Is Starbucks ‘reaching’ or just reaching out.

Starbucks is like Apple in many ways. It has a loyal – some would say fanatical – following, it sells a premium product and it differentiates itself on the experience around the product, rather than simply on the specific features/benefits of the product itself.

Apple however, seems to be flourishing (relatively speaking) during these tough economic times whereas Starbucks is searching to find it’s soul (and bottom line) and to remind everyone that there is still something very special about the Sbux experience.

Howard Shultz CEO of Starbucks is seen above in this video posted to the Starbucks YouTube channel. Although the stated audience for this video are the Starbucks ‘partners’ (employees) it is clear that the intent is to announce to the world that Starbucks is reaching out to all of its constituents – customers, prospects, influencers and employees to tell them that something ‘important’ is going on. (Hint – it’s really just a marketing campaign)

Starbucks is supporting a major marketing and advertising program (very unusual for Starbucks) through a number of social media activities such as YouTube video contests and ‘alerting’ twitter followers to watch out for the new campaign. Clearly you have to be a zealot to want to be notified of any one’s new marketing campaign.

The style of the video – honest, comfortable and personal is good – it supports the overall brand image and hints at something important going on. Just the same, after watching the video I can’t help but conclude – so what? I visit Starbucks mostly for off site meetings, the $4 coffee is just the cost of renting the furniture for a half an hour. Starbucks is not a movement or way of life for me no matter how hard they try to make it so.

I acknowledge that selling $4 coffee is tough during tough times. Interestingly one of the employee/partners ( all seemingly mandated to wear black )  mentions in the video that they do indeed offer alternatives to the $4 coffee.  Starbucks cannot and will not be able to compete on price with anyone so I’m not sure mentioning this does them a lot of good.

I think the short term attention will improve their outlook for a time but I can’t help but think this is more than reaching out – it’s almost a cry for help to all the fanboys and girls out there to keep the faith and help to keep the Starbucks experience alive.