In response to Tylers Post about Starbucks

Do you think Starbucks is a sell out? Also do you think Starbucks would have to develop a custom marketing plan for Italy?


I guess Starbucks could be considered a sell out but then every other global franchise would have to be considered a sell out too. It is very important for global companies to market products differently in relation to each unique culture. Every culture has different habits, rituals, and beliefs so a coffee place in the US would not be able to make achieve maximum profit without fine tuning their marketing stagey for each region. I also don't think a franchise coffee store would do well in Europe, apart from London and Pairs, because their are so many small local coffee shops at every corner in cities like Rome or Venice. It is just their culture difference that cause people in Italy to go to their local coffee shop, drink some coffee, have some pastries and finish with a cigarette (cigarettes are HUGE in Europe). 

Pepsi Firing 100 of its 150 Advertisment Agencies

I recently read an article on Business Insider that stated that this week Pepsi was going to be firing 100 out of their 150 advertisement agencies for various brands. The article said that it wanted to centralize their marketing campaign because there are too many brands and they are spread over too many agencies. This came from the CEO of the company about a week ago and the agencies have  not yet been notified which ones are going to be let go. This is causing a frenzy with many ad agencies, the agencies are calling the brand mangers and other  Pepsi insiders to get the details but most companies are being left in the dark until the decision is finalized. I recently posted about Pepsi increasing their marketing budget by about half a billion so this new came as a bit of a surprise to me. I haven't heard anything more about their supposed budget increase so I'm not sure whether they are still doing that or not. It appears to me that Pepsi is in a little bit of trouble so it will be interesting to see what happens with their marketing campaign in the future. They are in a state of falling demand for their product so they need to do something drastic like re-branding or increase their marketing significantly. Has anyone else heard any news about their new strategy? Is anyone else surprised by the huge cut in ad agencies?