Filed under: Products and services, Apple Inc (AAPL), Marketing and advertising

As Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) continues marching into consumers’ lives with iPods, iPhone and iMacs (and iEverything), is the company ready to take over the iLivingRoom too? Although the company’s Apple TV product has been received not-so-hotly, it’s a great product in the second generation form. But will it, with other products, provide the centerpiece of the digital living room within five years? According to some analysts, yes.

Apple isn’t perfect and has made several product mistakes, but those are the kinds of things that the media gushes on when iThis and iThat are released to the market and sell well. Still, a claim that Apple can come out of nowhere to “take over” the living room seems a bit dubious. A home server (without being called a server) and a universal remote, using iTunes as a central control and collection point for media — these will transform Apple into the Microsoft of the living room?

I am a huge Apple fan, from a marketing, design and usability perspective, but don’t own a single product. This is mostly because the freedom I like isn’t supported in the ways I like. Are you that way? Maybe, maybe not. But analysts, always the ones to grab headlines with large predictions, have this one dead wrong. Apple may be the centerpiece for some future digital living rooms, but it’ll be the vast minority in five years only.

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Filed under: Consumer experience, Starbucks (SBUX), Marketing and advertising

Tim Hortons (NYSE: THI) can’t seem to get enough of bad PR lately.

Only two weeks ago Canada was in an uproar when Tim Hortons fired a single mother employee from a London, Ontario location because she gave a child a free Timbit (a doughnut center). Tim Hortons has since rehired the woman.

Then, on Wednesday, Teresa Lee, a Good Samaritan who happens to be a Toronto investment manager, purchased breakfast for a pregnant homeless woman. When she was about to leave and go to her job, an employee admonished her, saying the homeless woman can’t stay to eat the purchased breakfast in the restaurant. According to the employee, “Tim Hortons at King and Victoria Sts. does not let homeless people eat inside, even if they’re eating Tim Hortons food, because they ‘make a mess.’”

Well, the chain claims it has no policy on the treatment of the homeless. Since 95% of the Tim Hortons stores in Canada are independent franchises, it is up to franchises to “make delicate judgment decisions when dealing with any disruptive customers to ensure the store is pleasant, comfortable and safe.” Tim Hortons has apologized to Lee, the investment manager, but failed to apologize to the homeless woman.

It’s quite surprising to see Tim Hortons, which has been called “a Canadian icon of best practices from a franchising perspective,” getting it so wrong lately. Tim Hortons is a Canadian icon, not just from business perspective, but from a cultural one too.

If there was one thing Tim Hortons definitely didn’t need to learn from Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), it was this. Starbucks had a few incidents involving homeless and bad PR itself. Tim Hortons has hurt its brand image with this negative publicity. So while indeed it comes down more often than not to judgment calls, those calls have been wrong of late. Perhaps Timmies should have a specific company policy on the treatment of the homeless after all.

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