Integrated Brand » 2009

The Starbucks Identity Crisis
July 29th, 2009

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Starbucks has built its brand on its ability to deliver a consistent customer experience. When you ask someone what they love about Starbucks, it’s always the same answer—“I know what to expect.”

Why then would a company with such a recognized brand promise veer away from the very thing customers value?

With its recent decision to open “locally-branded” coffee shops, Starbucks has completely abandoned its brand (and received much public criticism for the move). Aside from the fact that the new stores will not be named “Starbucks,” they bear almost no resemblance to the brand experience we’re all used to. Instead, they’ve taken on a Bohemian coffee-shop look and feel, adding alcohol to the menu and showcasing local artists from musicians to poets. To me, the move seems very off-brand and inauthentic—especially when you hear stories that Starbucks sent its employees to neighboring coffee hangouts, like Victrola, to jot down ideas and thoughts in notebooks labeled “observations.”

What are your thoughts on Starbucks’s new strategy? Do you agree with Adam Hanft of Fast Company (and me) that this is a poor and off-brand decision? Or do you, like John Moore of Brand Autopsy, believe it’s a brilliant learning opportunity to help Starbucks put its brand back on track?

-Hiley Spaet

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Watch Briana’s Webcast Live!
July 15th, 2009

Visit this page tomorrow at 3:00 PM to watch Briana’s webcast, Your brand booster: how to leverage every customer experience, live!

A Social Media Framework for B2B Product Managers and Marketers

A Social Media Framework for B2B Product Managers and Marketers
July 13th, 2009

Check out the presentation below on how B2B product managers and marketers should leverage social media. Our very own Jen Travis, vice president of online brand experience, was a panelist on this webinar!

View more presentations from Dan Sears.

Avoiding the Commodity Trap
July 8th, 2009

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I met someone at a networking event who told me that branding couldn’t help him, because he was in a commodity market. In my belief system, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I said in my book, The Reluctant Entrepreneur, “If they can brand water, or salt, (and they have!) any company can find its unique approach, role in the market, or other secret sauce and build it into a competitive differentiation, even in markets where there are many people who buy on price.”

It just takes creativity, like CCS Printing, positioning itself as the guide to lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) printing, offering workshops, and using an Indiana Jones-like fedora image to demonstrate their consultative approach to ink on paper. Like Silver Cup Coffee, packaging their retail experience into products and services that take their coffee beans out of the commodity world. Like Ethos water that turns hydration into an act of philanthropy.

If you think you’re in a commodity market, I challenge you to question that assumption. Why do people buy from you, above and beyond your product and price? And even if they buy on price, why would your prospect choose you to supply the product?

-Lynn Parker