HFTB Marketing Blog

Launching a product through charitable contributions… yours, that is

I love Starbucks. I spend a considerable amount of time in Starbucks and I really like their products, people and company. But with their new Via instant coffee launch, my local Starbucks have been using a product launch strategy that I find a little hard to swallow.

Bad pun aside, Starbucks has placed a large donation box in many of their Southern California locations. With the recent California wildfires, the donations go to the brave men and women of the local fire departments.

A noble cause. I’m all for supporting our firefighters. I had friends and family directly affected by the fires, and needless to say, without these unbelievably brave individuals, many of them would have seen their homes go up in flames.

My problem is with the way Starbucks is “donating” to the firefighters.

As far as I can tell through conversations with a number of Starbucks employees, both Baristas and Managers, Starbucks doesn’t actually “donate” anything. Instead, they ask their customers to make a donation to the firefighters by purchasing one of a couple different Via products and putting it in the donation box (clearly marked and located right next to the registers). This seems a little odd to me.

Starbucks has created a donation program around a new product launch. But the company doesn’t actually donate anything. They ask their customers to make an incremental purchase and then donate it. Just so happens that the incremental purchase is of a product line that Starbucks is investing significant resources in publicizing.

The campaign seems extremely disingenuous to me. As someone who has donated to the Via program, I resent being asked to contribute to a cause Starbucks isn’t really contributing to itself and that looks to be focused on driving new product sales and awareness by creating a charitable giving image.

What might make more sense is if Starbucks matched the Via donations with either a cash contribution to the fire departments, or at least a matching gift of one of their products; Via or other coffee.

I have no problem if Starbucks has some skin in the game. But to ask your customers to buy your new product and donate it seems more than a little self-serving.

If you would like to support the firefighters, click over to the Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association. The association supports the families of firemen injured or killed in the line of duty. Straight donation… nothing to buy here.

If anyone has a different take on the promotion or some information about Starbucks contributions, if there are any, please comment and let me know. I’m more than willing to say I’m wrong if there is an aspect to the campaign I’m missing.

Image by rudolph schuba courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

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Marketing charitable, Marketing, promotion

Image by lepiaf.geo

I spend a lot of time in Starbucks. In between client meetings I tend to locate the nearest coffee shop to check email or catch up on other work.

One thing I notice in just about all Starbucks is the state of the condiment bars.

I don’t actually use the condiment bars, as I prefer a black cup of coffee to the multi-syllabic, linguistically confusing creations that have become the norm.

Who knew, by the way, that so many are lactose intolerant. Crazy.

Anyway, Irritable Bowel Syndrome aside, the point of the condiment bar observation has little to do with what you are, or aren’t, putting in your coffee. My issue is the way people leave the bar after they’ve used it.

As I see it, there are two types of people.

1.) Those who leave the bar as it was, or better, than when they arrived

2.) And those that contribute to what I would call, condiment bar entropy

Entropy is defined as “inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.”

Look, we all know that at some point the barrista will have to come over and clean the bar. Fair enough… that’s part of their job.

But how some people scatter cinnamon and Equal and half and half all over the bar and then just walk away, is totally beyond me.

What goes through these people’s minds? They just too busy? Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe they believe the $8 they spent on their tome-titled beverage entitles them to act like petulant children refusing to clean-up a spill.

As I see it, this is a real dividing line in society. It has parallels in the way people treat servers in restaurants, service people in hotels and manual laborers like janitors and housekeepers.

And quite frankly, you can tell a lot about someone by observing these types of behavior.

I know this is a social media and marketing blog, and I could go on and make a half-ass analogy (although I typically try to use my whole ass) about how the same type of people affect the new media marketing world. And there may be some validity in those comparisons.

But for now, just clean-up after yourself when you fix your coffee. Or maybe even, I don’t know, clean-up after those that don’t.

Might feel good to leave the bar a better place than you found it.

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New Marketing coffee shop, email, Marketing, Social Media, Starbucks

taking a breather

I hear this from companies all the time. Usually goes something like this.

“Blogging just isn’t right for our company. We’d like to avoid some of the negativity out there. We like a little more control over our brand image.”

Control. Silly concept, really. Do companies think they have more control over their brand image if they don’t engage their customers on the negative aspects of their products or services? Seems a bit like ostrich syndrome to me… head planted firmly in the sand.

So let’s look at the alternative. Let’s assume the same company that initially rejected blogging (or social media in general for that matter) decided to put themselves out there. They start a blog, publicize it and make an effort to add relevant content over time.

What are the effects on their brand image?

Well, assuming the company has a recognizable brand and they spend the time and effort necessary to build a successful blog, they enter the discussion.

This is the key point. The discussion already exists. The difference is the company is now a participant. And as a participant, the negativity, which existed all along, can 1.) be addressed in the short term, and 2.) be acted upon and remedied in the long term.

Chris Brogan had a great post about his experience visiting Humana corporate headquarters. The post is about Humana’s unique efforts to combat the reactive vs. proactive health insurance model. And although the post is interesting for content alone, one of the comment strings is what really drew my attention – and ties into the above, by the way.

One commenter had less than positive things to say about Humana’s services. And she said it – in no uncertain terms. Now Brogan’s post was unequivocally positive, so the comment came in stark contrast to the rest of the commentary.

Here’s where we come back to the “losing control” topic.

This is a perfect example of a company putting itself out there (even though the post is from Brogan’s blog, the folks at Humana knew what they were doing by inviting Chris to their headquarters – his blog is after all in the top 100). And things were going great until the fourth comment on the piece.

Perfect definition of losing control. Humana can’t simply edit the comment out of the string, and I’d be surprised if Brogan would be receptive to a call from the VP of Marketing asking for its removal. So what to do?

Why not respond?

And that’s exactly what Humana did. Professionally. Quickly. And with a real answer. Wow, an insurance company with a face. Sounds like a differentiator to me.

And I will admit that in the future I am more likely to consider Humana as a result.

So what’s to gain from losing control?

Customers… profits… and enhanced brand image to start.

image by Pedronet

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New Marketing, Social Media blogging, customer relationships, Marketing, New Marketing, new media strategy, Online marketing, Social Media, social media marketing

I attended the Taking Your Brand Online Webinar through BrightTalk this morning. David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan were the panelists and all had, as usual, interesting stuff to say.

image by Glenn.Batuyong

Of course there was the ubiquitous evangelism on the benefits of social media… blah, blah, blah.

But the really interesting portion of the webinar for me dealt with the question of whether or not all businesses should blog.

The unanimous answer, interestingly enough, was “no.”

To me, this is great stuff. Social media has a place. But there is always a tendency (or perhaps a law of physics) for the pendulum to swing too far in one direction. And with the rush to embrace social media for businesses, particularly small businesses, the question of whether or not a blog is needed is often not in the conversation. It is simply accepted.

Guy Kawasaki made the point that a home remodeler might not need to spend a portion of his day writing about his latest project when he is more concerned with making payroll in the next 30 days. I agree totally.

That’s not to say that the remodeler might not want to think about other ways to leverage social media (Twitter Search was Kawasaki’s recommendation). But at some point, business strategy needs to play a role in the conversation – hopefully, the starting point. Simply blogging because seemingly everyone else is doing it makes no sense.

So in sum, blogging is not a cure-all for what ails business marketing. It is most definitely a tool that can help – a great deal if done correctly. But tools should be used where they benefit strategic execution. And not simply because everyone else is using them.

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Marketing, New Marketing, Social Media blogging, Marketing, marketing communications, marketing efforts, New Marketing, Online marketing, Social Media, social media marketing

image by Joe Shlabotnik

Your price, whether you sell a product or service, is most likely based on the costs you pay to produce the product or deliver the service… plus your margin obviously. You have to make a margin, right?

But what goes into your margin? There may be more than you think. In fact, there is often a hidden component that instead of boosting your bottom line, may eventually cost you your entire sale.

Rohit Bhargava has an interesting post on his Influential Marketing blog about a related concept – making your price less expensive to your customers without reducing your monetary price. His point is that there are things we can do to make our services or products less expensive for customers (without reducing the actual monetary price they pay) through what I would term, business process improvements.

The idea makes a lot of sense. After all, we’ve all dealt with unresponsive sales people, poorly designed websites and less than helpful customer service departments. What do all these things have in common? They waste our time. They also make the product or service relatively more expensive.

It’s important to take a long look at the product or service you provide and ask yourself, “What can we do to make our customer interactions and relationships less expensive… for our customers?” I’m not talking about your price. Look more closely at the markup that isn’t seen in what you charge. The markup that includes waiting time, unanswered calls and delayed shipments, to name a few.

The worst part of this unseen markup is that no one gets the benefit. It simply evaporates without lending value to your customer or dollars to your bottom line.

But don’t be fooled. Customers will feel the markup. They may not think of it in terms of an added margin on your services. But they will notice unneeded conference calls, late deliverables and unfulfilled promises. The result, a wandering eye for other service providers that might not be quite as inefficient in managing their time as are you.

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Marketing customer relationships, Marketing, marketing communications, optimize websites, traditional marketing