TO MARKET: Robbin Block leads the Seattle SCORE "Marketing 101" half-day workshop this afternoon. If you're starting a business or looking for a better, legal way to pry open wallets, the workshop covers product planning, pricing, and promotions, in addition to pointers on how to do market research and create a business plan. One thing entrepreneurs need most is to learn marketing basics--too many are counting on Oprah really, really liking their product. more ›

SMALL BUSINESS SKILLS: SeattleSCORE, the people who help small business people learn stuff, have put together a 4-hour seminar, Marketing 101. On the syllabus! Identifying your customers, packaging your product or service, creating effective marketing tools, and getting repeat customers. Now, in this market none of this will help, but it will get you out of the office for a bit, and you might meet some new people. more ›

Face it, folks: it's fall in Seattle, and along with cooler nights, leaves changing color, and the beginning of football season, fall also marks the annual Scion independent film series. Yes, it's corporate-sponsored lifestyle marketing aimed at the hip youth demographic, and yes, they just want the kids to buy their damn cars, but we're willing to shill for it when 1) it's free and 2) the films shown are actually worth seeing. The series kicks off tonight with Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the first full-length film made by the good people at Vice: more ›

Yes, Starbucks fucked up. Their "complimentary iced grande beverage" email coupon rapidly escalated beyond its intended audience, to no-one's surprise but Starbucks management's. They're embarrassed, and they should be -- it's a rookie Internet mistake, the kind of thing that we associate with the wild-'n'-woolly days of early '00 or so. more ›

If your workplace is anything like Seattlest's, you've seen this free iced grande beverage coupon a few times already. If you're as skeptical as Seattlest, you double-checked with Snopes to make sure it was legit. And you discovered that yay, it was legit! (Actually, if you're like Seattlest, you wished it was for a free Tazo lemonade because you don't drink coffee.) more ›

They've sold music. They've sold movies. Now, Starbucks is adding a "third leg to the stool": books. But not, you know, good books. They're officially launching their "book strategy" with Mitch Albom's new novel, For One More Day. Per the PI:

Albom's sentimental narratives are far from the Beat poetry traditionally associated with coffeehouse culture, and from CDs by Coldplay, Antigone Rising and others that Starbucks has sold. But Lombard said the author's new book, the story of a son reunited with his late mother, "embodies Starbucks values" because it's "an inspirational tale that encourages people to examine their lives with family and friends."