Marketing (over) coffee

Here in Prague we’ve got 3 players in the ‘Starbucks style’ coffee shop market (and some pretty decent small ‘classic’ cafes, and a fair few ‘grand cafe’ type places too). Personally I’ll have a coffee anywhere that serves a decent cup, but some of the smaller places are losing out to the chains. It would be a shame to lose some of these places but inevitability is knocking at the door.

There are a number of reasons why Starbucks, Costa and Coffee Heaven are always busy and the independent are not.

Reason one: to-go

The big guys will all serve you coffee to go in a big takeaway cup. The smaller cafes don’t even have a serving size equivalent to the Venti or Massimo (extra large!). That just doesn’t fit with the image of a coffee to go that we see on TV – business person drinking from an oversized coffee cup like it’s a baby’s bottle.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Freemium model for Facebook

Facebook are still burning money way faster than they can earn it (OK – I’m excited about some of the advertising changes, but I don’t think that’ll square the circle). It’s been suggested before on occasion but maybe it’s time they put more thought into going freemium, even for regular users.

What would the key differences be between free and premium accounts? There’s not that much they could offer other than the following:

• Images
• Ad free (optionally)

Picture this

Read the rest of this entry »