All articles from: October, 2010

Executing A Relevance Reset

The restaurant business is full of concepts that have gone stale.  Mindful of their sizeable investment (a sunk cost!), many restaurants attempt to enhance or revive their tired platforms with mixed success.  Rarer, but more important and much riskier, is the “relevance reset” – something big, announced with great PR fanfare and paid media – [...]

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Starbucks: Will Slowing Down Speed Sales Growth?

Starbucks’ evolution from Seattle coffee house to corporate giant has caused hand-wringing in recent years as it has tried to retain its neighborhood coffee-shop feel while simultaneously covering the globe.  When Howard Schultz resumed his role as CEO in January 2008, he initiated changes that were meant to bring the company back to its roots—grinding [...]

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Chipotle Drops Ad Agency

The most interesting part of this article, in Ad Age, is the comments section.  The ad world sure doesn’t like it when a company drops the agency and brings creative in-house! Chipotle’s position is interesting to us because it presents an ongoing challenge:  how do you keep the “green” message fresh, and how do you [...]

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