| Starbucks -- my favorite store. In Silicon Valley, where some towns have two Starbuck stores, people give directions by it, as in go straight and turn left at the SECOND Starbucks. There are 67 Starbucks in China. There is even a Starbucks inside The Forbidden City in Beijing! The last time I was in Shanghai, I tried to visit a DIFFERENT Starbuck each time I had a chance. :-) There are 26 in Shanghai, so I still have a long, long way to go. Since the invention of product placement (i.e. BMW in Jame Bond films), you see a lot of Starbucks in major Hollywood movies. It was featured prominently in > at the beginning. There was a line spoken by Tom Hanks, "The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are, can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall! Decaf! Cappuccino!" If you have seen >, Ashley Judd was driving by a small town in Colorado and she made a U-turn right in front of a Starbucks... I am sure it was all filmed in California, probably at the studio... Anyway, try and see if you can spot all the product placements the next time you see a blockbuster film -- Matrix 2 anyone? |
Starbucks in Shanghai