To brands serving up lemons: "We aren't interested in lemonade."

Especially in this economy, everyone with a product or service offering is doing all they can to grab out attention, with less means of doing so. However, at this point where life is throwing many of us lemons, I ask, should we get used to drinking lemonade, or are we thirsting for something that's actually desirable?

Every so often though, something good pop us to treat us during hard times, whether it's entertaining, useful, thoughtful, funny, or just plain weird, so long as it's not boring or annoying.

Don't get me wrong. Sometimes we ourselves as consumers, users, evaluators, and participants can be sour. Take the example of Facebook's new redesign, which groups of over 2.6 million have now gathered on the social network to talk about how much of a lemon the site's look and feel has become.

How about some good examples? Dunkin Donuts has certainly caught my attention, beating out Starbucks since the beginning of the year by serving up coffee that many of us can now afford (or at least not feel bad about spending on). The company's DunkinBeatStarbucks.com site provides a laugh or two which we could all use right now, and we can certainly appreciate someone giving us a positive nudge by saying "You Kin Do It."

What did Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz have to say about all this? His response was merely "Are you going to say to your friend, 'Lets go meet at Dunkin' Donuts'? Are you going to say that?"

C'mon, really? Since when did the green apron-wearing people start serving up a grande cup of bitter lemonade? It now appears to be on the menu...



Flickr photo by accipitereye

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