Posh Starbucks?

Lately I have been wondering about the positioning and target of Starbucks.

I used to be a Starbucks fan, and I would take any opportunity abroad (since Starbucks only opened in Portugal a couple of years ago) to have a Caramel Frappucino or a Vanilla Latte.

However, since I moved to the UK, Starbucks lost its appeal. Even worse, I cannot stand it any more, and I try to avoid it almost as much as I avoid McDonald's (I will keep this one for a later post). At first it just became common, but after that it was just because it was further and further from what it was supposed to be. Starbucks is supposed to be "the third place" away from home and work, where you can relax and enjoy your time. That is a wonderful concept, particularly for me who likes to work away from the usual environments. However, as I spent more and more time in Starbucks, I realized I was paying three times the price of a normal cup of coffee, and instead of having the cosy environment I was looking for, I had to clear up and clean the tables myself, the tables and chairs were sticky, and do not even get me started on the state of the toilets.....

After a couple of months I went from one extreme to the other, and really thought it was not worth the price I was paying for the coffee any more (which by the way was becoming more milk with a bit of coffee colour rather than anything else!). I became the nightmare customer, who would spread my negative opinion amongst my friends and who would convince the group to go anywhere else rather than Starbucks.

Starbucks has definitely lost its charm and mainly its inner purpose. This is common when a brand becomes too arrogant and loses its customer focus, and Starbucks has definitely lost it for me.

This morning I read Starbucks wants to start selling "posh coffee".

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/bulletin/dailynews/article/1058235/?DCMP=EMC-BreakingnewsfromMarketing

I think this is a desperate try to make the brand go back to where it came from, by focusing on quality.

I wonder if other customers like myself, who lost their Starbucks enchantment, might actually consider trying this, for the sake of coffee quality.

I know I will not fall for that one again that easily.

Business School Marketing

My old university where I went to business school in Portugal decided to change its name from "Universidade Nova de Lisboa - Faculdade de Economia" to Nova School of Business and Economics (http://www.novasbe.pt/).

My friend was saying he did not agree with this move, as changing the Portuguese name to the English name does not add quality to the institution, and therefore it is not very likely to attract many more students or become more international per se.

I disagree.

Even though universities definitely need to keep up with its international quality and reputation for research - that is a given - I think it is also important for them to keep up and compete with the marketing strategies of other international business schools.

As the world becomes global, students will no longer look at frontiers to get the best education they can, and with the government funding to universities decreasing, it is important to develop a coherent and strong international brand to attract more and mainly the best students.

In the end, it is always about the marketing, and when people remember the brand name, the marketing strategy has already worked - this is where the name change might be handy.

However the main end of marketing is sales, so once the name is remembered, the second phase of the work is the hardest, to keep up with the quality and international reputation - this is where my friend was right.

PS: I also think there is something more professional and reliable when you call yourself "Business School" rather than Faculty of Economics or School of Management, or anything else. However, this can only happen if at the same time the reputation of the school has enough quality to be seen as such, otherwise I believe it has the opposite effect, and might become even ridiculous.

Google TV Ads

I have recently discovered it is possible to create and set up a TV campaign via Google AdWords for as little as $20 per TV spot - a little late though as I see this has been set up back in 2009.

I cannot stop to be amazed by the new marketing possibilities that have been out of reach for small budgets for such a long time, but now become democratized and available to everyone, from small businesses to the already marketing-dominating global brands.

Google has been a key player in opening these frontiers and providing truly targeted advertising solutions, and I am very keen to keep discovering these new solutions that will be accessible to all types of businesses and industries around the globe.

For now, I am just curious about how Google actually measures the performance of its TV Ads.

Volkswagen Commercial: The Force

The best commercial for the Super Bowl this year, and the fastest one to become viral.

Marketing All Around

Welcome to Marketing All Around!

Marketing has become an integral part and a true influence on our daily lives, from Politics to Entertainment, and this has accelerated in the last few years with the propagation of internet, social media or smartphones.

This blog has the purpose of following these trends and to contribute to the sharing of original, entertaining, or disaster ideas from the industry.