Those of you who are Star Trek fans would have felt right at home with me the other day. I went to check out the new Microsoft store which just opened at Fashion Valley mall here in San Diego because I wanted to do a compare/contrast to the Apple store in the same mall. My fellow fans would have felt at home in the Microsoft store not because it was a cool look at the future of culture and technology, but rather because it seemed to be the Mirror Universe. (more…)
The following is a guest post by dear friend and consumer expert Brad Bennett. Brad is an ethnographer living the Chicago area. By stepping into consumers’ worlds, he uncovers stories that bring fresh perspective and new opportunities for clients and their brands. Contact Brad at Info AT BBennettCo DOT com.
Starbucks is launching instant coffee. 
What?! Yes, that’s right. They’ve been testing VIA instant coffee in Chicago, Seattle and London and are now rolling it out in Starbucks stores and other venues across the U.S. and Canada. When it showed up in our Starbucks stores in Chicago this summer, I couldn’t believe it. It is one more example of how they’ve lost their way.
Starbucks’ brand is anything but instant. (more…)
Saturn 
joins the ranks of formerly esteemed brands like Vonage and Dairy Queen in this series on brands that have failed to live up to their potential. (more…)
So far we’ve covered GNC, Facebook, and Dairy Queen in our chronicles of brands which have failed to live up to their potential — today Tom Fishburne (more…)
This is one in a series of posts about brands have failed to live up to their potential — from Jonathan Salem Baskin, author of Branding Only Works on Cattle, the “dim bulb” blog, and Ad Age/CMO Strategy column. (more…)
What do Lindsay Lohan,
the universal remote,
and the Bush administration 
have in common?
They are all examples of things that could have been great but have ended up not living up to their potential. (more…)
