DEbranding to INcrease brand awareness

Someone in the marketing department at corporate Starbucks must be having a good month. Only someone feeling creative, innovative, and unrestricted would be able to come up with adding booze to the menu, free ice cream giveaways, free pastries (only this morning!!), and now trial DEbranding a few of their stores.

Well, we say debranding, but my opinion (and Starbucks' too most likely--we're similar in genius thought) is that they are actually branding their name even more. How so? You've heard about Twitter, facebook, and other insanely popular social networking sites, right? They're allll about connecting people. Connecting people in similar areas, interests, markets, industries, businesses, ideas, opinions, and pretty much anything else you can connect about. Starbucks is simply applying the same strategy to a few of their Seattle locations--connecting with the locals and the nearby community.

If all goes according to plan, we'll soon be hearing how Starbucks cares SO much about their customers that they want to adapt their locations to their customers likings. They'll be known for catering to their customers, being unafraid to think outside of the box, and paving this new marketing road for others to follow.

Think it will work? Time will only tell. We'll give you an update when we hear of anything!

Until next time,

Sloane and Chelsea

Practicing what I Preach

Have I mentioned that social networking is important? Just to lodge that point further into your brain I'm following my own example and have now updated Blueprint's Twitter page, and created a facebook fan page. Go ahead and boost our ego by following us. Then go create or update your own accounts! Viva Social Networking! 

And if your blog, facebook, myspace, or twitter needs a makeover -- we can design you something cool.

Until next time,

Sloane and Chelsea

Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, Oh My!

The Information Age is sometimes overwhelming--even for the professionals who deal with it on a daily basis. I'll be catching up on a blog and suddenly a perfect, witty, 140 character tweet pops into my head! Next thing you know I'm attempting to blog in 140 character sentences. 

Here's a way to keep track of ALL your social networking accounts: Tweetdeck, Skimmer, and Seesmic. 

And guess what? They're all FREE downloads!! Check out what the Wall Street Journal had to say about them for more info. 

Now you don't have any excuse to confuse your social networking accounts! 

Until next time, 

Sloane and Chelsea