“We secretly have done blind taste tests in Starbucks stores and discovered that Starbucks expensive coffee tastes not better than instant coffee.”

I can imagine this experiment and campaign from Starbucks competitors.

But it was Howard Schultz who sets-up a blind taste tests in Starbucks stores to prove that expensive Starbucks’s coffee is not better than instant coffee.

This is the dream of every Starbucks competitor.

Instant coffee is the antithesis to Starbucks’s strategy

The strategy of Starbucks is to be expensive Italian style coffeehouse. This is a wonderful strategy and it brings to Starbucks its fame.

The essence of this strategy is to resist all cheap things in coffee.

In customers mind, an instant coffee is cheap coffee. Customers think that it is lower quality than espresso and tastes not so good than “real” coffee.

So, if Starbucks confesses that their coffee tastes the same or worse than instant coffee, I will suspect that Howard Schultz is working for competitors, not for Starbucks.

“Instant coffee is practically the antithesis of everything Starbucks stands for,” writes Kate Klonick on SmartMoney. I can’t express better. Bigger antithesis of Starbucks is only “coffee” from roasted acorns or wheat.

What Starbucks competitors should do?

“Starbucks coffee quality dropped to instant coffee quality, so come to our special coffee store” – this kind of message should Starbucks competitors spread. Especially small independent coffee stores. This will be the start of the end of Starbucks.

Schultz believes that “people have so much trust in our brand and the coffee delivers, we have something I think that people want to hear about.”

Yes, instant coffee drinkers maybe impressed and will switch from other instant coffee brand to the new Starbucks Via. But at the same time people who are loyal Starbucks customers will be offended. And good marketing campaign can switch some of them from Starbucks to other coffee stores.

Starbucks instant coffee Via may succeed as high-priced instant coffee. It can be a hit, a big player in instant coffee market. But in the same time it will hurt the Starbucks brand. It opens doors for the “expensive in the taste, not only in the price” competitor. Because perception is everything, taste is nothing.

The start of the end of Starbucks?

General Motors has done such brand diluting steps in past decades, so we have the consequences. Now the founder of Starbucks started to dilute Starbucks brand only couple decades after the foundation. How long will it take him to destroy the brand? It depends on further steps.

What Howard Schultz should do further in order to completely destroy Starbucks brand? There are my suggestions:

1. Start selling cheap coffee along with expensive coffee in Starbucks stores.

2. Launch a coffee-flavored Starbucks cola.

3. Launch a coffee-flavored Starbucks ketchup.

4. Launch a coffee-flavored Starbucks dogs food.

5. Run blind taste tests in Starbucks stores to find that expensive Starbucks espresso tastes no better than coffee made from roasted mix of acorns and wheat.

What else? What are your suggestions? Please write in comments.

Recently David Meerman Scott wrote about the problem me and many managers and marketers are facing.

In blog post entitled When marketing in the Netherlands you need to get Heeves, he pointed to a problem that in different countries there are different leaders in social media platforms. If you want to be successful in such country, you should know local habits very well.

Social media professionals are needed!

In my consulting practice I work with high-level managers, usually CEOs, on marketing strategy issues in web 2.0 age.

Because I am from a small country I understand that if you want to reach broad audience in any non-US area, you should know local habits, preferences. And of course, local language.

Yes, the local language, because not everyone in the world speaks English.

Who can help understand local issues? Who can help represent companies in those countries?

Obvious answer – local social media professionals. They can be former journalists or freelancers or even companies, specializing in media and social media.

But in every country you need different specialists who understand local preferences, who know local culture and habits.

Social media professionals around the world are needed!

The problem arises here: where to find contacts of those brilliant specialists in every country in the world?

Today my clients are seeking help in social media marketing in USA (especially Los Angeles area), Scandinavia – Sweden, Netherlands, Norway , Denmark, also Germany, Japan, Canada, Russia.

But I can’t help them. I know tendencies globally, but how to deal locally in countries around the world? Especially, when many internet surfers there do not even speak English.

I need resources for my existing and future clients from where they can choose a partner to implement social media strategy in local level. I assume many more marketers need the same.

Social media professionals, please leave messages about yourself there

So, I encourage social media specialists from all over the world to leave a short message in the comment section of this post in order prospects – my clients or companies who are reading this blog – can find you and you will help them with marketing in your country.

Following the ethics of commenting in blogs, advertising of your business is prohibited. Such comments are considered as spam. But in this case social media specialists – freelancers, companies or anyone else are welcome to leave their contact information in the comment section of this post.

When my clients will need a social media marketer in any country I want to be able just to point to this post and say ”look at the comment section and choose one from the list”. As simply as that. I don’t want any commission or any fee for your being on this list. Sure, I will be thankful if you will help me spread this list to other marketers in different countries.

The more social media professionals from different countries will be here, the better.

Please use this list

Also I encourage any other persons or companys who look for social media specialist in any country to use this list. I will be delighted if you will drop me a line about your experience with one or other specialist, listed here. Feedback is appreciated!

So, dear social marketing pros in all countries. For faster and better finding of you, please leave messages about yourself and your business in the comment section. Please keep by the following order in writing about your services:

Country where you live and are familiar with social media issues. Sure, you should be able write in this country’s language fluently, the best choice – this is your first language.

Your name, your blog or website.

Contact info – e-mail address and (or) phone. Also you can add Skype name or other appropriate ways to contact you, but please do not abuse adding three or more phones or e-mails. One or two of each please.
Area, where you are especially experienced (for example, cooking, sportswear, banking or laser technology), where you can from a few words understand about client’s topic, where you know specific business words (slang). Shortly – area, which you are familiar with, expert or even an insider.

Short description about your difference and specialization. Please, especially turn attention to your uniqueness. We all believe that you are providing only quality services, but what are other real differences? Please, help the potential clients to choose you and after choosing to stay exceptionally happy for their choice.

That’s all. Fees, other business and legal issues are the issues of agreement between you and your client.

I do not guarantee leads from this post, but I hope this list will be useful not only to my clients but to other CEOs and all other persons who want to establish a business blog too. Please feel free to use it!

Thank you for cooperation!

P.S. I keep the right for myself to delete entries with incorrect data, if my clients or readers report very poor service, unreachability by provided addresses or phone, in other cases when it misleads my clients or other readers of this blog.

The biggest fear of managers to start a business blog is fear. Fear of losing the control of information.

“Control” is the wrong word when we are talking about today’s web 2.0 society.

A business blog is not about control, it is about influence. And the goal of it is not to control public opinion about you, your company, your brand, but to influence public opinion about you, about your company, about your brand.

You can’t control all news about you, you can’t prevent yourself from bad news, even from false rumors. But you can influence society to consider your point of view, your arguments.

Dear CEOs, when your start a business blog you will have no less power to control the opinion about you. On the contrary, you will have more authority and possibilities to influence society.

The web 2.0 is not about control. The concept of control is dead.

The web 2.0 is about influence. The ability to influence your prospects is the future of business blogging.

Yes, it sounds different from the past experience, but this is the world as we live today. You can’t change this, so just try to live with it and explore it.

What the good news?

Media have less control too. Your business blog can become the authority in your field and you will have more influence than old media.

Just think less control, more influence.

As business blogs will become mainstream, the question is how it will change PR business. Reality seems not so bright for traditional, stubborn PR agencies who deny web 2.0 reality and still live in web 1.0 world.

Today news are announced by sending a press release to media. Will it be enough in the future to post a post in a business blog announcing the news?

I don’t know. It’s hard to predict the future.

The best way to announce news

Today the best way to announce news is to post a post in a business blog and also to send a usual press release to media. Chances are big that media are not subscribing to your business blog feeds, so a press release is necessary.

But a post about news in a business blog is necessary too, because it will be read by your customers, by your brand fans and the news have much more chances to spread across the world than by just sending a press release.

Why miss the chance to inform your customers directly? If you want an example how some smart companies are doing it, please check one of my favorite business blogs from Lenovo, Inside the Box. Just look, how they wrote about the news, how readers responded, how conversations are developing, how many valuable suggestions Lenovo is receiving from readers and worshipers.

One more reason to have a business blog

There is one more reason to have a business blog. It helps to spread the news across the globe.

But… But your business blog should be well established, with thoughtful posts valued by your customers.

The more useful to your industry your business blog is, the more chances are that it will be read by your industry journalists.

In this case, even if you don’t bother to send a press release, journalists will find your post and may be interested to write a story about you.

A well-known business blog is an advantage

In some cases, if you have a respectable and well-known business blog, if your news are closely related to your business and to your community it can be enough to only post a post in your business blog.

Sure, sending a good written press release never hurts, but in this case is it worth your time and money?

So, dear CEO, why not to start a business blog today?

Tags: PR, PR agencies, web 2.0, web 1.0, Lenovo, Inside the Box, press release, business blog, CEO

How to increase the visual appeal of women’s basketball and how to market it using web 2.0 tools - these are the issues that are very actual today in women’s basketball and highly need to be solved.

What to do?

What general managers of women’s basketball teams should do?

The new e-book The 2 Marketing Steps Every Women’s Basketball Team Should Make covers all the answers.

The e-book consists of two parts. The first part, where the major contribution is from my co-author Valentinas Navikauskas, is about how to increase the visual appeal of women’s basketball.

The second part (where my ideas are expressed) consists of defining the winning marketing strategy of women’s basketball and the tactics of how to make the strategy work using the web 2.0 tools.

This e-book’s purpose is to show to clubs and national team managers the missed opportunities in promotion of women’s basketball and to prompt to action to exploit them. These actions lie not in expensive promotions, but on the contrary, they will help to earn more money - money from advertisers, sponsors, from selling more tickets.

The point is when you will start the changes in your team’s marketing. Teams, that started these changes right now in the next season can have the first results. Teams, waiting a couple of years, will achieve the results couple years later. Or even more later, because first movers will have the biggest attention of media, fans, sponsors.

In fact, this e-book can be also useful to all other women’s sports managers. And some ideas, especially from the second part could be applied by men’s sports as well.

We hope that it will be a useful handbook and that at least one idea of this plan will be implemented by club or national team. So, press on the link of The 2 Marketing Steps Every Women’s Basketball Team Should Make, download and read it. Do not forget to write a review here! Thank you!

1. No person.

A business blog is a PERSONAL blog of a company CEO or founder or other high-ranking executive. Do not let the committee to decide what you must write there and do not hire writers to write posts instead of you.

Be personal, include your real photo, bio, let your business blog be the extention of your personality.

2. Too much person.

Another extreme of personality – too much of your person – is as bad as the first one. Remember, this is your BUSINESS blog, not personal diary and all stories about your family, kids, pets, hobbies, political issues are needless except when they are the part of your story about business.

Finding the right balance between anonimity and irrelevance to your business personality is art, but you must master it.

3. Business blog does not fit to the marketing strategy.

Your business blog should spread ideas that express your worldview, your companys difference from competitors, your uniqueness. All marketing strategy should be built around this uniqueness, so your business blog must confirm this one more time.

When you write a post for your business blog, think not about short-term result, but long-term impact on your business. Your marketing strategy is about long-term success, right? So, your business blog is about long-term impact to your readers.

4. Hard selling in your business blog.

Business blog is about information, relationship with audience, knowledge but not about the hard sell of your products. For hard sell you have your company’s site, please leave the business blog for the expression of your wordview.

It’s OK to have some banners and links in your blog pointing to your commercial pages where hard sell occurs, but please, do not even think about writing a post consisting of hard sell of your products.

A better idea is to sell your worldview, your thinking, your values and find prospects who think like you. But pushing hard just throws away your readers and you will not benefit from that.

Your business blog is your idea spreading channel, not the sales channel. Don’t try to sell, share knowledge, promote your wordview instead. Blogging is about sharing, not selling.

5. Censorship of readers comments.

Sure, you should moderate comments and prevent your blog from spam, rudity, personal assaults to you or commentators but you must leave negative comments.

Negative comments are part of your business blog and they are not necessary the bad thing. One reader of my Lithuanian blog once said to me ”when I was reading these negative comments I was convinced of your rightness”.

If negativeness is about your product quality, maybe your readers are right and you must pay more attention to your products? To service staff?

Just answer correctly and take action, negative comments can be as valuable as positive. Do not change comments, change your standpoint to them!

6. Posting in the sake of posting.

This flaw arises because of so popular believe that ”you must post frequently”. No, you don’t. Don’t write a post because you feel that you must post something on your blog. Write only when you have something useful to your readers, to your brand.

7. Hiring an advertising agency to launch and manage your business blog.

Sorry, but usual advertising agencies don’t understand web 2.0 world. One-way communication is so ingrained in their thinking. Two-way conversation in web 2.0 age makes them so unsecure. When it comes to internet, advertising agencies still live in 1.0 world and focuse on esthetics, flash, animation, programming features and pay so little attention to the main feature of web 2.0 – conversation, the two-way communication. Accustomed to advertising world, they still live in advertising age, not web 2.0 age. Sorry, but the old rules don’t work in here.

Tags: business blog, marketing strategy, Censorship, top 7, top 7 flaws, moderation

If you are a CEO, you must start a blog.

A personal blog is about your company’s difference from competitors. About your brand’s difference from competitors brands.

All your marketing messages must reinforce the difference, stated in your blog.

If you are a CEO of big company, your blog must be a guide for your marketing department.

Your PR agency must create messages that reinforce your difference from competitors. The difference expressed in your blog. If not – fire this agency.

Your advertising agency must read your blog and create commercials, that reinforce the message of your blog. If not – fire this agency.

Your sales force must sell, using promise, expressed in your blog. If not…

Your production manager must act, following your brand difference, expressed in your blog.

Your R&D team must concentrate in areas that reinforce your brand difference, expressed in your blog.

Throw out mission and vision statements, company mantra, beliefs, core value, brand promise and all other corpstuff, filled with corptalk. Now you have a blog with sincerely written personal posts.

Letter to shareholders? Forget it. Now you have the blog. Attention! Even this post must dramatize difference from the competitors brands.

Not differences, but difference. The same main difference, why your customers are buying from you not from your competitors.

You are a CEO?

If you are a CEO, you must start a blog.

Tags: CEO, marketing, start a blog

In my consulting practice CEOs often have a fear to start a business blog.

That’s understandable.

We all have a fear of things which we don’t understand, we fear actions we don’t know how to do, where to start.

Business blogging is a new tool for managers, so they feel uncomfortable with this idea. They simply have too little information how to start, about how to run a business blog.

For those managers who want to start a business blog but are uncertain about their actions, there are top 7 things to do before starting a business blog. Let’s check them.

1. Decide what internet domain you will use. You have at least two choices – use your company’s domain (for example, www.yourcompany.com/blog) or register a different domain. Both have pros and cons.

You must have your own domain name, not free alternative from WordPress or Google or other provider. The address is your property and you should build business on your property, not others.

2. Decide whether it will be your solo blog or there will be occasional guests from your company. Mostly it depends on business of your company. Tom Peters does a nice job by letting his employees to post on his business blog.

3. Choose a publishing platform of your blog. I recommend WordPress, because it is powerful and free. Others also may be good and it can be OK to choose a different one, just check the possibility to create a blog on your own domain.

4. Find a blog coach and (if you feel a need) an editor. Most managers fear to start writing, so a good blog coach is welcome. Just find a person you are comfortable to discuss with, who doesn’t hesitate to say all the truth about your writing, who is a believer of your efforts.

5. Write down your blog topic in one sentence. If you are a founder, an owner, a CEO or General Manager – this must be the answer, why your customers must buy from you instead of competitors. If your sentence is different, double check it. Maybe your blog doesn’t fit your marketing strategy. More about it you can read in my e-book The New Rules of Business Blogs in the chapter about strategy.

6. Write the first post like a manifesto. Explain to early readers what they can expect to find here. Usually it is hard to decide with what topic to start and such manifesto often is the best solution.

7. Start to write not too perfect posts. You must start to write. Especially at the beginning, it is far better to write an average post than not to write any post at all. You must start practicing and not to worry about perfection. Perfection will come with your experience in blogging.

Bonus tip. Start reading a lot of other business blogs. Start leaving comments on other blogs. By reading you will better understand blogging and web 2.0 environment. By leaving comments you will shape your writing.

For most questions to be answered correctly I recommend to hire an experienced consultant of this area. Not a PR or worse – advertising agency, but a consultant who specializes in business blogging. You will save a lot of money if you avoid mistakes in this process. I am not saying that your company depends on it, but frequently there is a big stake and better to have a pro on your side. Trust me, it pays off.

In future I will post Top 7 flaws of business blogs and Top 7 improper excuses for not having a business blog. If you don’t want to miss them, subscribe to this blog via RSS or e-mail.

Have any more tips? Leave them in the comment section!

Tags: business blog, Business blogging, blog, blog coach, web 2.0, The New Rules of Business Blogs, Tom Peters, Tips, Top 7, blog editor

Marketing 2.0 is not a hard push of advertising to national TV. Too big noise, shrinking audience, skeptic society makes old-school marketers less and less relevant.

The old-school marketing tactics was simple – create a 30 second spot, buy time on national TV and you are the king.

Not true anymore.

The old way of communication when companies spoke through ads or, at the best case, through PR department, are loosing efficiency.

Change from advertising to conversation

Nature of communication between companies and customers are changing. Today customers are skeptic, they have a huge amount of information between their fingertips, they are googling your company, your products, your services. And they end up listening to the third party sources and are reading references of your past buyers.

New social media tools are gaining populiarity and even Consumer Reports are facing huge competition with forums or blogs.

The best what you can expect – that your potential customers when they make a decision will come to read blogs, written by your employees. Not your ads, because they don’t trust them anymore, but your blogs.

In most cases it will look like the conversation between people who happen to work in your company with people who happen to be your customers.

No matter how conversation happens, what counts is the customers belief that the people who are blogging or posting in forums, or twittering or talking in any other place are the experts in their fields and are fairly neutral and honest.

That’s why in most businesses social things are so valuable.

A CEO must lead the company’s conversation with customers

Sure, the most common social thing in the new web 2.0 age – a blog.

A blog from your company’s employee with an expertise in his field is one of the most valuable marketing tools today.

The best case is the business blog from the CEO of the company. The highest authority tends to be the most listened and the most reliable source by customers and prospects.

But this business blog must be a business blog, written by the CEO, not by the PR or advertising department. Yes, a CEO can have a blog editor, or a blog coach, but all posts should be written by himself personaly.

Because this is not the company’s communication to customers, this is people’s who happen to be the CEOs of the company conversation with people who happen to read the CEO’s blog and happen to be the customers.

The role of CEOs are changing from managing to influencing

Little by little the time of brutual advertising campaigns are passing away.

The time of conversation, honesty, experience, expertise has started.

Today a CEO must stand in the front of that.

Many smart and most successful CEOs are already taking conversations with customers.

In previous times, when conversation was impossible due to technological issues, the most successful CEOs spoke to customers through media. It helped them to build a company and brand.

Now CEOs have a huge opportunity to bypass media and to stand in the forefront of this conversation. And that’s the biggest challenge and opportunity for a CEO.

Because, like Seth Godin said, “People don’t listen to companies, they listen to people”.

Dear CEOs, are you ready?

Tags: Marketing 2.0, old-school marketing, communication, business blog, Seth Godin

No doubt, in the future most of CEOs of successful companies will have a business blog.

But before that they must come up with the biggest problem in conglomerate’s world – megabranding.

If you have two brands, for which you will stand for? I mean, for which you will create a personal business blog? What if you have three brands? Four? Five?

OK, if these brands are well-connected like Apple and iPod. Because they are well-connected, complementary and non-competitive brands, Steve Jobs can stay with both. And both of them can be winners.

But if you are a CEO of General Motors, for which brand you must stand? For which brand you must create a business blog?

The megaproblem of megabranding

That’s a problem. Big problem. Big problem of megabranding.

Even Steve Jobs soon can fall in trouble with this.

For what brand he stands now? MacBook, iPod, iTunes, iPhone? Never mind about QuickTime players, Mac OS, regular Mac computers and… (what have I missed?).

You can’t give a lot of attention for so many brands. And it is harder and harder to stay with the uniqueness of all these brands as a number of them increases.

For what brand you will create a business blog?

The most confusing question is „For which brand I must start a business blog?“.

Again, OK, if your brands are well-connected. MacBook, iPod, iPhone share the same focus on ”easy usable cool product”, so Steve jobs can easily write about any of them in his business blog. He is perceived as the ”father” of all these products, as the creator of them. If he will start a business blog for all these products, there will be no confusion and a lot of good marketing for Apple.

But imagine a business blog by Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors. About what common feature of General Motor’s cars he can write? About bankruptcy? But wait, is it a reason to buy anything from General Motors?

The key to success is the passion to be focused

A successful spokesperson of the company stands for one idea, like Steve Jobs stands for ”easy usable coolness”.

Contrary to a typical CEO of a conglomerate of brands and megabrands who mostly speaks about irrelevant to buyer random topic. No doubt, most of those messages give little or no reason at all to buy from such megabrands as Rick Wagoner doesn’t give any believable reason to buy from General Motors.
The best place to collect all messages from a CEO is a business blog.

But in this case different brands with different reasons to buy must be presented by a different spokesperson in different business blogs.

General Motor’s spokesperson must be not Rick Wagoner, but the General Managers of Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac, Saturn, Saab, Hummer, and, at least, GMC. All these brands must be different and all of them must have a different spokesperson. And all spokespersons (preferably, the CEOs of those brands) must start a business blog.

Blogging for a CEO helps to think about strategy

If you stand for a megabrand, like General Motors, you are in trouble. In megatrouble. The only solution in this mess is to separate these brands to different entities. And for those smaller entities to focus on the real difference from competitors. Be a specialist, focus on the authentic message for the market about your brand specialization and be passionate about it.

Like Steve Jobs is passionate about coolness and ease of use in computer world.

If you have a ”multibranding” strategy, just start a business blog. I am sure, soon you will come up with big problems about what to write, how to write and I hope that you will understand that these problems are very similar to your marketing problems – what to market, with what difference, with what reason to buy.

As I like to say ”at first, a business blog is not a sales tool. It is the best helper for a CEO to think about strategy. As sales and marketing tool he becomes a little bit later.”

Tags: Apple, iPod, Steve Jobs, CEO, General Motors, megaproblem, megabranding, iTunes, iPhone, brand, Rick Wagoner, megabrand, strategy, General manager