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There is a much talked about trait of our culture that we love to see a fall from grace. When something gets too successful, we like to see it brought back to earth. I wrote a little bit about it a couple of years ago.

My case today? Starbucks. I admit it. I have made fun of being able to see three different Starbucks within 20 yards. I have wondered how many stores could possibly be supported. But also, I have gone to Starbucks in England, Frankfurt and virtually every other city I have visited in the last 10 years, if available.

Sure, people complain that it’s too corporate. That local coffee shops are way better, and that Starbucks is to coffee what Disney is to the real world. Whatever. They make good coffee and I like it.

Starbucks is recognized as having ridiculous growth for years. Like, way too much ridiculous growth for too many years. Metro corners, grocery stores, airports, shopping malls, drive thrus… anywhere people moving or sitting may want coffee. More locations than McDonalds?

Speaking of McDonalds (smooth segway…), the home of the Big Mac wants to take on Starbucks by selling “designer” coffee. So, McDonalds sees an opportunity. It has a launched a full radio and billboard campaign going right at Starbucks.

“Four Bucks is Dumb”

“Espresso Served Cold, Not Snobby”

And radio commercials that have some kind of message about coffee and intelligence not going together or something. Not sure.

And earlier this year, when the financial woes, employee training and store closure plans were reported, one would expect that people would be hooting and hollering that it’s about time Starbucks falls.

But, No. People are vying for their Starbucks! The day after I heard about the campaigns to save the neighborhood Starbucks scheduled for closure, my wife casually mentions she is going to avoid McDonald’s coffee because of the bad ad campaign (shouldn’t be too hard, since we don’t hit McDonald’s too much, but she said it none the less).

So I think Starbucks is turning the cultural trait on its head. People like their coffee, and appreciate their Starbucks. And besides: McDonald’s, the epitome of American fast food, thinks the public will rebel against Starbucks, the biggest coffee chain in the world. If anything, Coffee drinkers are rebelling to neighborhood coffee shops. They’re not going to trade one mass-market venue for another.

I remember, back in the day, Cherry Coke was officially launched. Then, all of the sudden, there was Wild Cherry Pepsi. Sure a one percent swing in the Cola market share is worth millions, so I get Pepsi’s motivation to introduce a copycat product for Cherry Coke. But I still thought it was odd to launch a product just because the other guys were doing it. Even as a junior high school chump, trying to keep myself from following everyone else jumping off that bridge…

Well, that was, like, 20 years ago. And the more things change the more they stay the same. Last year there was Miller Chill: Miller beer’s answer to people buying Corona and dropping in a slice of lime and a couple of shakes of salt. Miller Chill has a hint of lime & salt. I’ve tried it, and it reminds me of something like Taos: chick beer. It took me and my friend Simon the better part of a six-pack to decide we didn’t care for it.

Anyway, new this year is Bud Light Lime (Bud Light with a splash of lime): another competitive copycat product to try and retain a tiny sliver of the beer mass market.

So, I still get “me, too” products when you are Coke vs. Pepsi or Miller vs. Bud. But what if we were talking about Coke vs. Fresca?

What about other competitive relationships?

Does it make sense for a market leader to compete on a “me, too” level? No. Chances are you didn’t get to be the market leader by merely maintaining the status quo. And if a competitor has caught you off guard with a new product, now is not the time for you to act like the underdog. If you’ve been scooped, step back. Take stock. Look beyond. What is it that made you the market leader in the first place? It was capturing lightning in a bottle. Put yourself in the position to do it again. That’s not going to happen by letting your competition do your product development.

Does it make sense for a guerilla in the market to compete on a “me, too” level? No. The market leader got there for a reason, and a duplicate product with a different brand on it is rarely worth a switch. You need to pull off that next generation product the market leader has been trying to get at for a couple of years. You get to do the scooping, because you’re smaller and faster and can shake up the status quo. Plus you don’t have to worry about introducing something new and instantly obsolescing everything you built your market leadership on. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

And besides, copying a product is no fun, because it is obvious you are copying what you believe to be a good idea. And that idea is someone else’s.

UPDATE: We went to Lake Chelan last weekend, and Simon had some of the Bud Light Lime. I didn’t want it, and I didn’t want to like it, but I tried it. It was Delicious! You should try it.

I’ve never been a fan of marketing jargon: value proposition, consumer experience, integrated campaign, synergistic whatever.

So, to some degree, my brain shuts off when I hear these terms thrown about. But then, every now and again I discover that something I’ve been doing has a sadly jargonistic name. And “integrated marketing campaign” is one of those terms.

Here’s the funny thing I’ve discovered about creating an integrated marketing campaign. It is way easier than creating what I guess could be called a disintegrated campaign.

Basically, each of your marketing components is inspired by all of the others. Advertisements and press releases are coordinated and then timed with trade shows or product events. Web sites look like, and are organized like, advertisements and catalogs. Catalogs refer to web sites, ads refer to web sites, pretty much everything refers back to a web site that is up to date and completes the story that is started by the catalog, ad or press release.

And all of this is done to get the product in front of the customer, when they are in the mood to buy.

In an integrated campaign, you get to create the whole thing once, rather than reinventing the wheel every time you need an ad or a press release or a web graphic. You get everybody on board once, rather than sending graphics, slogans or pictures around for approval every time something comes up.

If I have a vice in life, it is pancakes. Of course, this doesn’t include stuff like gambling and drinking, because those are more proximity vices (Vegas, baby).

I don’t really know or care about a pancake’s health value, or lack thereof. And it doesn’t matter if I make them, my wife makes them, the dude at the restaurant makes them or they pop out of a toaster. My affection might have something to do with the pancake serving as a vehicle for the syrup and butter, but I just dig pancakes.

Lucky for me they are pretty easy to make, so a weekend morning will often find me digging into a stack. But I just got some awesome, awesome news: Batter Blaster. Pancake batter in a can; something like Cheese Wiz. Batter Blaster shaves four minutes and three dishes off my home pancake routine. And the can even says Organic. Not sure how official that is, but Organic Pancake Batter in a can is something I can totally get behind.

On a funny Social Networking note, I did a little Google research on Batter Blaster, to find out if this glorious new product was doomed for discontinuing. And I discovered there is a YouTube video, a MySpace page, and a Facebook page (but I’m not sure if that one is official). Nice.

I have worn Levi’s most of my life. My Mom wouldn’t put a pair of elastic-waist jeans on me as a toddler. She insisted on tiny pairs of Levi jeans, and to this day I have a pair of 501s in my jeans drawer.

So, there’s some brand recognition there.

You might have seen a recent Levi commercial. It’s nighttime and this skinny dark haired guy is putting on a new pair of jeans. As he pulls them up, he pulls the street and sidewalk below up into his apartment as well. On the sidewalk, he notices an attractive person checking him out from a telephone booth. He and the occupant walk off into the night.

The occupant of the phone booth? That’s where the plot thickens. There are two versions of the commercial and I just noticed the second.

In the NBC NFL Football version: A very thin brunette woman.

In the Bravo Project Runway version: A hunky blonde dude.

The same commercial, but with two different target audiences. The gay themed commercial was initially airing only on MTV’s Logo network, but the move to Bravo takes it into the mainstream with a very popular show.

Levi has apparently finally noticed that straight people like Levis, too.