Mike Ferguson

Got A Consumer Marketing Campaign?

by Mike Ferguson From The Specialty Coffee Chronicle 

It’s a good question and one I can’t help asking myself whenever I see a Got Milk? commercial or hear that raspy cowboy voice say, “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” So why can’t the specialty coffee industry put out celebrity endorsed commercials and full-page ads in national consumer publications?

The Supersizing of Specialty Coffee

by Mike Ferguson First Published  June 2003 Fresh Cup Magazine and Reprinted in The Specialty Coffee Chronicle 

Everything about the proper preparation of specialty coffee, from the day it was born on the tree to the day it is poured, speaks to the singularity of every cup worthy of the name. To equate value with volume degrades not only our product but the sophistication of our customers, a sophistication that helped build the specialty coffee segment.

Righteous Coffee

by Mike Ferguson From The Specialty Coffee Chronicle 

When the founders of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) spent 1982 meeting, talking and arguing about what the association should do and be, they made two very important decisions: 1) they decided not to name their group the Specialty Coffee Advisory Board, thus saving us all from being a part of the SCAB, and 2) they decided the association’s role would be
that of “coffee cleric” rather than “coffee cop.”

Preface by Mike Ferguson

Preface to Effective and Essential Marketing for the Specialty Coffee Retailer by Bruce Milletto

Though marketing professionals prefer to emphasize the creative aspects of their job, marketing is at the end of the day an economic endeavor and thus susceptible to the influences of voodoo...

Coffee, Community

by Mike Ferguson From The Specialty Coffee Chronicle 

Crisis often defines communities, marking
boundaries, drawing lines. September 11th may have affirmed for some of us the emotional ties to everyone who cups coffee, even if they are cupping in a range of defects our specialty palettes don’t understand...

New Again

 by Mike Ferguson From The Specialty Coffee Chronicle 

One day, everyone now on staff or now on the board, will have moved on, but the association will still be here—I think the First Responders proved that to be true...