Caribou Coffee has gotten a lot of media attention over the past couple weeks for its “complete rebranding.” It all seems a little over-hyped to me as what they’ve basically done is refresh their logo design on signage, cups and napkins. Frankly, I’m astounded that brand is still being defined in such superficial terms. I’m also wondering how many people really care, other than the folks at Caribou Coffee.

As Alfredo Martel, Sr. VP of Marketing at Caribou, explains: “This rebrand is meant to signify an important change in the direction of our company.”

The new logo is a different take on the traditional animal icon, which now features the body of a coffee bean and antlers in the shape of a “C” on the backdrop of a shield that represents a state park emblem, not that I would have known that last part without being told. Another thing I wouldn’t have noticed is that the caribou is now leaping to the right rather than left, toward the company’s future. I do hope we’re not over-thinking this.

A new cup design is cluttered with type going in all directions, with what Martel describes as “quirky sayings.” But the coffee inside the cup, which is what I’m going to Caribou for in the first place, is pretty much the same, as is the customer experience — assuming we’re not spending a lot of time reading our cups.

“You want a brand that’s identifiable from far away and reads well and has clean lines,” Martel states. “It’s easily recognizable.”  So what I’m hearing is the logo design is the brand.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the tag line (“Life is short. Stay awake for it.”), but it too has been given a new significance according to Martel; now it’s about “seize the day.”

Or, as Mike Caguin, executive creative director at Colle + McVoy, the agency that created the logo, says: “The original brand message was about staying awake, now we’re making it about a social movement.”

A social movement? Wow, a new logo can do that? I’m thinking maybe these guys might want to switch to decaf.

More companies are jumping on the cause marketing bandwagon as an alternative to tradition advertising, which is why many of the heavy hitters were conspicuously absent from this year’s Super Bowl ad fest.

Case in point: the Pepsi Fresh Project that ran through February. Rather than spending millions on a handful of 30-second TV commercials in and around the Big Game, Pepsi decided to reallocate that money to a worthy cause. They launched a major cross-media campaign asking the public to visit refresheverything.com and vote for a select charitable cause or community group worthy of receiving a grant ranging from $5,000 to $250,000. Options include a girls club to promote self-esteem, a diaper bank in Detroit and a group that is recycling T-shirts into shopping bags to raise money for rescued animals.

Not to be outdone, Coca Cola unveiled its own promotion to give $1 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America — up to $250,000 — every time someone watched one of its Super Bowl ads, which were not shown on television but on Facebook.

But is a good cause good for the bottom line?

A Cone/Duke University Behavioral Cause Study has reported that cause-related marketing can positively affect consumer choice and brand preference, which can result in dramatic increases in product sales. In the case of Coke and Pepsi, both of which produce and promote sugar-laden soft drinks that have been linked to obesity and poor health, is that a good thing?

More than ever before brands are built on trust, not image. Trust is an emotional state, founded not just on the products but on the integrity of companies that produce them, and the CEOs who lead them. In a consumer-driven marketplace, where public trust has been rocked by numerous incidents of corporate greed and situational ethics in a brutal economic recession, even seemingly invincible brands have become volatile.

Such is the case with Toyota, the crown jewel of automotive brands and the standard of quality for so many years, as it deals with repercussions from safety issues relating to reports of involuntary acceleration and now problems with braking systems.  President Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founding father, appears today before the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to answer questions about how responsive and forthcoming the company has been in dealing with these issues. It should be interesting to see how the consumer public responds and what kind of damage is done to the brand in this, one of Toyota’s largest and most important markets.

The thing that makes this case more interesting than past public relations crises, like Tylenol and Firestone Tires, is the cultural factor. It has to be excruciating for them. Japanese companies are extremely product-centric, often to the point of arrogance. Once trust in those products has been compromised, it comes down to how well the company can engage with the consumer public and restore faith. In companies where the CEO serves as more a figurehead than a true business leader this becomes exponentially more difficult, especially for Mr. Toyoda who is known to be reclusive by nature. This may well be the most daunting challenge of his career.

Could it be that a changing world has caught up to Toyota, which has failed to adapt to a contracted, customer-centric market environment and lost its competitive dominance? There are a couple of US auto manufacturers who are looking on with great interest; let’s hope they’re learning something.

A recent episode with Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines provides another glaring example illustrating that in today’s business landscape the customer rules, whether right or wrong. I’m not saying Smith is wrong, but I don’t think he was totally right either. There was a fair amount of media exploitation going on.

What he did was launch a Twitter tirade after being asked to leave a flight from Oakland to Burbank last Saturday, because his over-sized body was supposedly too large to fit in the seat and he was infringing on the space of the person next to him, as well as creating a safety threat — at least that’s how it was rationalized by the pilot and crew.

The story quickly became a national media sensation, from tweets to blogs to news syndicates and network television.  It will no doubt die just as quickly. This is the nature of media today; it has become way too overblown, with a daily appetite that far exceeds the availability of substantive news important and relevant to our lives. I’m wondering if the media attention wasn’t a little disproportionate to the news value, and if this ordeal would’ve gotten the same play had it been just another Smith and not a famous movie director, or a skinny person tweeting about the overweight person next to them taking up half their seat space.

Of course, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) had to weigh in on the matter, charging the airlines with discrimination and encouraging people of size to boycott the company.

For their part, Southwest claims they were just trying to follow protocol. The airline doesn’t guarantee standby seating, and they do have a “customers of size” policy that protects the rights of other passengers.

Southwest handled the situation in a professional manner, with humility and numerous public apologies. It is a reputable company, known for its customer-centric business practices, but they took it in shorts on this one. Perhaps the lesson learned is that, when it comes to meeting the needs of different customers, one size does not fit all. With the high rate of obesity in this country it might be a good idea to offer the option of wider seats in the back of the plane at a nominally higher price, much like first-class in front but without the frills.

I’ll probably be hearing from NAAFA for proposing to relegate people of size to the back of the plane, but they should support such an idea. They are holding their annual convention in San Francisco on August 5, so the airlines may want to be prepared.

And the winner in the Super Bowl advertising competition was… everyone and no one.

As usual, there was a lot of media buzz about which were the best ads to show during the Big Game. The consensus appears to be that none of this year’s advertising crop was astounding, though many of the ads were deemed effective by different outlets using different criteria. This is the part I always find most interesting: How do we measure the effectiveness of mass media advertising in general, and more specifically during the Super Bowl where a 30-second spot costs around $2.5 million, plus production? I guess it depends on what it is we’re trying to measure.

• According to most of the ad agency experts (those who did not have a stake in the game) it was a relatively poor showing as companies were playing it conservatively, due to concern about consumer attitudes with the bad economy and all.

• Based on a next-day survey of Twitter chat done with the Squawq analytic tool, there were about 185,000 post-game tweets about the ads (compared with 675,000 about the game). The winner, in terms of pure entertainment value, appeared to be Frito-Lay for its Doritos ads produced by amateurs, with the samurai snack attack and the dog collar.

• Another survey on Twitter activity done by Trendrr proclaimed the top ads to be those for Boost Mobile, Emerald Nuts, and Disney’s Alice & Wonderland.

• Some companies that didn’t even have ads on the Super Bowl this year, like Turbo Tax, Mazda and Pepsi, generated significant chat on Twitter by running paid search ads on keywords related to products that did.

• USA Today’s Ad Meter had the Snickers spot, featuring Betty White and Abe Vigoda, as the consensus winner.  And I thought Abe Vigoda was dead.

• Reprise Media, which measures levels of integration between TV ads and Web (search and social media), proclaimed Boost Mobile, E-Trade and Google the big winners.

• Radian6, another company that monitors online activity, claimed that Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl because the product is most relevant.

• A Wall Street Journal poll indicated the most popular spot was for Audi, with the green police.

• The Kellogg School Super Bowl Ad Review, done by graduate students, selected Google as the best spot, followed by the E-Trade commercial.  On a personal note, if I never see another advertisement with talking babies it will be too soon.

• On further examination of other ad reviews, the Budweiser horses, men without pants and the house built with beer cans all showed up as winners, depending on the source and criteria.

The one measure I’ve never been able to find on Super Bowl ads however, is how much added revenue can be attributed to these ads, or how much sustainable brand equity.  My sense is the only real winners this year, as in past years, were the TV network, ad agencies and the two previously unknown amateur film producers from Minneapolis who did the samurai snack attack spot.

The case in point would be the direct mail I keep getting trying to sell me the company’s Google Apps Premier Edition, which provides low-cost messaging and collaboration tools, including email, voice and video chat. Most recently I received a mass mail form letter from Matt Glotzbach, Director of Global Products, Google Enterprise, telling me about the power of business-class email and the money I can save with their hosted services. Included is a savings calculator wheel that is randomly stuck to the back of the letter with booger glue. I have no problem with the calculator tool, in fact it’s pretty cool that I can select the number of employees in my company, from 10 to 2,500, and view the annual savings I can expect to realize. One would think that were the data available they should already know how many employees I have and could just tell me up front what the savings might be — it’s a far more effective way to capture my attention than Matt telling me traditional email and collaboration tools can be costly to set up and maintain.

It’s interesting that Google would be using direct mail to market its email services, but good for them as they’re demonstrating responsible use of the media they are promoting. Blasting out spam would be far more intrusive and even less effective, at least for me. But let’s at least try to do a decent job of it, guys.

I have no problem with the offer of a 30-day free trial, but the engagement strategy is incredibly weak and the creative… well there is no attempt to be creative or innovative. The mail piece itself plain vanilla and poorly done — representative of the 98 percent of mass mail solicitation that doesn’t work. Maybe they figure the power of the colorful logo atop the letterhead is enough, but to me it says they really don’t care and are just mailing it in. For an innovative company like Google I would expect a better effort, even if this app is outside (and no doubt beneath) their domain.

Demographers are speculating that this census update might be one of the most significant of any in history, in terms of shifting demographics and clustering.

What we will find is a rapidly aging population, as the boomer generation has moved ten years closer to retirement. This, fueled by a deep economic recession, has changed attitudes and behavior in this massive cohort where most of the wealth in this country resides. Boomers have largely curtailed excess consumptive spending, with a lessened reliance on credit for purchases, and are focusing instead on debt reduction and record level savings. We also will find that the Gen Y population, the kids of boomers who represent the largest generational cohort in this country, is now ten years older and entering the workforce, while gaining increased consumer relevance and influence. They are the future and corporate America will have to learn how to adapt to very different attitudes, lifestyles and social consciousness, both in the market and the workplace.

We will no doubt find significant demographic shifts and socio-economic stratification down to micro-segments at a neighborhood level. This should expedite the beginning of the end for tradition mass marketing, which is increasingly less effective and cost-viable.

The 2010 census-taking begins in March when a survey will be mailed out to every household in the US, asking 10 short questions that cover topics including age, race, sex, phone number, household makeup, home owner or renter, type of residence and seasonal migration patterns. A quick overlay of lifestyle, wealth indicators and other augmented data will offer companies, marketers, media members and list providers a refreshed view of how the market has changed over the past decade. It also determines the distribution of seats in Congress and how federal funds are divvied up.

This should be interesting.

The case in point is a woman named Tammie Townsend who leased a 2007 Chrysler Pacifica from Walser Chrysler in Hopkins, MN, then agreed to purchase the vehicle when the dealer offered a very attractive buyout price, well below blue book value. She opted to finance through the dealer and signed the contract, driving off with a pretty good deal. Or was it a steal?

Soon after, she received a call from Walser informing her they had a made a mistake, that the price on the purchase agreement was not the actual price for the vehicle, and she would have to pony up another six grand or return it. Tammie told them she had no intention of doing either as she had purchased the car at the price offered and “a deal is a deal.”

According to Doug Sprinthall, director of vehicle operations at Walser, the woman was told what the buyout price was and she should have known the price stated on the contract was “too good to be true.” He threatened to sue her if she didn’t return the car. There’s a reason we don’t put operations people in charge of customer relationship management.

Here’s where Walser really blew it: rather than try to negotiate a quiet resolution to this problem of their own making, they took a hard-line confrontational position, pulling her financing and sending a couple of repo guys to take the vehicle back. When they couldn’t locate it the dealership filed suit, they accused Tammie of fraud and unjust enrichment. What, they didn’t think the media was going to jump all over this juicy story?

The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a prominent article, putting it online where it quickly circulated and creating plenty of buzz, most of which was sympathetic to her — it’s not often we see the female buyer getting the best of the used car salesman. The car dealer ends up looking like the big bad villain and Tammie the victim. Just wait, the publicity is only going to intensify if and when this thing goes to court. Not real smart, guys.

I guess nobody clued Walser Chrysler in on the fact that the world has changed, and in a contracted post-recessionary economy where the customer rules, it doesn’t really matter who was right or wrong. Companies simply don’t want to be threatening and bullying their customers no matter what the circumstances, especially not car dealerships which don’t rank very high on the trust-o-meter to begin with.

“It’s the Walser way,” the tagline on their website proclaims. One would think the potential damage to the brand, one of the largest automotive groups in Minnesota with 13 dealerships, would outweigh the financial gain in this case. By the time this is all over, paying a few thousand dollars to keep this story out of the media will look like a bargain.

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it very interesting to watch what appears to be a desperation move (or is it a Kamikaze mission?) by Domino’s Pizza, as the company has launched an aggressive mea culpa campaign using traditional advertising and social media, including a high visibility video on YouTube, in an attempt to resuscitate its dying brand. The campaign is essentially an admission that their pizza sucks — at least in the minds of customers. Domino’s has listened and is responding with a complete overhaul of the product.

Domino’s president Patrick Doyle speaks to us from his corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor about how painful it was to hear focus group participants describe how bad his pizza is; the crust tastes like cardboard, the sauce like ketchup, the cheese tasteless and processed. The average frozen pizza is far superior. A vocal leader in the focus group sessions, a woman named Adrian, proclaims it to be the worst excuse for pizza she’s ever seen. Ouch. That’s not a wound, it’s a head shot.

Doyle and his band of pizza chefs tell us how painful this all was to hear, but claim that they’re taking the criticism to heart and working day and night to come up with a whole new recipe with better ingredients, as the camera zooms in on a beauty shot of their new and improved pizza creation. The new product looks pretty good on video, but I have serious doubts they can deliver on this promise across thousands of retail outlets.

For me the real issue is not whether the pizza is better, but whether the brand can be revived or the social media campaign will have a reverse effect and put a fork in it forever.  Based on the initial tweets I’m reading it may likely be the latter. We’ll stay tuned as the pizza chefs go knocking on Adrian’s door to see what she thinks, if indeed it matters to anyone. I can’t help but think this all seems a little contrived.

Here’s a thought: when companies ask if the customer wants to unsubscribe from unwanted email solicitation, they should honor that request, or they shouldn’t ask. Very often they do not but are merely complying with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. In many cases by unsubscribing we are merely validating our email addresses for distribution to more spam lists.

It would seem this should be a matter of proper social etiquette — especially for a company that is in the social etiquette business.

Such is the case with FTD.com, a company that sells flowers online. I made the mistake of ordering flowers a year ago for a wedding anniversary, which at the time seemed like a very convenient way to buy a dozen roses. The purchase experience was easy enough and the flowers arrived on time, but soon after the emails started arriving, with weekly offers on specials for floral arrangements but without any particular occasion or triggered event. At the time of purchase I checked the box indicating I did not want to receive future email updates or offers, but they came anyway.

Every time I received one of these emails I clicked the “unsubscribe” link yet they kept coming on a regular basis.

What FTD did was take a favorable customer experience and turn it into a negative, and as we know, a negative customer experience has far more lasting and impactful ramifications. Not only will I never buy anything from FTD online again, I’m sharing my negative experience with others. This would not be effective marketing.

This brings me to the company that has been sending me unsolicited emails for the past couple of months. They are trying to get me to sign up for a webinar about best practices for email marketing and the risk of spamming, with no option to unsubscribe. I’m not getting this.