Starbucks offers valuable business lessons
Other than coffee, the company's unique and authentic corporate culture may be its greatest asset.
BY RICHARD PACHTER
rap@WordsOnWords.com
Tribal Knowledge: Business Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture. John Moore. Kaplan. 264 pages. $22.95.
Branding is essential but ill-understood. Managers mumble mantras to their minions about the importance of maintaining the integrity of their brand while consciously or inadvertently sabotaging their efforts. The jumbled semiotics of bad branding undermines the performance of everyone in an organization, from the CEO in his plush suite to the people who interact with customers in the field.
But when it works, branding's power is like a fiery furnace.
I'm not a fan of Starbucks' coffee; tastes burned to me. But the company's identity is so strong that studying it is a worthwhile endeavor. John Moore worked with them -- and later Whole Foods -- in their marketing department and his book examines how a cup of coffee fueled the growth of a multibillion-dollar international industry and, more importantly, how Starbucks' methods could be useful in other enterprises.
His premise is that there is a culture surrounding the company, and by tending to it and expanding upon it, customers' expectations are met -- even the ones they didn't know they had. By making the experience consistent, which can include surprises by the way, customers know what to expect. This is not new, in and of itself; the success of McDonald's and Burger King is predicated on predictability.
But the difference between Starbucks and fast food joints is that the totality of the experience is more upscale, of course, and positive. That is its brand: providing a respite from the world's hustle and bustle. This environment becomes conducive to non-coffee purchases such as pastries, candies and even music CDs by compatible artists.
According to Moore, it's for this reason the company places the greatest emphasis in developing its people, as their attitude and performance define the customer experience and the brand. You or I may not aspire to a position as a coffee jockey (excuse me, barista) at Starbucks, but for young people gravitating toward food service jobs as their entrée to the workplace, it's probably more attractive than serving deep-fried products. And as baristas develop special rapport and relationships with their clientele, these caffeine carriers also establish tight ties with coffee drinkers, or so I've been told.
Moore is an effective and mostly unquestioning advocate for the Starbucks' style of marketing and management; it's clear that he drank the Kool-Aid -- or the Frappuccino -- and presents little or no criticism of the coffee company's methods. I'll choose to believe that he is sincere, but remain skeptical because nothing is perfect, especially perfection.
So what can you glean from his observations? The biggest lesson, I think, is that authenticity is where it's at. You can create an honest, open and attractive business by treating your stakeholders well, but if your products and services are not reflected in the parallel narrative that you're trying to convey, all efforts are doomed. That's the most salient takeaway from this book.
As is au courant, Moore has a blog (http://brandautopsy.typepad.com) that expands and supports his ideas well beyond the world of Starbucks.
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