Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

On Wednesday, Starbucks rolled out their own digital network to over 6,800 stores across the U.S, evolving how we can sit and enjoy the paper and a cup of joe for the third time in their history.

At first they just offered you a place to buy your paper and read it.  Then they offered free wi-fi so you could read your paper online.  But now they have launched a network on their wi-fi - meaning that the first thing you see when you access that network is their new branded page: starbucks.yahoo.com (but don’t try to go there if you’re not in the store - you’ll get an ‘error’:  “So drop by your local store and log on for interesting and important content you can’t find anywhere else. Absolutely free!”)

The content on the network is basically news/weather/entertainment, music and restaurant reviews - keeping everything nicely within brand territory.  And tipping their hat to the increasing pervasiveness of mobile computing, their VP of Digital Ventures, Adam Brotman, stated that whereas some former digital in-store initiatives focused on getting the right screen in the store for the customer to interact with, they see that now the user is “walking in with their own screen” (although some people don’t think they are being as considerate as they appear).

Only a few days into the experiment, I can predict that the network has plenty of advantages for them -

Content - It’s appropriate for the audience (i.e., what they want) and premium-feeling due to how exclusive it feels - even if it’s really not exclusive content (yet - keep an eye on what they do with Apple), but in terms of access it hits the mark.

Brand fit - The portal aligns nicely with their mission to be a destination, an oasis amidst our crazy lives.

Context - They continue to focus on both motivations for visits to their store, and optimizing the in-store experience for people - their biggest competitive advantage, in my opinion.

Plus, if you keep up on the latest in Digital Marketing you know that Location-Based Services are all the rage, and for most marketers the challenge is getting on the right platform, with good content that users will want.  Well - this move by Starbucks puts them in the enviable position of basically owning the channel, rather than worrying about purchasing media on one.  So they get to offer consumers the network and its content at the right time, right place and for all the right reasons.  Very sustainable and smart.

And the above benefits should encourage us to take away a few questions about your brand as well:

1. Which brand experiences should you be evolving next?  Just because you’ve already made an improvement in one area doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity to take it to the next level.

2. Shouldn’t all your brand services and engagements let users BYOS (Bring Their Own Screens) as their motto?

3. How and why would you create a new channel that you own, rather than rent on?

4. Why do you suddenly want a cup of coffee?

Via PaidContent (<—- a really excellent article, by the way)

Update: a good video is posted here about the network.

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I was just made me aware of a pretty awesome site called Everynone. If you don’t know it check it out. Artfully crafted videos and storytelling await.

This is just one of them entitled “Moments”

Moments from Everynone on Vimeo.

via Florian

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Have you heard about flattr.com (@flattr)?

It’s a site currently in closed beta which tries to take on the problem of making money with user generated content. It is only logical that, in a world where old content business models are failing due to people’s behavior of not paying for content, they would also come up with a way to solve the problem of content creators not being paid for their efforts.

This idea is based on the existing behavior of voting (or liking/disliking) content, only that a “like” by flattr users will bring money to those whose content is liked. The amount is based on how much you decide to pay into your flattr account divided by the amount of “likes” you clicked.

Let’s see what happens. Is the social web generation really as stingy as always assumed, or is it just that there hasn’t been an adequate way of doing it in the social web? We will see.

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Found an article by Keith Blanchard of the Huffington post in my FB stream posted by Alan Wolk. In it, fueled by the crisis and news of more city newspapers eating dust, Keith states the hard truths about content (it’s free!), competition (is infinite!) and advertising (is dead!).

These truths, to be fair, shouldn’t really be news to anyone. We have all heard this before. First, about 15 years ago when it was still a futuristic scenario, and then again and again, as the landscape changed - almost to fit our predictions.

After painting this repeated bleak picture, Keith turns it around and says that even though it may seem to be a bad time to be a NY Times shareholder, it is a the golden age if you are a content producer. It’s a rallying cry for those who write and have tried to make a living with it. How they will be able to do that, Keith can’t say, but, hey: why not rally?

Is the media irreversibly democratized, for better or for worse? I think it is…and what comes next is anybody’s guess. Including yours. The architects of online have untethered us from our old media moorings, and have given us the ability to tap into the power of the infinite. Infinite information, infinite competition, infinite human connection. They’ve put us at the cusp of a new world…the rest is up to us.

Everyone knows and says that “everything is different,” but that is a fact that is almost in the past already. If the models of content distribution, news, etc are gone, what is the new model? Will there even be a new model, or will won’t we require one because we will rely on serving up content as individuals to other individuals? Is it that we will do content production sort of “on the side” without quitting the day job? Or will news production become a utility, subsized and regulated by governments?

“Workers of the world - unite!” was a rally too, but it had an aim and a new model in mind: a new society without classes.

Rallies can be nice, but you gotta know what you are rallying for. “Content producers of the world, unite!” Unite to do what exactly? Too bad we can’t ask Gene Roddenberry.

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As usual there is a lot of ‘tweeting’ going on about business models for twitter, but I like Twitterboy’s take on it.  He’s a Twitter content provider.

For a nominal fee, he’ll tweet for you, placing you in “awesome locations/situations, saying genuinely interesting and thought-provoking things”.

You inform him of your interests/reasons for being on Twitter, and pick one of his plans -  three Tweets for $1.99; full profile takeover for $30; whatever.

I love how the microblogging trend has slipped from a fun thing to do in downtime, to a raison d’étre, to a chore, to a service you can subscribe to.

Who knew content design could fit in so small a space?

Source: Thrillist

Update:  Check out this random status updater.

Source: Plime

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