Starbucks De-Branding Strategy - Is It Really So Bad?

I just sat down in this cozy little independent coffee shop in my current city of residence (San Francisco) to write a little bit about Starbucks…and maybe a little about local versus corporate economies as well. I’ve actually been meaning to turn my attention to these guys for a while, ever since I noticed their new “fair trade” iconography gracing the bus stops of my fair city some months ago. You may have seen this, it’s large-scale representations of a very organic, very hand-knit looking light brown sack, which is, of course, how all fair trade coffee gets transported to our caffeine-starved shores. Tongue out of cheek, though, seriously, I like the campaign and the way Starbucks seems to be constantly evolving their brand.

Then, I ask myself, how can this be? I mean I’m sitting here in an independently owned coffee shop to do my writing. Why? Well, yeah, I care about supporting my local economy, blah blah blah. But, if I’m being honest, it’s the vibe. Classic German prog-rock band Neu! is pulsing from strategically spaced speakers. The place is bathed in natural light. I’m sitting at a scarred square wooden table and I like it. Wireless is free and there are plenty of electrical outlets so I can keep my laptop charged. And the coffee’s decent, too. If I went to do this writing and Net surfing in any Starbucks, it would be a) not free b) noisy c) filled with only mild, corporately approved music d) hopelessly over-lit and e) suffused with that strange nowhere/everywhere antiseptic feeling that every chain seems to embody in spades.

Nevertheless, if I’m looking to grab the best tasting soy latte I can get, I’ll definitely be stepping into a Starbucks and snagging one of those ubiquitous cup-and-sleeves that poke from every celebrity’s hand in the pages of Us magazine (talk about the best product placement ever). Starbucks is a great grab-and-go, but I never have the desire to stick around (though, in my neighborhood, many folks do).

So, this discrepancy or contradiction or nuance or whatever you want to call it, hit me a little harder when I came across a recent article from the Guardian UK, by University of Cambridge professor, Priyamvada Gopal. In it, she frames a critique of Starbucks latest recession-influenced strategy:

Starbucks' new stealth strategy sees it "rebranding", or de-branding, stores to give them different names and more local "community personality". A victim of its own success—161 branches within a five-mile radius in Central London and the famous promise to open a new one every fortnight— Starbucks has been hit by the recession and, in different ways, both by the turn to less expensive caffeine hits and a reawakening of interest in local economies. Even before the downturn, its legendary CEO, Howard Schultz, fretted about what he called the 'watering down of the Starbucks experience' and the loss of 'the soul of the past' in 'the warm feeling of the neighborhood store'.

Now, I just noticed this occurrence while cycling around town. A coffee shop that looks home grown, but is really a Starbucks. I actually find the move kind of heartening. I lived in Seattle’s coffee shop mecca neighborhood, Capitol Hill, during the early 1990s (before Starbucks was anything more than a local brand) and remember the diversity of the city’s coffee culture. Every café had its own vibe, including Starbucks. I can’t even name the amount of excellent bands I discovered, just by hanging out in different shops and drinking in their stereo systems. In one sense, this new “local flavor” move by Starbucks doesn’t just reflect their market research savvy about the public’s growing interest in local economies OR the company’s need to reduce costs (by forgoing those incurred from creating signage and stores that fit the corporately approved design schematics).

I believe it’s also a reflection of where our consumer culture is heading. Slow down and think about it for a second. The hallmark of everything that’s going on with social media – Twitter, blogs, online reviews, real-time feedback and, overall, increasing independence of thought among customers – speaks to a growing inability of large companies to exert control over their brands. And where branding became the business religion of the 1990s, now in the late 2000s the command-and-control enforcement of a company’s brand identity is becoming both a liability and an impossibility. In one sense, I see Starbucks as recognizing this environment and bravely letting go. Maybe next time I stop in for a grab-and-go latte, I’ll stick around, maybe even chat with staff that have not been hounded into being scary cheery Disneyesque baristas.

Professor Gopal, I suspect, doesn’t see it the same way. Here, she wonders:

The transformation of the quirky, the unique and the countercultural into mainstream commodity culture is not new, and Starbucks is hardly alone in enacting this relentless corporate logic… What can be done, and is it an issue? If every human desire, including a commitment to the distinctively local can be repackaged with such global panache, perhaps this is further evidence of the futility of resisting the gigantic enclosure that is corporate globalisation.

I don’t see the same futility. For one, I think it’s important to remember that most folks ARE mainstream. Whatever at any given time is quirky and countercultural is usually enjoyed solely by the quirky and the countercultural, always a minority of folks in any country. Not every business can make their cake off this audience alone. Mass appeal does count for something. Two, blunting the impact of corporate globalization may not necessarily be the binary action/reaction suggested by Gopal’s use of the word “resisting” above. What if blunting globalization’s negative impact is a matter of propagating an unruly coexistence, not unlike how Michael Pollan envisions our future food system as being one in which local organic farms enjoy an increasing share of the food market with large-scale agribusiness?

What I mean is, the public is not always as brainwashed as intellectuals may think. In a Web 2.0 world in which regular, mainstream consumers exhibit an astounding amount of agency, local businesses have enormous opportunities to tap into that agency by reaching out to customers and each other (through online social media, the formation of cooperatives, partnerships, collective promotions and homemade branding efforts). This means that local businesses can engage an audience and protect their business interests not simply because a mass of customers become inspired to RESIST corporate businesses (which involves straight-up repudiation and is very difficult), but because they’ve been inspired to JOIN great local businesses. In an environment with this kind of potential, Starbucks may simply become one successful business among many viable and frequented options for today’s caffeine seekers.

The Dubious Use of Social Media or Sacrificing Effectiveness for Control.

Since we’ve entered the brave new world of Web 2.0 and social media technology, companies have been falling all over themselves in a race to use these tools to further their interests. It’s only natural. Blogs and social networks happen to be where their potential customers are or, at the very least, where companies perceive those customers to be.

But What is Social Media All About?

Let’s keep in mind that the power of social media as applied to building brand loyalty and driving incremental sales still rests on some pillars that many companies find it difficult to embrace: those pillars being transparency, authenticity, and free-flowing dialogue.

When you take a trip through different sectors of the blogosphere, it doesn’t take too long to spot instances where companies are using bloggers and the social media space to continue age-old one-way marketing practices that push positivity, innocuousness and, above all, product. While companies may be pleased as punch at their ability to utilize new communications mediums to reach customers, it remains to be seen if these stealth top-down messaging strategies are really serving to deepen their relationships with consumers. Because, to deepen those relationships, a little depth tends to be a requirement.

One of my recent forays into the blogosphere proved educational. This blog had to do with bath product giveaways and an ostensible blogger review of Fraiche products.

If you take a look at the blog, there are several tip-offs that a company is behind the proceedings:

1. Lack of transparency: it’s hard to tell who is behind the blog. There’s no info, photo, or anything much about the blogger.

2. Lack of authenticity: Of course, the blog tells us that Fraiche products are just great and you should get them for yourself. That’s the message. Nothing about why they’re great, what they’re made of, why anyone should care, nothing. They’re just great. This is a tip-off. Why would anyone blog about something just to say wow, it’s great. Sure, there are polyannas out there, but more often than not it’s because they’ve been asked to do so, paid to do so, or they simply don’t exist and a company’s marketing communications department has set up the blog.

3. Lack of free-flowing dialogue: If you review the comments, they are all exceptionally short, positive, innocuous and, amazingly, push additional Fraiche products. Wow, what are the odds!? Everybody else thinks it’s just great, great, great. Gosh, I just love it when things are so great, don’t you? Sorry to be so flip, but this is another tip-off. These comments have been planted for the purpose of driving sales.

Some blogs don’t even try that much to hide their marketing intentions. This blog about financial products just pastes in marketing copy from online bank EverBank (I know it when I see it, I wrote copy for them some years ago).

Okay, okay. Of course, any company has the right to play around this way in the blogosphere. But, if Web 2.0 has taught us anything these past few years, it’s that people are sick of being passive consumers. They like products and gadgets and widgets, sure, but if they’re going to engage on these topics, they are looking for some depth, some dialogue, and some helpful perspectives. The rub about this for companies is that engaging customers in dialogue, as opposed to just trying to sell them something, takes a lot more time and necessitates giving up control of the “message”.

Some advice from the peanut gallery out here to companies.

If you want to be a part of the Web 2.0 world, start by listening. Find out what people are thinking about and talking about. Then look for ways to engage with them. Why not try asking questions instead of delivering messages? Why not be a part of the dialogue instead of the one who controls the dialogue? Hey, your legal department may hate it and your sales force may hate it, but if you want to build brand loyalty, you’ve got to put in a little work out here in the messy reality of a world where consumers have an increasing amount of agency and information.

As a final salvo, take a look at this blog about streaming video versus pirate downloads. If a company were listening to what this man is talking about, they could not only be a part of this dialogue, but also discover better ways to market their products to those pesky teenagers who are used to getting what they want for free. (or so we've been told).

Do you have examples of blogs or social media applications that help build brand loyalty through dialogue, transparency, and authentic voices? Please share!