Posted by TheShot on 04 May 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Machine
Not all public relations professionals are brain-dead. Really. Unfortunately, there are armies of brain-dead PR zombies that routinely clog the media firehose with inane chatter.
One of their favorite zombie techniques? Take a rather inane topic that seems trendy in the media — say, oh, blogging. Then take whatever tired idea you have in front of [...]
Posted by TheShot on 13 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine
Has TheShot been taken over by “splogs” (spam blogs)?!
For anyone who has run a blog, I don’t mean the regular stream of bogus insurance adverts and “great post - I had never thought of that” comments. I mean all those splogs out there that have disguised themselves as online “lifestyle magazines” — i.e., shorthand for [...]
Posted by TheShot on 03 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Starbucks
Yesterday, Consumer Reports announced that their taste testers rated McDonald’s premium coffee as superior to Starbucks‘ coffee. (Isn’t that a bit like a beauty contest between Courtney Love and Joan Rivers?) But the real story behind this isn’t their ratings so much as the response to these ratings: Coffee taste test stirs hot debate - [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 08 Jan 2007 | Tagged as: Fair Trade, Restaurant Coffee, Starbucks
Yesterday’s Sunday Times (London) ran a story concerning McDonald’s UK’s announcement of a coffee supply partnership with the Rainforest Alliance: McDonald’s brews up £1m fair trade deal - Sunday Times - Times Online. At first read, I opted not to add a blog entry on how the Rainforest Alliance served as another alternative example to [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 16 Nov 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Starbucks
There’s been a lot of “he said, she said” going on between Starbucks and representatives of the Ethiopian coffee trade lately. Ethiopian Sidamo and Harar (two generally excellent bean stocks, mind you) were up for trademark protection when a “certain voting member” of the U.S. National Coffee Association (or NCA, a business interest legacy of [...]
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