A sign from the Willowbrook Starbucks in Houston, TX.

Starbucks finally listened to me!*

Back on December 12 of last yearI wrote a piece in response to an Ad Age article that was sent to me by faithful commenter TD. As I said at the time, I think Starbucks should offer a happy hour. It would help their stock bounce back as it would lure a new audience at a slow time of their business. Simply offer discounted drinks from 5-6:30 to get people to stop by Starbucks rather than a bar to catch up after work and before dinner.

Well, last week “kyle” commented on that post saying that there is a store in Houston that is offering a happy hour of kinds.

“This just in… There is one Starbucks in Houston actually doing a happy hour. I know this to be true, because I work at it. In the Northwest Part of Houston, in the Willowbrook area Starbucks has Happy Hour between 5pm-7pm EVERYDAY (yes Sat and Sun, too). All Frappuccinos are 50% off!
Address 7606 FM 1960W Houston TX 77070″

Luckily, a good friend of mine, and fellow Starbuck’s fan lives in Houston and was able to go check out what “kyle” had reported on this here site. For the full report checkout Lach’s post here. As Lach did some investigative reporting this is brief report on if this was a test market, or what was going on with this new Starbucks happy hour.

“The employees working there said it was this store only, and not a push from corporate. They just printed the signs and started selling half off frapps during happy hour that Monday. They did seem nervous about all my questions, but they should be. The Mother Ship will not be pleased. They run a tight ship and don’t generally give stores flexibility over pricing.”

Well, we’ll see how long THAT happy hour lasts. I doubt that the Starbucks Support Center will be a fan of hearing about a rouge Starbucks offering half price drinks. I bet it’s working out well for “Frap” sales as well as overall store sales, but unless they have phenomenal numbers, I have a feeling this is going to go the way of the Iced Coffee’s in stores.

Thanks for the tip kyle and the follow up Lach! Howard, please bring this offer to the masses!

*Starbucks probably did not listen to me in particular.

Then this coming Thursday is the beginning of March Madness.  The best sporting event of the year that typically does not have Oregon State in it.  With the tournament comes office pools and many many brackets being filled out, distributed, and talked about with almost every person you know.  I have what I think is my final bracket, but with UCLA having two potential game changing injuries, I may have to change it again tomorrow.

As there is a rumor that Starbucks may be unveiling a customer loyalty program tomorrow it got me thinking as to what this program can, will, and should look like.  A free drink every ten drinks?  Doesn’t seem like it’s worth it.  A bonus for auto-filling your Starbucks Card?  Potentially.  More personalized emails, offers, recommendations, etc.  Hopefully.  However, with my regular Starbucks having the occasional trivia games with free drinks (or high-fives), it hit me. 

Starbucks should unveil a nation wide NCAA bracket challenge.  Everyone is getting into it, even John McCain has his bracket, that you can sign up for and win McCain shwag (Sounds exciting).  

Think about it.  Starbucks makes a brackets that you can fill out online, or fill out in person at your local Starbucks.  They then tie each bracket to a registered Starbucks Card holder.  Starbucks is then able to put updates on their chalk boards each morning as to who the leaders at that particular Starbucks are and where they rank in the state or nation (if they are close to the top).  This creates a HUGE connection in the store, between the baristas and customers and even among the customers.  Starbucks offers, a weeks worth (1 a day) of whatever the customers most frequently ordered drink is (as it’s tied to their Starbucks Card) if they win the individual store bracket, maybe a month if they win the state, and a year if they win the whole thing.  A year worth of coffee at say $4 is still only apx $1500.  Not much to create the type of buzz and community that this would bring with it.This would bring people back to either the store or the website, create a bond between a large group of people, and in my opinion would drive up loyalty which in turn drives up sales.  They can then parlay this into other trivia games, fantasy sports leagues, random drawings, etc.

Now THAT is a good customer loyalty program for Starbucks if you ask me.  What do you think?  Am I to wrapped up in these two events?  Is it to crazy of an idea?

Dreamhost sent out an email, posted a blog entry, and many other blogs started writing about the mixup. The billing team at Dreamhost has taken a very non-chalant tone in all of their customer contact pieces, and they continued this tone, even in a HUGE mixup that they made. They actually billed $7.5M to customers today, which isn’t bad for a single day of billing I guess.

The honesty and humor was a perfect mix of being up front as well as keeping their same tone to keep me feeling good about hosting my domains with Dreamhost. A great company who I highly recommend… unless they triple bill you.

For a good reach check out their blog entry addressing the issue: Dreamhost Blog- “Um, Whoops”

Jawbone, is representing at CES with a booth, and not only that, they are using up some of their new money on an amazing PR move. Jawbone, is accepting any other phone headset as a trade-in for their amazing headsets. I have one and LOVE it. It has made using a bluetooth headset bearable and actually very enjoyable.
This move puts the amazing headsets in the right ears as CES is mostly attended by bloggers and reports, so therefor the loss leader will quickly turn into alot of written words about how peoples lives have been changed since they started using their free Jawbone headset.

Engadget story

Well, I opened it up to find out what was inside during this holiday season… and to my surprise it was a marketing gimmick with three Starbucks Double Shots inside.  Something about how I can get fast service from AT&T, when I buy my new HP computer, I don’t know I didn’t read any of the packaging.  Just took out the Double Shots before deciding that this is something that I could and should blog about.

This seems like a very expensive mailing, but maybe I fit the right demographic.  I have purchased an HP computer before (7 years ago), I do have a large phone bill sent to me monthly from AT&T, and could it be possible for them to purchase my name from when I registered my Starbucks card?  Well, I’m not going to be buying an HP laptop anytime soon (although, they do recommend Business  Vista) but I will definitley enjoy the more than $5 in free Starbucks drinks.

If you want to see the pics of the box being opened check out the rest of the entry.

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Horizon Airlines, which is based out of Seattle, has decided to paint four of their planes to match the four major universities in Washington and Oregon.  I’m most excited about the Beaver plane, and very uncertain how I would feel if they asked me to get on a duck plane.  I know that there are people that give much more money than I do to their respective schools and I wonder how they would react to being asked to board their rival schools plane.

Now if I could request to fly from PDX to SFO on the Oregon State plane to watch the Emerald Bowl I would love it.

So is this a worth while marketing move by Horizon or will the painting and eventual repainting (and a few upset customers) be more than the stunt was worth?  It shows that they’re a Northwest brand and says that they support the Northwest, but to me it seems to be a little to much effort for how uch positive PR it will produce. Of course, I don’t know how much painting a plane like this costs and maybe it’s not that big of an effort.

[Article with all the planes and the press release]

Some Seattle natives may remember when Tully’s in their continue quest to find something, anything, that will help lure customers away from Starbucks had the 3:21 special.  It was a promotion that would give you between 33% and 50% off of your drink between 3:21 and 3:51.  I loved the promotion, and in turn became a big fan of the Tully’s Espresso Oreo Shake (still highly recommended), however I felt it was a gimmick.  I also felt that it was to early in the day to add new customers and what it was in fact doing was cutting into their margins during a time in the day where people are needing a quick pick me up from the after lunch lull.  Their thinking, I take it, was to get people in the mind set that you do in fact need that afternoon coffee everyday.  It did help engrain that thinking, but once they stopped the offer, I returned to Starbucks for my coffee needs.

A happy hour though in its most true sense could really drive additional business into Starbucks.  Imagine a happy hour from 5pm until 6:30.  You aren’t cannibalizing the post dinner group and you aren’t cutting into the margins on the afternoon coffee break from work crowd.  If you implemented a more open atmosphere with the Baristas (some would shine, others would not) where the Baristas could become more like your local bartenders and the patrons could find a new place to interact after work.  I go to happy hours fairly frequently and usually more than the food or the drink the place is decided upon based on price, atmosphere, and location.  Starbucks has the locations (any location) down, and if they were to offer happy hour prices and a more open barista atmosphere along with different music there would be the other two deciding factors.

Howard Schultz founded Starbucks after a trip to Italy where he saw how much people were interacting in the cafes there.  This could rejuvenate the cafe environment in the US as well as increase profits for Starbucks.  In my opinion, after the lackluster performance and the many competitors who cannot offer the atmosphere that Starbucks can, it is now time to create the new Starbucks Happy Hour.

Jones has never been one to pass on a weird tasting soda to get some pr.  A few years ago I bought their holiday pack which included Turkey, Smoked Salmon, Green Bean Casserole, and Pecan Pie.  Nobody wanted them with their Thanksgiving dinner, so a few weeks later I tried one of them.  It’s safe to say I didn’t drink the rest of the holiday pack.

Well to one up the holiday pack and to tie in their sponsorship of the Seahawks Jones Soday today announced their new "Seahawks Collector Pack" which includes these fine sodas

Dirt Soda, Sports Cream Soda, Perspiration Soda, Natural Field Turf Soda, and Sweet Victory Soda.

Mmmm, sounds delicious.  When two things you love combine to make something so horrible it just doesn’t seem right.

[Press Release]

Fred Wilson, has previously stated that the Wall Street Journal should allow their online edition to be totally free (I’d say about 90% is for subscribers only) and I have had a hard time believing this would be worth it.  People are paying between $50-$70 to access the WSJ online and that is money you know is coming.  It has been there for years, and with the Journals market, it seems like it will be there for a long long time.  I mean, I’m 25 and I’m willing to pay for it.  The NYT says that the traffic they are now recieving through Google is worth more than the paid subscriptions.  If that is true, then there is no reason not to open up the WSJ.

We’ll see how long Ruper opens up the WSJ.  With the NYT move, I have a feeling I will be asking for some of my subscription money back soon. 

There is an option on the official site though if you "…already own an island.  But I’ll take the phone on its own."

Nice work Sprint and Blackberry.