Starbucks’ media empire strikes back! And… Brands beware: McDonald’s YouTube Fail. Plus, rants and raves about the bot that argues with Internet trolls so you don’t have to, new research revealing that many of us lie about what we watch on TV, and a great Airbnb promotion where the grand prize is a night in Dracula’s castle – in a coffin. It’s episode 52 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Listen as we go inside media to re

Maybe distribution is king! And… Content is crap. Plus, rants and raves on the ridiculous controversy over Starbucks’ holiday red cup and REI’s Black Friday gimmick. It’s episode 31 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Listen as we go inside media to reveal the ugly truth! Click the play button below: And if you’re reading this by email, click here for the audio. For show notes go to the Media Unplugged site. Sample and subs

Last week, Google announced Android Auto, which – like Apple’s CarPlay – aims to fully fulfill the promise of the so-called connected car. Watch this video to see an illustration of how the platform integrates music, both from Google Play and from third party apps like Pandora or iHeartRadio: So what does this mean for radio? Well let’s take a step back. Broadcasters have been obsessed over the dashboard lately because they smell big trouble. But the trouble is much bigger th

Yesterday I wrote that some auto industry analysts believe radio needs to be easy to find and use on the new auto dashboard because ease of discovery and use will trump any discussion of how good or bad the actual content is. In other words, consumers are not likely to seek out great content they care about unless it’s first easy to find and use. While it’s certainly true that making anything easier to find and use promotes both discovery and use, is that even within radio’s

Sometimes I just want to scream. Like when I read a piece in Radio Ink titled “Consumers do not know about the Power of Radio.” That’s right. With five radios in every household and radio presumably being a part of virtually everyone’s daily habit, we consumers “do not know about the power of radio.” We consumers must be stupid or something. As a result, say Radio Ink’s 40 “Power Players,” “Radio needs to tell a better story.” Yes, the clichés are flying like monkey dung. Wat

It was a company district manager in Southern California who first observed the strange beverage that Starbucks’ competitors were offering – it was cold and frothy almost like a milkshake, but spiked with coffee. “We should have something like this,” she told Starbucks’ International President Howard Behar, who agreed. So Behar took the idea back to Seattle, where he was met with this reply: “We don’t do that at Starbucks.  We’re in the coffee business.” Behar took the bad ne

Howard Schultz is the CEO of Starbucks, and you probably know that Starbucks has emerged recently from a dark period of declining sales, store closings, and layoffs.  The company is back now, stronger than ever.  And Schultz tells the tale in his new book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul I’m going to pluck out some of the lessons Schultz learned because they couldn’t be more appropriate for an audience of broadcasters. Think about how these le

“There’s an app for that.” You’ve heard that phrase countless times. But there’s an important lesson wrapped up in that phrase. Consider this:  There’s an app for what? And the answer is “whatever problem a consumer happens to have.” Apps are generally solutions to problems.  They’re not simply tools for you to amplify your brand – in fact they may not be that at all.  Apps are not necessarily about your brand, they are about your consumers. Even if they are in the presence o

If the average broadcaster (and I mean the average one) ran Starbucks, what would that experience be like? Would it be even remotely like the one in your own neighborhood Starbucks? I strongly suspect that the average broadcaster would be providing the same coffee varieties they offered when they first tasted success years ago. They would be doing the same promotions, assuming they had the budget to do any promotions at all. The decor inside the store would be unchanged. They

If content is so terribly important in the digital world, then what types of content should broadcasters feature on their web platforms?  In other words, “can you be more specific, Mark?” There are many reasons why there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to that question. First, you need to understand that content forms from and around brands.  And building a brand is not like following a recipe. Granted, much radio programming falls under the “recipe” category, but that’s becaus

I have argued that people today are media and that digital platforms enable brands themselves to be their own media (and when you are media you don't need to advertise on as much media). But now I'm going to take the argument even further. Because I think brands are going to move beyond media.  Brands are going to be entertainment. I'm not talking about brands spending ad dollars on entertainment events or hosting entertaining promotions or wrapping their logo around an enter