By B.L. Ochman
What does it take to damage a brand with a hate campaign? That depends on whether the brand is listening, reacting in real-time, and has a community of its own in social media.
While fear of “the haters” damaging the brand is probably the Number One factor keeping many companies out of social media, it’s the companies that are involved in social media that are most likely to survive a brand attack.
As Starbucks has demonstrated in the past week, the reasonable majority of the online community recognizes brand hijackers and calms, or simply ignores, a brewing storm.
Pro-union counterpunch
In an effort to stave off competition and re-gain ground lost in the downturn, Starbucks recently touted its coffee and its corporate values in a multi-million dollar, multi-media campaign. The launch, including a Twitter contest, was quickly met with a Stop Starbucks campaign claiming that the coffee giant is anti-union, among other things. While several blogs reported that rebels hijacked Starbucks campaign, that doesn’t seem to be the end effect.
Stop Starbucks video accusing the company of harassing workers who want to unionize has 59,000 views on YouTube as of today and a Stop Starbucks‘ petition to Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz had amassed 14,589 signatures.
Starbucks walks the social media walk
Starbucks has 195,509 followers on Twitter. Stop Starbucks has 344. Since the Stop Starbucks campaign started they’ve gained barely 300 followers on Twitter. In the same time period Starbucks added more than nearly 10,000.
Today Starbucks even has a social media director, and a vast community who love Starbuck’s famous burnt bean coffee. In the past week, the majority of Starbucks social media followers defended the company or simply ignored the critics. “There will always be disgruntled ex-employees who criticize any company,” was an oft-expressed opinion.
Matthew Guiste, who manages social media for Starbucks, told me in email that Stop Starbucks didn’t elicit much interest from the My Starbucks community, where members are invited to contribute and vote on suggestions for Starbucks.
“Allow your workers to unionize” was the title of a post in My Starbucks community, where each vote for an idea nets 10 points. As of today, the post has only gotten 40 points and 8 comments.
By contrast, an idea about Dark Chocolate beverages got 5040 points and 38 comments. And one about the size of lids on cups got 40 points.
Coffee drinkers luke-warm to critics
Guiste said the company hadn’t spent much time responding to Stop Starbucks because their campaign didn’t gain much traction from Starbucks Twitter, Facebook, or MyStarbucks community. The response the company did give is replete with what sounds like a lot of old-fashioned corporate-speak.
Starbucks’ new ad campaign included a Twitter contest, challenging followers to seek out Starbucks posters in six major cities and be the first to post a camera phone photo of one via Twitpic, using the hashtags #top3percent and #starbucks.
Within hours, there were dozens of Twitpics in front of stores across the country. And followers of Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films used the same tags to post photos of themselves holding anti-Starbucks messages. According to Guiste, despite reports of a Twitter ‘hijacking” there were only nine entries about Stop Starbucks and those had about 75 views each. Starbucks is mentioned on Twitter about 10 times per minute on an average weekday, so those nine entries were about one minute’s worth of notice, Guiste claimed.
“The bottom line for us: We’re the first to admit that we don’t control the conversation about Starbucks. The bad news for this campaign is neither do they. Ultimately the community decides and we believe that’s a beautiful thing,” he wrote.
The companies most often damaged by criticism are the ones – like Domino’s and Amazon – who don’t monitor their brand in social media and respond to issues in a timely manner. The bottom line remains the same though: criticism often means change is needed, and smart companies listen. Ask Dell. Or Kryptonite.
Starbucks online presence has come a long way
Starbucks has come a long way since 2004, when it missed an obvious online opportunity for customer interaction, to 2005 when it was firing employees for blogging, to its 2007 toe-in-the-water Expedition for Change to the March, 2008 launch of the crowdsourcing My Starbucks Idea community, where more than 70,000 ideas have been submitted since its launch.
Starbucks has been facing a variety of problems, and Stop Starbucks is far from the biggest one: McDonald’s coffee recently won a Consumer Reports taste test, which recommended “Try McDonald’s, which was cheapest and best, or make your own coffee–just call it something special.”
Starbucks has closed more than 600 stores and laid off many employees. Not only that: McDonald’s is poised to open 1,000 coffee bars in Europe, and the US would presumably be next. A Big Research study shows Starbucks coffee is still Number One with consumers, with McDonald’s an ever-closer second.
Having an established online community allows instant assessment and engagement. And those two things saved Starbucks neck in the past week.
B.L.,
This is a great case study! You’ve filled it with so many historical links. This underlines the importance of building community and having a community manager/social media person interacting with consumers.
And it also speaks to the importance of brand monitoring. It’s really cheap insurance (and a necessity for every brand).
Connie
Chief Community Officer, Techrigy
@cbensen
You neglected to mention that Starbucks had to cancel their promotion.
No matter how much you can commend the clean-up in the aftermath, that much cannot be viewed as anything short of a planning and foresight failure on their behalf.
I too had StopStarbucks following me on twitter a few days back and to be honest I didn’t happen to read too much about what it had to offer.
Starbucks in undoubtedly one of the most social brands that there are and this is helping them and will continue to help them if they run into a situation again.
I’d like to know more about how StarBucks does it online reputation monitoring, any pointers ?
Thanks
Great post. I like that Starbucks is using real world, tangible metrics, like YouTube views and Twitter followers to make sensible assessments about public reactions in social media. They may also be using more esoteric measurements but in this post the examples cited gave them enough information to respond accordingly. The key, as BL said, is to make sure you’re already in the mix and familiar with your resources so when a challenge presents itself you are best prepared to respond.
B.L.,
Great overview and thanks for the historical reference points. I think that you hit the mark in that brands that don’t participate in community building & social media monitoring will have a more difficult time the longer they wait to engage and practice.
As you eluded, it is much easier when you have a community of thousands to help defend the brand especially when there is a serious wildfire to put out. I would submit that in times of crisis your community if fostered could lend a significant helping hand if the brand remains transparent and reaches out.
Hats of to Starbucks for leading their tribe.
@greg
I manage the Starbucks Twitter account. We did not cancel the promotion. It was a one day contest and by the end of the day we had 5 winners to mail prizes to. I’m not sure where the idea came that we ‘canceled the promotion,’ but it simply isn’t true.
cheers,
brad nelson
It’s impressive to see how Starbucks is aware of the fact that no one controls conversation. By admitting it, the brand approaches Social Media with a different spirit: it will listen and try to change things only by intercating, knowing what really matters: the social capital.
Take a look at the statements in the post: what helped Statbucks decide when and how to react to threats? The social capital assesment: how many followers are moving? What mass of reactions are their actions generating?
By measurig what Tara Hunt would define the “whuffie” of people who take part to the conversation, Starbucks has decided the type of action to develop.
This focuses investments and avoids giving too much attention to topics or people who aren’t really interesting for the brand’s community.
It takes a wise, mature company to know how to deal with brand attacks. It looks as though Starbucks is becoming such a company.
This was a good case study, well-thought out, supported, and delivered.
Great story with lots of insights. And I find it interesting that, even within the comments here, Brad Nelson’s quick response demonstrates how tuned-in Starbucks is to the social media world. Do I KNOW for a fact the promo wasn’t canceled? No. But I’m more inclined to believe a direct statement from a credible source than something that sounds like third-hand hearsay.
My guess is that the main purpose of the Stop Starbucks campaign was to highlight the fact that while touting to be a progressive company, Ed Schultz and Starbucks is anti union and anti EFCA. To that end, they were successful. They have been all over the blogs, last week even the LA Times wrote an article about it. I bet all the blog activity on Stop Starbucks including this very post has ensured that Howard Schultz and at least half their management team has taken notice. To that end, whether or not you agree with the Stop Starbucks campaign, one thing is for sure, they were successful in getting their message out effectively.
I find this article interesting and funny at the same time. Starbucks defends its brand with millions of PR dollars, and I am sure the folks at the Stopstarbucks campaign did so with very few and yet they represent a legitimate threat to the brand. It comes to show you that Starbucks is vulneralble and the brand is as well because no matter how much you put into the progressive banner, the reality is that they can still get legitimately attacked for unfair labor practices.
I completely agree with the above… You can not compare the crisis management activities of a multinational with the pressure group activities of a union. If this shows something then it shows that groups of individuals can have a certain amount of “share of voice” the same way well oiled PR departments can have. I like what you do BL but this “comparison” doesn’t do it for me. The J&J contra Red Cross case is to my knowlwdge a better one to show that you need to be engaged online in order to have get the benefit of the doubt by the online community.
This is exactly the case. And they are smart to do it. This article about Starbucks and their social media machine was kind of interesting: http://www.aircheese.com/article/intpulse-traps-how-starbucks-got-the-message
Hi Philippe! I think you miss the point here. I’m not making a comparison, I’m reporting on a story.
To your point: remember the Kryptonite Lock debacle? A teenage kid demonstrated how he could open the lock with a ballpoint pen. It did terrific damage to the brand when the video went viral. A group of individuals, and even one person, can indeed impact a huge brand. We all have the tools to make ourselves heard on the Internet. If what we stand for resonates, people listen.
And the impact could be huge if the company doesn’t have an established online presence. Starbucks has tens of thousands of loyal online fans. Had Starbucks not had a strong presence, the union might have been able to gain more traction.
The union apparently wasn’t of huge interest to the Starbucks social network. They clearly care more about having a new chocolate drink added to the menu.
Intersesting, I found the exact opposite of your study Ummmmmmmmmmm
this is what is being said about starbucks, just in the last hour:
http://www.oneriot.com/search/r?q=starbucks+anti+union&format=html&ssrc=browserBox&spid=86f2f5da-3b24-4a87-bbb3-1ad47525359d&p=twitterbar-ff/2.2
if you are a paid poster you are doing a bang up job. Perception is everything
a) I am not paid for posts on this blog unless they are clearly labeled “Sponsored Post”
b) if you read the post again, you’ll see that it says it did not impact on the MyStarbucks member community. There was coverage of the pro-union video in blogs and MSM, and I noted that.
I am sure the folks at the Stopstarbucks campaign did so with very few and yet they represent a legitimate threat to the brand. It comes to show you that Starbucks is vulneralble and the brand is as well because no matter how much you put into the progressive banner, the reality is that they can still get legitimately attacked for unfair labor practices.
At least Starbucks got a lot of publicity and that is a good thing.
a) I am not paid for posts on this blog unless they are clearly labeled “Sponsored Post”
b) if you read the post again, you’ll see that it says it did not impact on the MyStarbucks member community. There was coverage of the pro-union video in blogs and MSM, and I noted that.