As I was eating my spaghetti leftovers yesterday for lunch at my desk (sad, I know), I came across news that Arby’s is merging with Wendy’s.

Suddenly a vision came to me and I thought I’d begin the process of voicing what awesome combinations of lunch could come forth from such a melding of quick service restaurant chains  (this would make Arbys + Wendy’s into #3 behind the other two - you know who they are).

Combo #1 - Beef ‘n Cheddar + Vanilla Frosty

And for the marketing spin, how’s this for a new tagline:  “I’m thinking this is WAAAAY better than McD and BK”  (it’s awful, I know, but it’s all I could conjure up on leftover lunch).

Happy Lunch Hour to all - would love to hear other visions of combos.

I don’t often watch South Park, but when a friend sent me this clip I had to share it with everyone. As I watched, it dawned on me how much we rely on the internet these days, and nothing can illustrate it better than this clip.

Click on the picture above, or visit this link to view the clip.

Would you be able to function on a day-to-day basis with no internet?

Bree posted a link to Starbucks’ online coffee promotion - free brew-at-home coffee samples with the completion of a little flavor preference quiz.

While I definitely appreciated the nifty interactive interface for this promotion (Bree called it brilliant - I mean, who doesn’t want free coffee?), it’s actually a symptom of a much larger problem at Starbucks.

A BusinessWeek article published yesterday stated “Starbucks (SBUX) stock dropped 42.8% in 2007 and is down 14.7% since the start of 2008.” That’s cause for concern.

A result, many consumers are beginning to witness a massive re-branding exercise, aimed at improving Starbucks’ bottom line. This exercise began as far back as January when Starbucks re-elected company founder Howard Schulz as CEO. Immediately, Howard whipped up a “Transformation Agenda,” communicated to the public on their website as numbered announcements.

Here’s What’s Up.

Over a period of several years, Starbucks grew to become an Arcadia to coffee lovers. But, over the past couple of years, this paradise has begun to slip away from them.

Even though the company still maintains a loyal following (I know at least one person who goes their 2x per day every day), less loyal people are flocking to cheaper vendors who are now offering “premium” blends, such as McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts. A recent article even pointed out that McDonalds plans to launch espressos and mochas nationwide this year.

How Does Starbucks Plan to Regain Their Position?

Watching this Transformation Agenda come to fruition has been fascinating to watch. It’s a truly massive business, sales, and marketing initiative from top to bottom. The Agenda outlines the following courses of action:

• Slow the pace of U.S. store openings and accelerate internationally
• Discontinue warmed breakfast sandwiches at our North American stores (the smell interferes with the aroma of their coffee … Um, k.)
• Going forward, they will not report same store sales comps
• Reinvent partner training
• Reinstating regularly scheduled open forums in the field
• Bring back the Leadership Conference

Through the numbered announcements and other research, I was also able to identify the following.

• Adding Wi-Fi to all US stores (rolling out this service market-by-market to more than 7,000 Starbucks stores)
• In-store training for their more than more than 135,000 store partners in the US. (which included closing stores during this training)
• A reorganization that will eliminate 600 positions (mostly non-retail support folks)
• Introduction of the Park Place blend (the everyday Joe’s blend - smoother than most Starbucks blends that’s receiving very mixed reviews)

Ask the Customer

Throughout nearly every Agenda announcement written by Howard he stresses the importance to have a “laser focus” on the customer. This left me saying “but, are you talking to them yet??” Well, today I just discovered that the company is now soliciting feedback from customers through a CRM portal called “My Starbucks Idea.”

I’m not sure when it launched, but it is a pretty serious endeavor. Interestingly, the portal is powered by Salesforce.com - a sign of their commitment for this venture to be truly built around the customer relationship. Many ideas are very creative. Others are just painfully obvious - like frequent buyer cards. I suppose it never dawned on me, but Starbucks has never offered a buy 9 get one free card before!

Now, of course, what’s most important is what they do with this feedback. If they’re really “laser focused” on the customer, then the most important changes they make will stem from a consensus of pain points and ideas generated from My Starbucks Idea, in addition to the important business and organizational changes.

Going Back to Their Roots.

Another decision was made to - if only temporarily - bring back the store’s original logo, used on the coffee cup and sleeves.

It’s a strange double-finned mermaid thing (I should probably have known what this was, but I’m not up on my maritime mythical lore. Here’s what it is, if you’re curious. Funny, but I guess even the “new” logo is also this double-finned creature, you just see mostly her face). Anyway …. it’s not really the logo that matters. It’s symbolic of their commitment to bring Starbucks back to its roots - before they tried to be all things to all people. CDs, sandwiches, a shop on every corner…

What’s probably most promising is that this is clearly not a slapdash program. Howard and the rest of Starbucks’ leadership are executing on careful planning, and communicating to shareholders, the public, and their partners in a very systematic fashion.

What Do You Think?

So what does everyone out there think? What would you tell Tomer (our Director of Development) who has stock in Starbucks? Hang in there, or cash it in?

I am a fan of biking, just ask any of my coworkers who have had the pleasure of seeing me haul into the office after a nice jaunt. I am also a application developer and web addict. Given the ubiquity of cheap wi-fi, the pleasure of not having to park or follow most traffic laws, and an investment in a laptop which weighs 3 pounds and has a 5 hour battery life, I tend to do a lot of work on the trail.

This has lead to an interesting problem. Most of my job is creating web applications which fail when you do not have any internet access. Now not being able to check my email when I am on the side of Stone Mountain may not be a problem, but not being able to update my spreadsheets, compose mail, or save my changes to the next great American novel is.

Many sites do not see the need for dealing with intermittent connectivity and instead take an all or nothing approach. Things are changing, needs are changing, and this attitude should change. Over the past few years there have been several technologies developed and proposed which mitigate these issues.

One that I have worked with is the Dojo Storage API. This API is a part of the Dojo project, an open source Javascript library. It provides wrappers for Adobe Flash’s shared object functionality which means that I can write Javascript code which will call Flash and save data to the user’s machine even if I am not online.

There are a few downsides to using the Dojo Storage API. First, a user must have Flash installed and must not have disabled shared objects. This is not a very large concern because of the large userbase of flash, however; Apple’s iPhone does not have a version of Flash and is not capable of using this API. Secondly, this API is part of the Dojo Offline SDK which has not had a stable release.

Of course this is still a far cry from an official, supported, implemented standard such as ones being proposed by the W3C (and subsequently ignored by Microsoft, Apple, Opera, Mozilla or bascially whoever DIDN’T propose the standard), but it offers a general step in the right direction.

Everyone is trying to figure out online video these days.  We know that every day more and more people are turning to the web to view content that they used to get from their television.  Look no further than the once popular TV show, “America’s Funniest Home Videos”.  Today that’s called YouTube.  And most of the popular TV shows today are broadcasting their episodes on their websites soon after the episode runs on TV.

I recently found two blog posts / articles that talk about how to get online video right.  The first is by YouTube Celebrity (he probably hates me calling him that), Kevin Nalts.  If you missed it, Nalts recently pranked us at Spunlogic and you can see it on YouTube (of course).

In his recent blog post entitled, “The Marketer’s Cheat Sheet to Viral Video” (which, if you are at all interested in viral video and how it should work with marketing, you should subscribe to his blog), he goes through eight steps to making a successful viral video.  This post is a must read for any marketer trying to figure this not-so-new medium out.

Taking a different tact on the online video space, Esquire magazine has an article that talks about the qualities that make a successful webisode.  I had to post about this article because it talks about Michael Cera, which gives me yet another opportunity to mention that Arrested Development is the greatest show of all time.

And if you haven’t checked it out yet, take a look at Clark and Michael (pic above).  Excellent example of what a webisodic show should be and yet another Cera masterpiece.  He’s the really cool looking guy on the right.

A couple of my friends and myself got together on Valentine’s Day, and started asking the age old question … What is Love? Really.

Ok. Maybe not. But I love Jib Jab and it has gotten a lot easier to use. You should all check it out!

Maybe it’s just me (I doubt it), but as concerned as I might be about the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election, I don’t think I have the mental, emotional or intestinal fortitude to sit through hours upon hours of televised speeches and media coverage to keep on top of what the candidates are saying. I would love to see a ‘CliffsNotes‘ version of all the speeches.

Soon after President George W. Bush’s final State of the Union speech, our VP of Client Services, Shannon Delaney, shared a link to a tag cloud that was based upon the transcript:

At a glance, you would conceivably be able to see what the gist of the speech was. If you believe that the most important issue in any given speech gets the most play, you would expect to see words associated with that issue stand out in the tag cloud.

After seeing this tag cloud, I wondered whether a tag cloud could help track each candidate’s position statements on a variety of issues across multiple speeches over the course of the campaign.

Better yet, wouldn’t it be impossibly too simple and cool if we could slap all the transcripts of all the speeches made by one candidate, run it through a tag cloud utility and … PRESTO … see what each candidate is consistently saying at a glance.

I realize that a tag cloud doesn’t do everything for you in preparation for an election, but I would hope, even in this wondrous age of information and technology, to take a candidate at their word.

With great regard for Jeff’s annoyance of top ten lists, instead of a list of what I think will become major marketing and media trends for the coming 12-18 months, these are the things I will be keeping a running interest in (in no particular order):

1) Genomic Marketing: With tests for genetic ancestry and inheritances hitting the market for under $1,000, expect more consumers to take the bait. This will initially affect marketing spaces by way of the bioproduct’s complexity and the need for the industry to educate consumers and their doctors about genetic predictabilities and phenotype interactions (we’re already seeing the results of the PR push). Secondarily, and most importantly, when more consumers are armed with their genetic predispositions we should expect marketers to respond by introducing products and campaigns that speak to your DNA and not your preferences, your fears instead of your aspirations. Good times.

2) The end of the “Celebutard” glut: After a year in which users not only passively watched but became de-facto participants in the complete self destruction of Britney and company, I have a gloomy sense that one of these narratives of posturing will end very, very tragically. During an election year, when voters will be asked to reflect on what it means to build a great society, the TMZs and In-Touch Magazines of the world will watch their audience slowly disappear. Hasselhoff will emerge as the proverbial nuclear roach.

3) Neuroscientific Retailing: From AdAge’s 2008 predictions

Going beyond traditional focus groups and consumer surveys, market research will embrace scientific approaches that literally tap consumers’ brains to learn how they neurologically respond to commercial messages and make brand choices The Four A’s and ARF have begun researching this topic in earnest with an intensive study, “On the Road to a New Effectiveness Model.” In 2008 we will start to see practical applications of these insights as advertisers and shops begin to truly understand engagement.

I agree, especially within the context of Spun’s own growth in behavioral insights and some of the functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques being used on the campaign trail, but think the real gains will be on the shelves.

The major retailers have been way ahead of their manufacturing peers and suppliers when it comes to understanding what drives category growth through their channels - from packaging and traffic patterns to narrowcasting media in-store and “retailtainment” positions. Expect to see (but maybe not hear about) shifts in the grocery and big box landscapes to reflect learnings from the neurosciences as well as continued growth of boutique retail environments geared toward the particular behaviors of discrete populations. And expect to be surprised by how much the back of your receipt knows about you.

4) The web will find its narrative voice: In what is currently still a very clinical medium, the well crafted turn of verse will begin to find its way onto websites and into interactive advertising. With thousands of Hollywood hacks flooding the market with words looking for pages (and no end to the strike in sight), brand story arcs will begin to take shape, and consumer engagement will not only be task driven, but plot driven. Gorilla playing the drums for chocolate – Ok. How about a Gorilla who has to keep playing the drums or else his Gorilla gal pal gets dumped into a vat of hot banana pudding… stay tuned (and sponsored by BENGAY®).

5) BOOMERvision!: Marketers have increasingly recognized the power of the Boomer generation’s income and impact – now they will start to segment and speak to it. Today, 50+ American adults represent 38% of the population, exploding to 47% by 2020, and control upwards of 70% of the nation’s wealth and half of all consumer spending. From “Leading Edgers” to those “Ready to Launch”, marketers will begin to understand the unique passion points of those born on the cusp of the boom versus those later on, the subtle differences between those who still have kids in the household to the empty nesters. Most agency and media pros, on the other hand, will not.

6) Green Fiends: This is already being covered ad nauseam in the trades, but companies that preach environmental consciousness better be really self-aware. Not only will consumers collectively call their bluff (and expensively flood their customer call centers), so will our elected officials, their competitors and their partners. In the end, many marketers will realize that grubby granola ground hippies don’t buy antiperspirants or luxury automobiles anyway. (Just kidding). And that capital sustainability is sometimes counterintuitive to environmental sustainability. (Not Kidding).

7) Election Rejection: Interactive marketing professionals will concentrate more during this election on topics that in no way impact their lives (insert that subject here), but will have no idea where the candidates stand on the most important topic to our field: net neutrality.

And finally, speaking of elections…

8) Real Beauty elected in landslide: After wasting months of meaningless grey matter over what the Mitchell report really means, the electorate will turn out in record numbers to select the winner of Dove’s campaign for real beauty:

If you’re like me, you can’t believe that its already 2008, your vacation wasn’t long enough and its way too cold outside right now. I mean way. The water bottle in my car was frozen this morning. That’s cold.

But if you’re also like me, you spent some of the down time this holiday season catching up on your reading, particularly all of those sites you’ve subscribed to that are just so hard to keep up with during the working day.

And one thing that I get quickly tired of is all of the predictions that marketing sites think they have to make for the new year. Inevitably every year its the same thing, “Mobile will be huge”, “Online Advertising is going to grow”, “Britney’s going to back to rehab”, stuff like that. We know all that.

But there was one recap post I really thought was useful. TechCrunch threw a post up on December 31st entitled, “Most bookmarked TechCrunch posts of 2007“. It’s a great list of what ‘we the people’ thought were the best TechCrunch articles of last year. Check it out.

Oh and if you have any really interesting Resolution’s this year, I’d love to hear them.

Happy New Year

Several airlines have announced that they will soon begin offering in-flight web access, according to the New York Times (and Adotas).  JetBlue looks like they’ll start by offering email and instant messaging.  More airlines will follow, including Virgin, American and Alaskan.

The fact that its taken this long for us to have internet access while flying is absurd, so I’m not exactly jumping for joy at this news.  The airlines seem to be stuck about 10 - 15 years behind the rest of the world.  We can put a man on the moon but I can’t listen to my iPod on take off.  You’ve got to be kidding me with that.  A few other things I’d like the airlines to work on while they try to give me email in-flight:

* How about letting me recline my chair to what almost would constitute as a normal posture while we take off and land?  Instead I have to actually lean forward until we’re in the air.  Makes sense.

* When I walk up and try to buy a ticket for a flight that leaves in 2 hours, do you really have to charge me 8 times the original price?  Do people really pay that?  Isn’t it better to fill the seat or are you hoping that 1 out of 7 people take that deal?  (This has only happened to me at a time when they lost my original booking…customer service isn’t exactly a high priority at some of these airlines).
* How about having more than 12 pillows and blankets on board?  Oh, and don’t give me those unsealed nasty blankets, that’s disgusting.  Sealed only please.

* And everyone has made fun of the peanut bags but seriously, the last time I flew I counted eight and a half peanuts in the bag.  At least the stewardess gave me two bags.  17 peanuts really hit the spot.

Ok, so I’ve been traveling a lot and just waiting for a reason to rail on the airlines.  Luckily this amazing news about in-flight web access gave me the opening.  I’ll enjoy that for the 18 minutes that they actually let me use my laptop in the air.