Starbucks has always been a premium coffee café with an ambience that provides a sense of luxury and opulence to the act of consuming coffee. Starbucks also believed in letting the product speak for itself and spent only $10 million on advertising during 1987-97[1]. Everything from the store environment to the white paper cups with the prominent logo is a result of deliberate research projecting the Starbucks Brand image at the consumers. The stores were chosen based on extensive study of traffic flow density. The décor of the café’s are picked from a catalog created by Wright Massey specifically for Starbucks that give the ambience a ‘similar yet different’ look while maintaining the brand image. Every Starbucks store is unique in its way yet projects the same brand image of a plush, opulent and relaxed atmosphere. It also has its own drink nomenclature.

Starbucks steadfast adherence of its basic theme “Starbucks coffee equals romance, relaxation and luxury” has made it synonymous with those concepts transforming a cheap commodity into “a sophisticated coffee indulgence”[2].

Its mission has been to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time.

Target Audience has always been educated, refined, fashion conscious, ability to appreciate coffee, seeking individuality, moderate-high income. The audience is looking to enjoy the experience and get inspired.

Starbucks and Social Media – The Positive

In 2008, Starbucks created its first social media website to listen to its consumers and engage them in creating memorable experiences at the stores due to a drop in revenues. The site – “MyStarbucksIdea.com” was instrumental in listening to the consumers and engage them before Starbucks launched a facebook page. The site invited customers to contribute ideas by posting to a discussion board where other customers would debate their merit, suggest improvements to the ideas, and vote them up or down. A total of 75,000 ideas were contributed, from which the company chose to implement one hundred, including the complementary WiFi, the ability to buy a friend a beverage remotely, and splash sticks to block the hole in coffee cup lids.

Starbucks’ launched its facebook page in January 2009 and complemented it with twitter, flickr and YouTube. By June 2009, the facebook page had close to 3 million ‘likes’. Starbucks tries to create / share content that the consumers would find attractive and engage with the company. Starbucks uses coupons, special offers and discounts to encourage the consumers to ‘like’ its page on facebook. This is an excellent way to incentivize consumer engagement[3].

The content of Starbucks had evolved over the time from brand building to consumer promotion. The content posted on facebook ranged from information about the latest flavor offerings to webisodes of its new instant coffee, from photos of and by Starbucks customers at their favorite locations to discounts at their favorite locations.

Starbucks ran a promotion in March 2010 on twitter and facebook called ‘Free pastry Day’ that offered its consumers a free pastry if they present a coupon that had been only posted online. There was also a wave affect with the coupon since the coupon was passed around and shared online. That week Starbucks obtained an additional 200,000 fans on facebook and later overtook Coke to be the top brand on Facebook. Later that year Starbucks partnered with Yahoo, Foursquare and LinkedIn to enhance its content offering at the stores. However Starbucks’ engagement numbers vary drastically – (high when there is an offer by Starbucks online, low otherwise). Starbucks this day has startlingly low engagement numbers[4]. The engagement rate[5] is only calculated to 0.28% Likes and 0.02% comments

Starbucks approached Social media from a “What do consumers know and love about Starbucks” and succeeded in engaging the consumers not just to promote the brand but to create the unique experience that we know of today. Starbucks customers from a very active and passionate tribe, its location based promotion incentivizes tribal Behavior.

Starbucks and Social Media – The Negative

The As with many large corporations, there is a significant negative sentiment towards Starbucks due to various reasons like fair trade coffee, its prices, employee policies and sometime even the service that it prides itself on. The tribal behaviors of the passionate consumers are countered by an equally passionate tribe who disagree with Starbucks. Websites like “www.ihatestarbucks.com” are one of the leading websites that disagree with Starbucks and have users posting their grievances online.

Starbucks also has to listen actively to any news depicting the operations inappropriately. Starbucks had been criticized for its Ethiopian Coffee Deal, Fair Trade, employee policies and monopolizing the communities and harming local economy.

Starbucks is known to have a well placed system of listening to its consumers online. There have been examples of Starbucks employees correcting misconceptions about it and restoring the customers faith and satisfaction. Starbucks wants to be knows as an organization that is inspiring people, one cup at a time. The passion with which Starbucks is mentioned online proves that people are inspired. While Starbucks is mentioned once every 10 seconds, its product Coffee is mentioned once every 35,282 seconds. This shows that the brand of Starbucks is still going strong. Starbucks response to most of the allegations and negative sentiments are met with either a press release, a reply online or a change in policy.

“I Hate Starbucks” – Websites

• www.ihatestarbucks.com: This is the most prolific forum for people to express their issues against Starbucks. They however do not expect Starbucks to address these issues and sometime delete the posts that Starbucks employees create. This can be classified as a purely listening channel. The home page has a cloud of Tags that might give an idea about the sources of issue.

• http://www.ineedcoffee.com/06/hate/ : This is primarily a website about Coffee aimed at educating the consumer about the taste, origin, the business and the brewing of Coffee. They promote local coffee shops with information and recopies and their issue with Starbucks is that Starbucks monopolizes any area it is in and causes local coffee shops to lose business.
• stopstarbucks.com : This channel is primarily by Starbucks employees and their grievances.
• www.spacehijackers.co.uk/starbucks/
• www.starbucked.com

There are a number of Facebook pages created by irate customers providing a forum for others to share their experiences and in a way grow their tribe.

Location based Monitoring

The Majority of the immediate sentiments are expressed through micro-blogging and is generally done so close to the Starbucks store, right after their experience. Starbucks should have a system of addressing them based on location. Most of the posts are tagged based on their location. A team in Toronto monitoring Tweets about Starbucks from the GTA and surrounding areas. A response with free coffee for another chance at great service within minutes of consumer’s complaint might convince them to go back. They say the only thing better than having no complaints is having solved all complaints. The location based monitoring would divide the plethora of tweets into manageable number for the teams to monitor. It would also provide us with some metrics on performances & customer satisfaction based on location.

Managing Consumer Perceptions

There are multitudes of tools available for monitoring social media that provide the sentiment and the key word cloud. These are important benchmarks in finding out the associations of the brand in consumer opinion and cross reference it to the associations they envisioned as per their brand platform[6].

Starbucks, with all the negative tribes has managed to create core associations that the brand had planned for. Starbucks is adept at listening to its consumers online and to an extent contributes to the conversations and tries to correct any misrepresentation online. It listens to its consumers through the regular channels and created its own channel for consumers to voice their opinions and engage with the brand.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

1.  Radian 6 (http://www.radian6.com/) : It helps monitor Brand mentions across the social landscape and offers an end-to-end presence management tool. It also integrates with existing tools of the organization like salesforce & Google Analytics.

2. SAS Canada (http://www.sas.com/offices/NA/canada/) : Provides a tool for business analytic & consolidates social monitoring on one dashboard with great insights & analytic options.

3. Addict-O-matic (http://addictomatic.com/)
4. Social Mention (www.socialmention.com)
5. Steprep – Reputation Intelligence (http://www.steprep.com/)
6. Twazzap (http://www.twazzup.com/)
7. Sysomos (http://www.sysomos.com/)
8. Hootsuite (www.Hootsuite.com)
9. Beevolve (http://www.beevolve.com)
10. Seesmic (https://seesmic.com/)
11. PostRank (http://www.postrank.com/)
12. Social Seek (http://socialseek.com/app/home)
13. Social Pointer (http://www.socialpointer.com/)
14. Board Tracker (http://www.boardtracker.com/)
15. Tweetdeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/)
16. Lithium (http://lithium5.com/)
17. Brandwatch (http://www.brandwatch.com/)
18. Mention Mapp (http://mentionmapp.com/)
19. Wildfire (http://www.wildfireapp.com/)

Black Friday

It is the brand that makes you smile when you use it. It might not be perfect, It might not even be the best out there, but it has to connect.

Today Marks the launch of Ubuntu 11.10

For those of you who have been brainwashed not to recognize anything other than Windows or Mac, Ubuntu is a Linux based, open source operating system. It is the Luke Skywalker to the WinMac Empire.

It is completely free (Yes, Legally free.) and has some of the most advanced customization’s you can think of.

However, like all good things – It is not perfect – you cannot start using it as soon as you install it. you need to spend hours / days looking for software and drivers that will replace your trusted ‘butler-type’ operating system. You cannot install MsOffice, Photoshop or ANY games out there.

BUT it is one of the best brands out there because they bring a smile to the people using it. They provide a sense of community to everyone who take part. They let everyone know that they will keep innovating at all times to be able to launch twice a year. Versions come out in April and October every year.

They provide a tribe for its consumers to be a part of and be proud of.

I have been looking at the features in the new version. I admit that it will probably drop my productivity by 50% in the beginning, making me work to get audio coming out of my semi-functional Dell (more on that later) and depriving me of some games and software that i am used to.

BUT in doing so, in making me look at the community for answers to fix it / install it – they show how engaged the tribe is. how proud everyone is to be using Ubuntu and sticking it to the Man.

Every time I run Ubuntu, I start smiling. That I believe is a sign of a great Brand.

As a marketing student, I think the success of a movie depends largely on the brand identity it is given by the director. More than a good script, the director of the movie is responsible for the outcome of the movie.

A great script can be ruined by a director if he does not understand his target audience and tailor it to it. An unwanted violent scene in a movie could ruin its box office by its MPAA rating.

For example, ‘Watchmen“ could have been a bigger hit if they had cut back on the graphics, the nudity and maybe depended on the beautiful story. But because of its direction, it was rated ‘R’ by the MPAA, losing out on a whole market of young adolescents who read comics and would have aided to the success.

“Captain America” on the other hand tried to include as many segments as possible by limiting the graphics and the violence and the nudity and obtaining the rating of ‘PG-13′.

If the studios do not understand the implications on their revenue by adding a few seconds of footage and effectively forbidding every adolescent from watching the movie in a theatre, they have failed even before the movie is released.

More importantly it is a soul that is visible for everyone to look into. It is as obscure as a soul and as insightful.

It is no wonder then that when a company tries to change its brand, it always encounters resistance from its consumers who have done their diligence in soul-searching and have decided to associate with this brand.

Perhaps the most heated discussion in the world of marketing this year has been the decision by Starbucks to change its logo.

Starbucks 2011 Logo

The new Starbucks logo does away with the ‘obvious’ words “Starbucks Coffee”. I say obvious for two reasons, one – people recognize the logo without ‘aid’. Two, if a billion dollar company thought for one second that its consumers will stop enjoying their coffee unless the cup says ‘coffee’, they would not have risked it.

We can all argue that It is the coffee that sells, the cafe’s that fill up, the staff is liked by the consumers. But I believe it is the brand that emphasized coffee, conversation and good service.

The history of Logo.

History of Starbucks through Logo

Starbucks started out in 1971, offering Coffee, Tea and Spices. Like any startup organization looking for maximum sales to breakeven, they had three key offerings and this was duly communicated in their logo. This was the period that Starbucks wanted to gather as much customer base as possible.

The next step was when Starbucks decide to re-live the boston tea party and threw out the tea and spices off the logo. Strategically it fit in the plan as Starbucks; on acquiring its customers wanted to create a brand that people associate with. This was so successful that not only did people associate good coffee to Starbucks, but they started associating Starbucks to good coffee!!

Now the words are gone. No longer are you reminded by the cup that there is coffee inside. This is a strategic move from Starbucks. They believe that the association will continue. But the industry has its own doubts.

• Would people buy a burger from “Starbucks coffee” or McDonald’s?
• Would people still value the Starbucks service if the staff tried pushing burgers, pasta to its customers instead of taking care of them and giving them the coffee they deserve? imagine the nice lady at the counter take 1 minute to read out the specials and ask you for your confirmation when all you’ve ordered is a hot coffee.
• Would Starbucks attract more crowd in its cafe’s for food than there is for coffee? If that happens, if you find yourself not finding a decent place to sit and have your coffee, would you still go there?

Starbucks taking out the words has triggered the most curious consumer base, looking forward to the corporate strategy in the months to come.

Bottom Line

The Good: The change in Logo can be the best thing Starbucks has done strategically if they do not change the business model. they have accentuated the brand and would be bringing in more confidence to their consumers who identify with the brand name without the prompting ‘Starbucks Coffee’

The Bad: The Change in logo can be the biggest mistake Starbucks has made in a long time if they plan to expand in areas other than coffee and condiments. Nobody goes to McDonald’s for coffee and the chances are equally slim that the informed & intelligent consumers of Starbucks would go there for burgers and pasta. If Starbucks doesnt associate itself with coffee anymore that’s more reasons for the consumer to beware of the changes.

Starbucks has created a lot of value. It is time to see if it retains the value that has been created.