, hopes, frustrations and anger in a battery of ways — in coversations with friends at coffee shops, conversations with complete strangers online, in focus groups, in print, in government…the list goes on.
It’s the ability to have something to say and someone to hear it.
Designer Candy Chang has created a new project that gives communities that opportunity to be heard. The project is called “I Wish This Was.”
The “I Wish This Was” project gives communities, in this case New Orleans, the opportunity to have site specific, civic input. Using easy stick (and easy remove) vinyl stickers, community members have a chance to give visual voice to their neighborhood concerns.
Says Chang, “New Orleans is full of vacant storefronts and people who need things. My neighborhood is still without a full-service grocery store. So I made these fill-in-the-blank stickers to give us an easy tool to voice what we want where we want it”
I often wonder why companies and brands shy away from having conversations with their consumers. If you take the time to ask the hard (and often not so hard) questions consumers will tell you exactly what you need to know.
All you have to do is ask. All you have to do is listen.
Tuesday night. 8: 30 p.m. It’s late, I’m tired and I’ve been standing in the coffee aisle of my local grocery store for a good five minutes.
I’m not picky about my coffee but I like what I like — mild with lots of caffeine.
But which one is mild with lots of caffeine? I can’t remember what “Breakfast Blend” tastes like and have no idea what “Verona” means. Does “medium” mean boldness of taste or amount of caffeine? What does “Supreme” mean? I know “Pike’s Place” is in Seattle but have no earthly clue what that means when it comes to coffee.
Hazelnut. Cinnamon. Hawaiian. French. Turbo. Balanced. Half. Regular…Original?
Why in the world is it this difficult? When it’s 5:45 a.m. I want (need) coffee — pure and simple.
Luckily for me, Seattle’s Best understands my dilemma.
The Starbucks-owned coffee brand (to which I still say has an awful logo) just introduced a line of coffee blends featuring “level system” packaging. The blends, numbered from 1 through 5, offer the average coffee drinker the ability to easily choose their coffee based on increasing amounts of flavor intensity — one being the lowest, most mild flavor and 5 being the boldest.
The blends will hit store shelves late December. With any luck I’ll be out of that crazy coffee aisle by then.
This week I read that Starbucks Corp is telling their baristas to literally “slow down” and giving their stores clear, mandated guidelines to make no more than two drinks at a time.
The reason? Starbucks is trying to combat consumer complaints about the mechanized process of their coffee experience by reinstating the “fine art” of coffee making.
Hm…
Is that “fine art” of coffee making reinforced by local baristas who are forced, by store policy, to ask me if I would like to try Via? Those little pouches of instant, shelf stable coffee provide an artful, high quality coffee experience right?
Hm…
Then surely that “fine art” of coffee making is reinforced in the fact that there are about 10 Starbucks within a 10 mile radius of our office — many of which offer drive thru service. Nothing says high quality, attention to detail, like a drive thru.
Hm…
Once upon a time the Seattle based coffee company did offer consumers an authentic, high quality, coffee experience. But those days are long gone. Starbucks willingly opened stores on every corner, equipped their stores with rapid production espresso makers and gave their employees headsets to speed up ordering — all in the name of money money money.
More stores with faster service equals more money. Products on Amazon and in the aisles of Wal-Mart equals more money. And the potential to sell beer and wine at their stores? More money. Much more money.
Earnings at Starbucks rose 37% while revenue for the quarter ended June 27 increased to $2.61 billion from $2.4 billion in the year-earlier period. Sales at U.S. stores open at least a year rose 9% in the quarter thanks to more customer visits and higher average spending.
With numbers like that, this sudden step backwards in the name of “art” is a bit confusing.
As a consumer, Starbucks has trained me to seek them out when I need a quick jolt of caffeine. Working in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, I cannot imagine the cluster%&$*(^ that will ensue if the Starbucks outside of the L station is forced to make only two drinks at a time. Some stores simply cannot afford to abide by the two drink rule because they have promised (and delivered) a quick coffee experience to their consumers. Taking that away means potentially loosing those consumers.
So some stores will adopt the rule and others will not. Some will provide “art” and others will provide coffee. In their efforts to restore a genuine, high quality coffee experience, Starbucks is about to throw their consumers for a loop.
8:00 AM confusion plus $3.00 coffee plus a long wait to get it? No thank you.
Guess there’s always Via…
Question: What, if anything, do you do over 100 times a day?
Outside of involuntary acts like blinking or everyday tasks like clicking my computer mouse or taking steps around the office, I can’t think of one thing I do 100 times a day.
But if I was a 13-17 year old American, I would have no problem telling you the thing I do 100 times a day is text. In fact, if asked, I would most likely text you my answer.
According to recent Nielsen Co., research, the average 13 to 17 year old sends and receives over 3,000 texts a month — more than 100 a day. And before you say that the data is only relevant for the teen/tween population consider this: People from ages 45 to 54 sent and received 323 texts a month in the second quarter of 2010, up 75% from a year ago. 
We all know better than to ignore a 75% year over year increase in anything.
Smart Phones are changing the lives of consumers in every possible way. It’s 24/7 news cycle access and constant social interaction — usually in 140 characters or less. We’re scanning coupons instead of cutting them and banking on the go. We’re even changing the way we do business with Google and texting instead of white papers and conference calls.
What we love about our smart phones is our ability to literally be ‘smart’ about how we manage our lives on any given day in any given place. We can work, share and talk no matter where we are with unlimited access.
What we hate about our smart phones is our ability to turn off that same unlimited access.
That constant access continues to present marketers and advertisers with problems. How and when do we reach for our target audience? Even though only an estimated 1 in 5 Americans has a smart phone, do we rethink the segmentation of major markets as national access continues to level out regardless of where you are? Do we rethink advertising placements for the consumers that don’t sit still long enough to read a magazine or watch television in real time?
When we think about advertising and delivering insights @ the right moment, to what degree do we consider the consumer’s “virtual” state of mind against their actual state of mind?