Saturday, June 13, 2009

The war between Nestle and Starbucks over the instant coffee market

This is going to be short, because I am tired, but I keep noticing the hilariously aggressive ads that Nestle is putting up all over town targeted at Starbucks and their new line of instant coffee, Via.

So (for context) we first have the Via ads, which claimed that it's not just instant coffee, it's flowery-font instant.

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And therefore that Via (the flowery-font instant) is a whole new thing Starbucks has invented--an innovation.


So then Nestle, which probably controls a good deal of the world wide instant coffee market with Nescafe (which was, by the way, first introduce in 1938. Ok, here's some info on their "soluble coffee" market control throughout the world.) releases this torrent of ads in response to Via, the resentful-ness of which, for some reason, strikes me as totally hilarious. See below.

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Or my personal favorite (can't find a pic) which I saw whilst biking home today which read (something like):

"Dear Starbucks:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Raising our prices by 400% not so much."

It took me a little while to process this (wait, so you are saying that raising a price is not a form of flattery?...wait...?)
Anyway, I guess we'll see if Nestle's campaign pays off or not. Who drinks instant coffee anyway?

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