What?!? Starbucks Doesn’t Have a Marketing Department??

Toronto – Canada

The paper cup, the cardboard sleeve, and the mermaid symbol on the front. Depending where you are, these are probably some of the most ubiquitous symbols you see during the morning commute to work. Bring up Starbucks around a group of highly opinionated people and you are bound to come up with some interesting perspectives on how Starbucks is viewed. Is it authentic? Not authentic enough? Intimidating? Corporate?

Love it or hate it, one thing is clear, Starbucks has been a successful business for decades, and is poised to continue its run, but did you know that its success was built without a serious marketing department?

Starbucks has enjoyed very consistent year on year growth, and has been able to aggressively expand its stores and other distribution outlets. Even the recession didn’t stop the coffee house from posting profits, CEO Howard Schultz boasted that they had found a recession proof product. At one point Starbucks was opening 3 stores a day! All of this was achieved without heavy investing in advertising or marketing, the focus was on the customer and the coffee “experience”. Sadly for us the best organizations often claim they don’t need marketing…or do they?

After Starbucks become so ubiquitous it was in danger of falling victim to its own success. With an expanded customer base came varying demand and different expectations. Starbucks now had a range of new customers outside of their traditional core consumer, which forced them to accomodate and meet new consumer needs.

Whereas “traditional regulars” wanted to stay and linger, new customers rushed in-and-out without buying into the “experience”. This was the symptom of a larger problem that Starbucks discovered, people had very different opinions about the brand, this resulted in skewed expectations for new customers.

Now…cue the marketing department. Despite Starbucks having built a very strong brand awareness they hadn’t built strong brand cohesion. It is from here that Starbucks decided to roll out their first mass marketing campaigns informing consumers about the specific value proposition of Starbucks. This campaign largely centred around a core message of the “coffee experience”, price justification, de-bunking common myths, and informing the consumer. Check out the video for more:

Does this video make you look at Starbucks differently, did they tell you something that you didn’t know, and do you feel as though it was authentic? After doing some digging I found that there are a lot of positive initiatives that Starbucks undertakes and I wouldn’t have known about if it wasn’t for this type of campaign.

So even though there was no marketing department during the boom years, now that Starbucks has reached a new phase of its business development, which is maintaining growth and profitability of existing stores, it needs to consolidate its brand image and push a coherent message to its customers. Marketing is now a serious component of Starbucks’ corporate makeup- looks like that marketing degree might come in handy after all.