Comments on: What is it about Starbucks?

By: Location Business Summit – Day 2 « James Thornett

Location Business Summit – Day 2 « James Thornett — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:21:44 +0000

[...] Jebara from Sense Networks talks about the old view of LBS data – obtaining the single point reference to the nearest Starbucks for a potential [...]

By: This all reminds me of a friend of mine « El blog de Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarr??a

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 23:04:31 +0000

[...] April 8th, 2007 Reading Mobhappy just now I stumbled upon a great story hidden in a Russell Buckley’s post. I thought I had to share it. [...]

By: aldamiz

aldamiz — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 18:26:53 +0000

Russell, if Nick ever comes to Corvallis please let me know, I’ll pay him dinner and lots of drinks. I’d love to the performance.

By: Leo Fish

Leo Fish — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 06:18:39 +0000

What’s the point of locating Starbucks on your mobile phone when there are 3 on every bloody corner!!!

Starbucks proliferates like rats to corporate monoculture …

By: David Beers

David Beers — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:18:39 +0000

It seems like Starbucks already has LBS worked out pretty well. It goes something like this: “Is this place a location? Ok, then we’ll open a Starbucks here.” At one office I worked there were 7 Starbucks within a 2-block radius of the office. One intersection had three.

For LBS it’s tough to beat good old fashioned line of sight.

By: Carnival of the Mobilists #67 at Wap Review

Carnival of the Mobilists #67 at Wap Review — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 13:10:02 +0000

[...] SMS is ubiquitous and SMS based ad campaigns appear likely to be rewarding – but there are some things they just aren’t suitable for as Mobhappy’s Russell Buckley amusingly explains in What is it about Starbucks. [...]

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:54:27 +0000

Hi Russel

I’ve seen the future, and it’s an HTC P3300 (or a Nokia N95 depending on your religion). Built in GPS on a decent sized handset is a real killer application and is provided by TomTom. But if you could ‘opt-in’ to receive offers while walking around with the GPS activated – so much the better.

Whatever the future holds, you can bet that LBS marketing will require opt-in. The very thought of being blasted with a Starbucks deal every time I pass one of their shops scares me. In most parts of London and NYC there is an SBX on every street corner – my inbox would be full every time I ventured out.

Have fun,
marc

By: klasroggenkamp.de » Location Based Marketing Flops

klasroggenkamp.de » Location Based Marketing Flops — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:39:45 +0000

[...] mobhappy hat eine witzige Sammlung von Fehlannahmen bei Location Based Services, die zwar vom vermeintlich klassischen¬† Starbucks-Szenario ausgeht (”find my nearest Starbucks”). Mein Highlight ist aber die Feststellung: “And the tiny percentage of the time most people spend outside their known area, they‚Äôll just forget that the service exists, or they won‚Äôt be able to remember how it works or the number they need to send it to.” [...]

By: Paul B

Paul B — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:54:53 +0000

Russell, count yourself lucky that you only deal with the Starbucks example. When it comes to LBS & proximity marketing I always seem to get people who start conversations with ‘you know that bit in Minority Report when Tom Cruise is in the mall and all the posters and shops speak to him……..’

Sadly this fits hand in hand with your example too and will never work.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 04:45:02 +0000

I agree that the SBUX example simply won’t work. For any type of advertising to the phone to work, it must be highly relevant. Due to the relatively high cost of each SMS charge, there has to be an almost 100% probability that the user will act upon that offer delivered to the phone – it simply must be perfectly relevant to that unique user. This is not easy to cost-effectively achieve. Forget GPS because one bad apple will spoil the bunch and nobody will want to be “tracked the the ad fairy” anymore. Again, is it relevant that I’m near the SBUX or is it more relevant that I’m a Prius driving local and I go to SBUX every morning and they send me a text message to go to a merchant around the corner to purchase fresh organic food with my SBUX Visa. If I go to SBUX every morning, why do they want me to spend less money by giving me a compelling SBUX offer? Realistically, SBUX will never get me to spend more money at SBUX, they must look elsewhere and their surrounding merchants are a great start.