We asked the question: how would you strengthen the Tully’s brand if you were their brand manager? Your responses were great; and confirm our thinking as well. Collectively, here’s our recommendations for strategies we think would help bring this brand out of its tailspin. Tully’s – are you listening?

Strategy #1: Get a point of view
It’s always a mistake to be the alternative, without a positive reason for choosing that alternative. The biggest problem with Tully’s is that they don’t have a point of view. Customers want to feel some authentic passion, whether for the 3rd place, for a particular approach to coffee, for a personalized experience, or whatever. Even before doing customer research, they need to figure out what their passion is, then figure out which customers want that.

When in doubt, nichify. That is, be the best at doing one thing for one type of customer. Then build out from there. Currently, it is difficult to know what Tully’s is best at. So it is a bland “Starbucks lite” even with Lavender drinks, ice cream or whatever wacky thing they’re doing this week.

Strategy #2: Organize for that point of view
Tully’s loses the opportunity to gain brand loyalty with customers because they don’t deliver a differentiated experience. After doing internal and customer research to find out why people choose Tully’s, what they do well, and what they can own over time in the market, they need to set themselves up to intentionally and consistently deliver that experience. Organizing themselves around their core assets will enable them to drive the brand through the organization – from determining what products to offer, what type of people they hire, how they structure their stores, to how they train and how they communicate what they do – strengthening their point of differentiation in the hearts and minds of their employees and customers alike. Tully’s should bring back the local coffee shop feel — comfy seats, bulletin boards, art, mellow hip music. Tully’s has a chance to be more friendly not tragically hip — something really missing in many coffee shops. They need to remove any similarities to Starbucks - similar sounding drinks, merchandising and store layout and create a place that speaks to being local and yet coffee sophisticated.

Strategy #3: Make sure employees support that point of view
People want their coffee to taste good and they prefer to have the face behind the counter to be a familiar one. The biggest problem with all of these larger coffee chains is that they have a difficult time retaining employees. A big reason for this is they don’t spend enough time on training–coffee training or customer service training. They throw new employees on the floor after only a few hours of training. This freaks new employees out, causing them to rush through orders, ultimately resulting in crappy coffee and a tenuous customer experience at best. Tully’s can differentiate itself from Starbucks and others by spending more time training its employees, so they feel confident they can deliver the brand experience Tully’s ultimately wants to deliver – differentiated and personal. Better training leads to better retention of employees and customers as well.

Strategy #4: Communicate that point of view
Talking about your products isn’t enough. Tully’s spends the bulk of their marketing dollars promoting their seasonal drinks without communicating the underlying reason you should go to Tully’s. Tully’s is not Starbucks. They don’t have a solid brand that defines what people can expect from them, so therefore, promoting their seasonal drinks isn’t enough to build brand loyalty. They need to use their brand to find their voice and develop a brand communications campaign to create positive visual associations with that voice. Their drinks may be part of this, but they certainly aren’t the whole of it. They need to be where Starbucks isn’t and creatively utilize local media and community events to reinforce their regional focus and create buzz at the ground level.

- Jen Travis