Not the coffee -- truly, I live on the stuff -- but the company....


I was Dead Man Walking (late flight) through Boston's Logan airport last week when I saw a rack of magazines -- the free (mostly business) publications some terminals offer travelers. What caught my eye was the cover story on a trade pub called SellingPower. It was on branding ("How Branding Drives Sales") and the artwork featured -- guess what -- a giant familiar green logo of Starbucks.
Clearly, Starbucks as a company has done a phenomenal job with branding. Is there a bigger branding giant? OK --a bigger branding giant in a cup, then?
But enough already! Is this news? How many articles, speeches, presentations, blog posts, or whatever have talked about branding in the same sentence with Starbucks? Or (for that matter) Apple, Virgin, IKEA or Amazon.
Is anyone else out there driving sales with branding? Sometimes, I'm not entirely sure.