The Power Of Vision

Not long ago, Starbucks had a vision of having a store 5 miles from every customer and in Australia that was certainly true in the major cities. However, Starbucks reached saturation point and got to a stage where it had nowhere to go but down, and thats exactly where it went. With bad coffee, untidy and underperforming stores and a stock price that fell dramatically, the brand was forced into a direct showdown with McDonald's McCafe's, which began opening on every corner.

Every brand experiences growing pains and Starbucks, which opened new stores at an arguably pathological rate, was no exception. The Espresso reports that speaking at last Thursday's Ernst & Young Strategic Growth forum, Starbucks creator and CEO Howard Schultz, admitted that his brand had lost its focus after 15 years of infallibility. 'Somehow along the way, the level of the Starbucks feeling, the love inspired by the people-based business, got somewhat blurred by success.'  As a result Schultz has had to make some difficult decisions in the past year or so and has closed some 900 stores. In the mean time, McCafe has gone from strength to strength (believe it or not).

It just goes to show the power of the vision. With a vision to be 5 miles from every customer, they grew too fast and forgot what the Starbucks experience was all about - coffee, the stores, the environment, the feeling, the people, the look and the sound. All this got blurred and forgotten due to an explosive rate of expansion. Brand vision is incredibly important for every sized brand or company and its surprising how few brand managers and CEO's can articulate where they want their brand to be in 5, 10 or 15 years time. Can you articulate your brand vision?

And You Thought Lego Was Just For Kids...

Who said Lego was just for kids? The Espresso was delighted when this photo was sent through by photographer John Clutterbuck. It was once said 'No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative you will keep the child inside alive'. We think this guy is keeping the child inside alive. How brilliant is the art created using lego.

Many business leaders would look at lego and say "It's a toy". The true creative spirit is looking at lego and thinking, what could I create with that? Remember the secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity....Aldous Huxley

How Does It Really Look?

Everyone has had that experience of buying something that looked good at the time but when you got home it just didn't deliver. Apparently this is also very true in the lipstick industry - often the lipstick colour bought by a consumer is dramatically different from the manufacturer's colour guide. With this in mind, new brand Beauty Swatch aims to give consumers a true-to-life view of lipstick shades by showing what they really look like on real people. If you check out their website which is really interesting, there is a series of actual photos contributed by the Beauty Swatch tribe. It highlights the power that brands have now to communicate with their consumers or clients as well as leverage the authenticity that people expect from their brands.

The next question to ask is how to then apply this knowledge to your own world. Social networking, tribalism and authenticity are happening around the world and this site is a good demonstration of somewhere that self proclaimed shopaholic bloggers of varying skin colours, ethnicity and stages in life can constantly add new swatches featuring photos of themselves wearing various lipstick shades and brands with their personal comments.

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Better Sleep, Better Ideas

There is no doubt that getting a good nights sleep and being sufficiently rested will help give you clarity of thought and lead to better ideas. Some of the greatest inventors of our time, from the early ages have been notorious nappers or cat nappers - Churchill, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Napoleon and Einstein right through to some of today's greatest leaders, all spruik the power of rest. Even an episode of tv smash hit House reinforced the power of sleep. When House left the bed of a dying man in surgery one of the other doctors said 'Where are you going?' House replied, 'I am going home to sleep'. The doctor replied 'How can you go home when a man is dying' House said 'Sleep allows the sub conscience mind to solve problems when a conscience mind can't!'

With that in mind we found a new personal sleep coach product called Zeo. Developed by leading sleep scientists, Zeo is a new kind of educational tool and motivational program that helps you to understand how you are sleeping and also reveal habits and behaviours that may be helping or hindering your sleep patterns. Essentially, the Zeo bedside display provides a window into how you slept last night, from how long it took you to get to sleep, the amount of time you spent in REM, your patterns of sleep and also a score that helps you quickly gauge the quality, quantity and depth of your sleep each night. Zeo may be targeted at our more 'techie' Espresso readers, but if you're into this sort of thing and you value the quality of your sleep, then check out their website.

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