I spent time working at Philz Coffee yesterday (now in downtown Palo Alto – and if you haven’t enjoyed Philz… hurry. It’s amazing coffee).

This is a fun, light post from always-socially-creative Starbucks.
Starbucks is unveiling a new coffee brew (the Blonde Roast) tomorrow (January 12th). In an effort to promote the new roast, they have created a social campaign …

I logged into Starbucks’ wifi this morning and was presented with the below screen. I find it fascinating that Starbucks has an ad for “full behind-the-paywall access. Free.” This strikes me as very much an …

Yesterday, TechCrunch covered the $1m that eBay / PayPal had raised for Japan earthquake and tsunami relief. It’s been heartwarming to see such big brands and platforms leverage their communities – and their scale – …

Last week I wrote about the “do’s and don’ts of gamification“… in other words, how to effectively add game mechanics to your site / service. Thanks to the success of leaders like Zynga and Foursquare, …

Last week I wrote about how both Starbucks and H&M are beginning to advertise their Facebook Deals / Facebook Places campaigns.

Last week I wrote about two updates to Facebook Places: Deals (using Starbucks as an example) and Photo attachments. Those two somewhat combine when deals are redeemed.
If you haven’t seen an example yet: here …

Today Facebook shook up the local deals space with their Facebook Places announcement: the local deal platform which now competes directly with Foursquare, Yelp, Groupon, etc.

A few days ago, I highlighted the latest Carl’s Jr. Facebook campaign and noted the impressive mix of product, virality, advertising and consumer benefit (aka coupons and rewards).
Below is a similar effort from Starbucks …

I subscribe to Starbucks’ Facebook Page updates via SMS because I like to stay current with Facebook’s most current brand marketer. With 5.1m Facebook fans, they tend to innovate… and also get seem to trial …

In March, I wrote about Apple’s full page advertisement in the New York Times touting the iPhone as a weekend tool: “Getting the most out of your weekend, one app at a time.”
In yesterday’s New …

I spend a lot of time using mobile applications – in part to experience what is going on and in part to experience how brands and top players are thinking about mobile. There are plenty …