It strikes at the heart of all advertising and positioning exercises – are you selling more? If not, it doesn’t matter whose and what creative brainwaves hit the TV screens or appeared in the print media.

On Starbucks, all the advertising story is all fine. But they are over-priced and ubiquitous so much so that new stores end up cannibalising old stores’ sales (not very clever that!). Despite their promises not to sell overtly to children, their stored value cards and their smoothies and food offerings have meant that young teenagers run riot in their stores destroying the ‘third place’ plank which they so promoted. Oh and the most important thing of all? The coffee is just crap.

Sensitive execution in the end is the key to success, and seeing Starbucks’s decline, one could say, sustainable success.