Some in my circle are grumbling about Starbucks’ “Red”
campaign, which allocates five cents of certain beverage purchases to Aids
relief in Africa. They’re grousing that the Red program is at best a marketing
ploy, and at worst a cynical manipulation of the better instincts of Starbucks’
brand devotees.
They’re saying that a mere nickel for each cup sold represents so trivial a portion of Starbucks revenue as not to matter much. Others say they’d rather be responsible for their own giving decisions, and not be dragged unwillingly into a corporate giant’s exploitation of a dire situation for its own commercial gain.
I’m not buying either complaint. Millions of nickels scale
up pretty quickly. Since November 27, in fact, when the campaign began, Starbucks
customer nickels have furnished a million and a half doses of anti-retroviral
medicine, enough to supply nearly 4000 AIDS patients with a full year of
therapy each. And the campaign will continue on a greatly expanded scale throughout
2009 at least.
As for the ‘marketing ploy’ claim, isn’t it a no-brainer that powerful brands amplify their reach through the good will of their customer communities? That’s how it works in this age of social networks and word-of-mouth transmission. Leading brand maintain their leadership by embodying the values they share with their brand communities. Aren’t smart companies supposed to encourage this brand affinity? In Starbucks’ case, global social responsibility is a big deal, and one of the linchpins of the brand. The company is doing what it should do, given that understanding, to sustain its brand mojo.
But what really fascinates me here is the apparent shift in attitude among folks whom I know to be across-the-board early adopters in both life style and buying habits. These are people who not so long ago were praising Starbucks as a virtuous disrupter, a successful challenger to complacent market habits, not to mention a model of institutional social responsibility. Now, at least for them, Starbucks has faded into just another emblem of corporate opportunism, a Main Street mainstay.
If early adopters like these are jumping ship, this may be a trend worth watching. McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts are currently grabbing share from Starbucks. Does this mean that, for brand trend-setters at least, frequenting Starbucks is losing some of its luster as a personal values statement, and becoming more of a commodity buy, like its two main challengers?
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