Starbucks—I love you, you’re perfect, now change

By Eva

I’m not addicted to coffee. I don’t even like it. That bitter, caffeine-filled, poop-colored liquid is not a frequent visitor to my mouth. I’d much prefer a cool cup of Pinkberry, an iced-cold Triple-X Vitamin Water, or a Root Beer Float.

I’m not a fan of locally started, adult soft rock bands. I don’t even ever listen to them.

I don’t like Marble Pound Cake, or day-old chocolate brownies, or Madeline Cookies.

But that’s beside the point.

I love Starbucks not because of their products, but because I love the idea of the brand. I love how my happiness level soars every time I hear those two luscious syllables. I love the way the word sounds when it flies out of someone’s mouth and into my ears. I love picturing the nine letters that make up the word in my imagination—I picture the square-ish letters circling the company’s signature green and white logo, the mermaid with the wavy hair and the stars—and I’m at ease. I’m an atheist, but if I were to believe in a god, it would be Starbucks. Despite the majority of products and drinks they sell, I love everything about the brand.

I love their stores. I love the big, brown, velvet, “cozy” chairs (as my mom calls them).

I love the white cups, and the red ones that come out for the holidays (even if they are distributed WAY before the holidays)

I love living vicariously through the other customers I see at Starbucks—picturing myself as a successful businesses woman, a relaxed mother of two, a college student…

I love the costume Starbucks provoked me to dress up in for Halloween in 5^th grade (I was an Iced Tall Chai w/ Whip—check out this image to get an idea of my costume)

To me, Starbucks is a family. Starbucks understands me—it understands me because of my quirks. The Baristas (my mothers and fathers) always put up with my crazy orders.

I’m almost always welcomed when I go to Starbucks—I’m welcomed by my family.

There’s another blogger out there who agrees with me. He claims that after he stopped working as a Barista at Starbucks, he realized just how much he loved working there. Starbucks had become his family. He found himself in such a state of withdrawal that he decided to decorate his new apartment to mirror the inside of a Starbucks. He was only able to accomplish the music component of the store’s ambiance and set-up. But he thought about purchasing “comfy” chairs, about buying Starbucks’ industrial coffee maker. Unfortunately he couldn’t go that far in his Starbucks-makeover process, due to financial constraints. But the point is that he would have. Check out his Blog for more details.

The truth is that I would almost go so far as to turn my room into a Starbucks. But because we are an imperfect family, Starbucks and I have our fights. I do have my problems with the company. I detest both the company’s new ad campaign and the company’s mission statement.

Although I can attest to some of the phrases in the ads in Starbucks’ new campaign (such as “If your coffee isn’t perfect, we’ll make it over…”) I find myself disillusioned by the ads. I find that the presentation and visual setup of these new ads do not match up with my image of the brand. Take this ad:

I don’t picture a brown, burlap coffee sack—one that would be used on a farm in Latvia—when I picture Starbucks (if it’s not clear, the burlapy sack is the background in the above ad). Although Starbucks is down to earth, and does do some behind-the-scenes work in far away third-world countries, it’s a classy brand, and I’d prefer not to be reminded of its humitarian actions. It’s on Fifth Avenue. It caters to the elite. It serves Vanilla Bean Blended crèmes, Java Chip frappachinos®, red velvet cupcakes. How can a dusty, tan colored sack represent that classiness of Starbucks, of its upper-middle class clientele?

A couple of years ago, Starbucks came out with an ad campaign where their signature frappachino drink was pictured, sitting calmly on a park bench (I can’t find an online image of one of these ads—sorry). The background of these ads consisted of a summer day with a blue sky and tall green grass blades, rather then a burlap sack. This series of ads spoke to me. First of all, these ads put me in a good mood, confirming my hypothesis that I have positive connotations with the brand. Secondly, I was immediately drawn to the ad’s image because I love frappachinos®. I favor them over hot coffee. A frappachino® is a luxury, a cup of coffee is a basic need. Upper-middle class folks can afford luxuries.

So I haven’t lost all admiration for the company. Perhaps they simply made a mistake when hiring their latest advertising head, and I need to cut them some slack. Or maybe they were right on target with their new campaign. Perhaps the company is suffering because it only caters to the upper-middle class, and it needs to pull in an additional clientele. It’s possible that I’m so against the new ads because I see them as a threat to my exclusive relationship with Starbucks. The more kids there are in a family, the less attention there can be given to each child. If Starbucks draws in more customers, will they be able to give me as much undivided attention?

Another reason I’m against this new campaign is that it is entirely incongruous to the previous frappachino® campaign. Although projecting two utterly different messages could help the company draw in a wide clientele, it could very well rip the business apart. Customers could point a finger at Starbucks for trying to be too many different things. If customers became angry, then Starbucks could lose patrons, and presumably go out of business. Because I’m so entirely attached to Starbucks, the death of Starbucks could be the death of me.

Tying in well to these fears of mine are the implications of Starbucks’ mission statement. Taken from their website, it reads:

“Starbucks has an unusually human approach to business. We always figured that putting people before products just made good common sense. Our relationships with farmers yield the highest quality coffees. The connections we make in communities create a loyal following. Our ability to accomplish what we set out to do is based primarily on the people we hire - we call each other "partners." We are always focused on our people.”

The kind of relationships Starbucks claims to have established—good relationships with farmers and other lower-class citizens—are not at all the kind of connections I envision the company making. In my mind, “Starbucks’s people,”(the people Starbucks caters to and connects with) includes exclusively those of the upper-middle class. In Starbucks’ opinion, to be a “Starbucks person” is all encompassing—it is not to be part of an exclusive elite, but to be a person of the world – any person. As I begin to understand their definition, I’m taken over by my attention-sharing fear. It is hard to share something that has given you so much, something you have loved so dearly.

Starbucks has made a connection with me—it has become my family. But this relationship I’ve formed was in no way influenced by Starbuck’s written “mission,” or their whole fair-trade, we-do-good in the world ad campaign. I think Starbucks should ditch the whole we do community service and have fantastic relationships with our coffee partners part of their philosophy. I realize that this is a selfish suggestion, but I feel that if their current mission is not altered, I could lose some of the undivided attention Starbucks spoils me with.

Nevertheless, no matter what ads they paste around the city or however many new followers they pick up or whatever bull shit they spell out in their mission statement, I will always love Starbucks. Because of all the positive connotations I have with the name and the fact that it has become my family, Starbucks will always have a place deep in my heart.