Starbucks Corporation: Social Media Strategy for 2010

1. STARBUCKS CORPORATION “Our mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

2. The Business “Wake up & smell the coffee!” Starbucks is everywhere- As the world’s #1 specialty coffee retailer, Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee and coffehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. The outlets offer coffee drinks and food items, as well as roasted beans, coffee accessories, and teas. The Starbucks Corporation operates more than 8,800 of its shops which are located in about ten countries (mostly in the United States), while licenses and franchises operated more than 7,800 stores worldwide (primarily in shopping centers and airports). The company owns the Seattle’s Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia coffee brands as well. Additionally, Starbucks markets its coffee through grocery stores and licenses its brands for other food and beverage products. Starbucks Corporation currently operates in more than fifty countries! ,

3. A Little About Us “Expect more than coffee” As a company, Starbucks does not just purchase and roast high-quality whole bean coffee. The essence of what we do is much more than that. Our coffeehouses have become an inspiration for coffee lovers all over the globe. The overall service that Starbucks offers allows coffee drinkers to count on heartfelt service, an alluring environment and an extraordinary cup of well-roasted and richly brewed coffee each time they enter our coffeehouse. It is important that we are not just passionate coffee suppliers, but that we offer everything else that goes with a full and rewarding coffeehouse experience. We also offer a quality selection of Tazo teas, delicious treats and pastries as well as coffee accessories. We also believe the music you hear in store should be chosen for its artistic and natural appeal to compliment the atmosphere.

4. Challenges“Keeping our lead” Starbucks is a good example of a mature brand that needs a lift, and it must be very different, not the same old strategies used by everyone else. With competitors like McDonald’s McCafé, Dunkin’ Donuts, and now Subway on the horizon, Starbucks is feeling the pressure to keep it’s lead in market share. Lots of companies are searching for ways to capture the high-value young professional customers, the ones that spend are willing to pay four dollars for a cup of coffee, that indeed is a high-profit crowd. McDonald’s in particular is becoming increasingly more aggressive and drawing customers and spurring food sales. With all these well-financed rivals going after them from all sides, and with sales down due to recessionary forces, it is a serious issue to Starbucks, stock is down and quarterly profits are hurt. The Starbucks brand seems to be at war now with other well-known brands that want a piece of the action.

5. Goals“What we need to focus on” Here at Starbucks, we are committed to responsible business practices and managing the company in ways that earn the respect and trust from our customers, partners, and friends. We call this commitment Starbucks Shared Planet. Ethical Sourcing: We are putting an emphasis on developing positive, long-term relationships with our farmers all over the world that help ensure we are able to buy the high-quality coffee our customers expect from us. By 2015, we hope to guarantee that all of our coffee will be grown using ethical trading and responsible growing practices. Community Involvement: We believe in being involved in the communities that we’re apart of, from the neighborhoods where our stores are located to the ones where our coffee is grown. We hope to bring people together by stimulating and inspiring change and making a difference in people’s lives. By 2015, we plan to contribute one million volunteer hours each year to our communities. *Environmental Stewardship: Finally, we want to share our customers’ commitment to the environment. We strongly believe in the importance of caring for our planet and encouraging others to participate as well. We have set yet another goal for ourselves: by 2015, one hundred percent of our cups will be reusable. We will also work to improve upon energy and water conservation, recycling and green construction.

6. Our Theme“Starbucks is committed to a role of environmental leadership in all facets of our business.” Everyone talks about using social media to connect with their customers and fans and engaging in deeper relationships and conversations. When meetings are done and it’s time to put the work, time, and energy where the buzzwords are, few companies are doing it, and even fewer are doing it well. Although Starbucks already employs an essentially successful social media strategy, there are a few elements that we want to incorporate and focus on, that being the environmental stewardship goal.

7. Starbucks And The EnvironmentOur Strategy What we hope to accomplish as well as communicate to our customers, partners, and neighbors with the implementation of the environment into our strategy: Understanding of environmental issues and sharing information with our partners and customers Developing inventive and adaptable solutions to execute change. Motivated to buy, sell and use environmentally friendly products. Being aware that fiscal responsibility is essential to our environmental future. Gradually incorporating environmental responsibility as a corporate value. Measuring and monitoring our progress for each project. Encouraging all partners to share in our mission . We want to view social media not as a marketing ploy, but instead as a means of customer engagement where we can have real connections with customers, engage them in the brand, our commitments to environmental stewardship, and answer their questions.

8. Incorporating Our Goals Into The Social Media Strategy When it comes to environmental stewardship we want to increase awareness among our customers by incorporating the topic into discussion. Meaning, PR, PR, and more PR! Because Starbucks has already done a successful job with its current social media strategy, especially through YouTube videos, blogs, Facebook and twitter, it is important that we use this success to incorporate our theme, the environment. First, we plan to amp up YouTube by capturing the ways in which we practice environmental stewardship. We will broadcast videos of our commitment to Fair Trade practices, Cocoa practices, recycling etc. We feel the best way to educate our customers is to show them.

9. Key Components Next we plan to utilize the success of our current blog, “MyStarbucksIdea” by creating one specifically for the environment. We will encourage users to post their experiences and opinions about Starbucks environmental practices as well as their suggestions for what we can do better. This blog will be entitled, “OurSharedPlanet” and will be launched immediately. We will promote this via our Facebook and twitter updates and tweets. As the largest part of our strategy, we will be creating a Rewards Program that incorporates our “OurSharedPlanet” blog. Every user that posts their own story of how they participated in an environmental activity, will receive a discount on their coffee. To receive the coffee they will bring in their iPhone or blackberry with their post on screen. We hope this rewards program will encourage customers to participate in helping the environment through recycling, conserving energy, using Starbucks tumblers instead of paper cups, and many, many more! The most important aspect of this campaign is to cultivate meaningful relationships with our customers and encourage our faithful commitment to Starbucks Shared Planet.

10. Measuring Our Success When considering Social Media, return on investment is not measured in how many friends you have on Facebook or how many followers you have on Twitter. It's not calculated in trending topics or YouTube comments. The lone factor that really needs analyzing is, did it move your business? If we can move our business and improve on the aspects we are lacking, then our campaign was truly successful. However, there are also ways to conduct actual measurements in order to gauge and monitor our success, we will be looking for these general engagements among users accessing our Web site, blogs, YouTube videos, etc. Unique visitors Time spent on site Total time spent per user Frequency of visits Depth of visit Conversions We will be tracking a lot of these metrics on well known Web analytics tools like Google Analytics and Omniture.

11. TimelineBudgets, Data, and Allocation TIMELINE: We will launch the YouTube videos and the “OurSharedPlanet” blog immediately. We want to incorporate the Rewards Program with Earth Day, which is April 22, 2010. The program will not be launched on this day however, the promotions for it via Facebook, twitter and in-store will be begin on this day. We will begin the program (meaning, customers will be able to actively participate on May 1, 2010) ALLOCATION: We will be allocating more money to the Rewards Program more than any other aspect of our campaign. OurShared Planet will obviously see a decent sum of the allocation as well since this will be needed to promote the Rewards Program. Of the budget we have for traditional direct marketing, we will shift more than a fifth of this to our new social media strategy in hopes to create more meaningful and personal relationships with our customers.