Anyone following marketing or business news has seen that Starbucks is asking their customers to tell them how the coffee retailer can improve itself (from products, customer experience to community involvement). To me it meant starting and facillitating a conversation with your customers, that could drive your business strategy.
So this morning I was asked to visit the site by the barista that handed me my coffee. The barista was even excited about the idea. I said, “Oh great.” as a customary response and she went on to say “Yes, it’s an awesome idea to get customer feedback.” Trying to predict customer service at Starbucks across Chicago is like trying to predict what a teenager suffering from ADD off his/her meds with nine cups of coffee is going to do next. This was a great start.
One of the site’s most impressive pieces is that it seems Starbucks is answering and responding to these requests in real time, and transparently. Just a great example of a big brand that gets the idea of customering and what Phillip Kotler, famous business professor, says below.
Philip Kotler on marketing“Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.”
Punch Card System: From the My Starbucks Idea team: We have moved this idea into the review process! Please check our “Ideas in Action” section for updates.
Offer customers a free drink, after purchasing a set number of drinks. Similar to a punch card system or by tracking it thru their Starbucks Card.
- From a customer in Feb. 08
The difference between Venti and Grande SHOULD NOT JUST BE MILK (UNDER REVIEW): I never understand why extra milk is the only difference between Vanti and grande drinks. It is expected that there should be an extra shot!!!!!! Most of people don’t even know this “secret”.
SO, STARBUCKS, IT IS TIME TO ADD THE EXTRA SHOT…
This is cheating….
From Techcrunch. Someone placed an ad on Craigslist saying that anything at a home in Jacksonville, Oregon was up for grabs. People responded, and carted away most of the belongings of resident Robert Salisbury. He arrived home to thirty people picking over the last of his stuff. Even the man’s horse was taken.
Arrington sums up Craig’s List well. It’s not uncommon for classifieds to become entertainment. In Chicago we have the Reader, before the web exploded, the classifieds were a source of entertainment.
In 2000 living in New York, I remember fondly visiting Craig’s List for entertainment after trying to pick up furniture for my apartment on the same site. Digg has the following as a popular link cinder blocks while this post is an honest backlash against artist job openings that you would never see in the newspaper model. These posts seems to show that the “free” and “open” model of CA has evolved classifieds beyond the traditional newspaper model. One more sad note for newspapers, maybe but my wife and I will still be entertained by the homes for sale in the New York Times and Chicago Magazine just not as much as looking up homes in our neighborhood on Zillow.com.
A few items to share so you can kill a precious 15 minutes on your Friday afternoon after a long stressful week of working late and eating Cheetos for lunch every day.
Axe Netherlands has a new hilarious advergame where you are a man-treat being chased by girls who want to eat you. I couldn’t figure out the message I was supposed to get out it, very deep.
This odd Adidas video is actually making me guess what exactly its pupose might be, however, the video is entertaining and it comes from Adidas. I will slip my suede sambas on tonight before I hit the bars.
Sometimes it’s all in the product name.
Do you like beer and football (not American Football), I do. I found this site very addictive, it’s for the best selling Swedish Beer. You create your own chant (literally type in whatever you want), speed up, slow down and push play to listen to a lovely robotic voice play that back. Reminds me of when I first purchased a Mac.
Of course they mention Fast Company in this Ad Age article and their social media approach so I had to post. First off, I think this article does a good job at scaring some of these publishers.
The few pubs they do list on here are telling, Forbes and ESPN for example. Although not perfect, these two have done a great job on the content on their site keeping people coming back and passing stuff along. For example Forbes has always been about the richest people in the world list. Online (and maybe in print though I wouldn’t know) they run tounge-in-cheek, pop culture, aspirational and informative top lists. The latest is on Corporate Kool Aid. My favorite is rating top hip hop moguls.
NEW YORK—In what is being called a seminal moment in Internet history, a rare weekend post by 25-year-old blogger Ben Tiedemann on his website bentiedemanntellsall.blogspot.com rocked the 50 million-member blogosphere this Saturday.
The landmark post, which updated nearly every member of the global online community on the shelf Tiedemann was building, was linked to by several thousand sites, including Daily Kos, Digg, and The New York Times.
“Wow, what a special treat this was for all of us,” said Talking Points Memo head blogger Joshua Micah Marshal, who, along with all other bloggers, checks Tiedemann’s site every day just in case something monumental occurs. “I thought I was going to have to wait until Monday to find out if Ben decided to put [the shelf] in his bedroom or the living room. The pictures were great, too.”
Within two hours of going live, Tiedemann’s 15-word post received 34,634,897 comments.
Posted by TechCrunch
We had to take a hiatus from posting because our wi-fi connection was lackluster in Patagonia.
Patagonia was beautiful but the most memorable experience may have been a white-water rafting excursion we went on. Keep in mind it was about 40 degrees, drizzling (on/off) and windy. But we went, dressed in wet suits and rain slickers and had an amazing time. We saw incredible scenery riding down the Mansa River near the border of Chile and Argentina. Also as we were nearing the end a few guys jumped into the freezing cold water. I followed — I was already drenched from the rapids and thought ‘how much worse could this be.’ It was much worse and I was shivering for a long time after I got out. But it was worth it.
Today is our last night in BA. We flew in Saturday and took in a tango show that night. Yesterday we to see the Boca Juniors play, they are a local futbol team. Tomorrow we head off to Mendoza, wine country.
