I have and they're eating Starbuck's lunch. Now, aside from the "Doing Things is What I Like to Do" commercial that it'll take a jackhammer to uproot from my noggin, there's this one:
This is exactly what I've been thinking when I've had to go to Starbucks: "What the hell language is this and why are the barristas so insistent that I use it when all I want is a small cup of tea?" I laughed like a goon!
Howard Schultz has returned as Barista in Chief six weeks ago. First thing on the menu? Staff reductions. This from Howard (emphasis added):
Dear Partners,
Since I returned as ceo six weeks ago, we have experienced a lot of change in a very short period…with our renewed focus on the customer experience and the return to our core—all things coffee--as evidenced by our decision to discontinue warmed breakfast sandwiches in U.S. stores by the end of Fiscal ’08; unprecedented Art of Espresso three-hour training for U.S. store partners on February 26; free Wi-Fi for partners and customers beginning in the Spring, and more to come. I hope you view these changes as positively as I do. Together, we have created a blueprint to transform the company, and I sincerely appreciate all that you have done and will continue to do every day on behalf of Starbucks.
I pledged to communicate with you about our efforts to improve the current state of our U.S. Business, reignite the emotional attachment with our customers and make foundational changes to our business; and I have done so in six previous emails. However, this is my most difficult communication to date.
As I have mentioned in previous communications, in order to reinvigorate our company we must continually analyze and review every part of our company operations. This rigorous look at our business will ensure that we are managing and optimizing our resources as effectively as we can in order to improve the Starbucks Experience.
We realize that we are operating in an intensely challenging environment, one in which our customers and partners have extremely high expectations of Starbucks. And we have to step up to the challenge of being strategic as well as nimble as our business evolves. Unfortunately, we have not been organized in a manner that allows us to have a laser focus on the customer.
Over the last several weeks, we conducted a thorough organizational analysis, which was, at times, very emotional and extremely stressful. But as I sit at my desk and think about my responsibility to over 170,000 partners and their families who rely on me and others to preserve and enhance our company, I know that I am responsible for ensuring the success of the company for the long term, which means that difficult decisions must be made. Personally, I continue to struggle with the outcome, because I realize how painful it will be for some partners.As the result of our review, which was done with great thoughtfulness and respect for everyone concerned, organizational changes have been made. These changes will restructure the company, but they will also result in a decrease of both the number of positions and partners by approximately 600. This total includes the elimination of existing positions and open headcount, as well as the reduction of our current workforce. Within this context, approximately 220 partners have separated from the company. Nearly all were U.S. partners serving in non-retail support roles. We are thankful and proud of the contributions our departing partners have made, and we are committed to treating them with respect and dignity.
Today, we are announcing the following modifications to our organizational structure that are designed to strengthen our focus on the customer in our U.S. field operations, and centralize and/or consolidate many of our support functions to drive functional excellence and reduce redundancies:
U.S. Field Operations
Effective Monday, February 25, the U.S. field organization will begin transitioning from two divisions to four, with full implementation completed by March 24. The new divisions are: Western/Pacific, Northwest/Mountain, Southeast/Plains and Northeast/Atlantic.Not only will this organizational structure create more capacity for our field teams, it will enable the company to align our leaders closer to our customers and partners. This will ensure a stronger level of support in partner development, coaching and accountability in the field. Establishing a customer-centric field support structure in the U.S. Business enables our field teams to focus on our partners, customers and our coffee.
Each division will be led by a senior vice president, reporting directly to the U.S. president. Within each division, partners supporting Store Development, Marketing, Partner Resources and Finance will report directly to their respective functions while still being accountable for results at the divisional level. These teams are being centralized to create an infrastructure with global span, capability and effectiveness. Senior leaders in the U.S. Business will provide specifics in their individual team Town Hall meetings that will be held later today.
Support Functions
The reorganizations of Starbucks support functions are designed to consolidate functional activities into teams that have a shared vision and goals to support the business.The following support functions are being reorganized and/or consolidated:
• U.S. Store Development
• U.S. Licensed Stores
• U.S. Finance
• Partner Resources
• Marketing
• In-Store Experience
• Global Supply Chain
• Global Communications
• Partner & Asset ProtectionAs a result of these organizational changes, some partners may have new roles or new managers. Senior leaders in these areas will provide specifics to partners in their individual team Town Hall meetings that will be held later today.
Partner Care and Support
As I said earlier in this communication, while these decisions were necessary to move our business forward, I fully recognize the personal and professional impacts these actions have on individual partners, and we are committed to making the transitions as smooth as possible.Once again, I would like to thank all of our dedicated and passionate partners for their numerous contributions to the company.
Onward,
Howard
Bad news for Starbucks partners who served the company well during it's mindless growth phase. Good news for Schultz:
Scientists Create Coffee-Making Robot - Scientists in Italy this week unveiled a robot barista named Justine. She's part of a European project to develop robots that can use two arms together.
Maybe he can get rid of those pesky barista's altogether.
Now, I'm not sure how this impacts Starbucks' immediate issue--Consumer Reports found that a cup of brew at McDonald's is preferred to a cuppa joe at the Bucks.
Yup, Daimler just introduced a new soundmark with which to associate their brand luxury of horseless carriages. A gentle nudge to remind us that our brands are so much more than what can be printed. (listen for the soundmark at the very end of the ad)
Blogged with Flock
In the 20 some odd years that the BG posse over in Redmond have been creating new products, they've finally done it: left us completely bewildered by their product icons. Aside from the usual suspects (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Frontpage), I've gotten good at guessing, which is the only reason I scored so well (trust me: I still don't know what Groove is). Take this quiz and see how you do (so far the average score is 58% with 327 responding).
Here's an excerpt:
"Ask anyone at Anthropologie who that customer is, and they can rattle off a demographic profile: 30 to 45 years old, college or post-graduate education, married with kids or in a committed relationship, professional or ex-professional, annual household income of $150,000 to $200,000. But those dry matters of fact don't suffice to flesh out the living, breathing woman most Anthropologists call "our friend." Senk, 46, says, "I like to describe her in psychographic terms. She's well-read and well-traveled. She is very aware -- she gets our references, whether it's to a town in Europe or to a book or a movie. She's urban minded. She's into cooking, gardening, and wine. She has a natural curiosity about the world. She's relatively fit."
"While most retailers today are obsessed with the highly lucrative and populous "tween" (preteen and young teen) and boomer markets, Anthropologie has cultivated an understanding of and connection to the ultimate tweener: the thirtysomething sophisticate, once known as a Gen-Xer, who has carried her mildly rebellious, against-the-grain independence into a serious career and family life. She's defined less by static qualities and more by a set of dynamic tensions. If the tween anthem is Britney Spears's "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," the Anthropologie customer's plaint is more Alanis Morissette: "I've got one hand in my pocket, and the other one is giving the peace sign." Translation: "I can't pick up my children or sit through a meeting in low-rise jeans, but I'm not nearly ready for an elastic waistband."
"The Anthropologie customer is affluent but not materialistic. She's focused on building a nest but hankers for exotic travel. (She can picture herself roughing it with a backpack and Eurail pass -- as long as there is a massage and room service at end of the trek.) She'd like to be a domestic goddess but has no problem cutting corners (she prefers the luscious excess of British cooking sensation Nigella Lawson to the measured perfection of Martha Stewart). She's in tune with trends, but she's a confident individualist when it comes to style. She lives in the suburbs but would never consider herself a suburbanite. (This is where Senk's kinship to his customer is most apparent. He had lived in cities all over the world -- London, San Francisco, New York, and Philadelphia -- before settling in an elegant turn-of-the-century house in the Philadelphia garden suburb of Chestnut Hill with his partner, Anthropologie antiques buyer Keith Johnson. Says Senk: "We're city people -- we'd never dreamed of moving to the suburbs. But Chestnut Hill is sophisticated. It's like
a suburb in the city.")
"The Anthropologie woman is not so much conflicted as she is resistant to categorization. Her identity is a tangle of connections to activities, places, interests, values, and aspirations. She's not married with two kids: She's a yoga-practicing filmmaker with an organic garden, a collection of antique musical instruments, and an abiding interest in Chinese culture (plus a husband and two kids). It's no coincidence that Julia Roberts is the celebrity avatar of Anthropologie. Not only is she a frequent shopper (along with many of Hollywood's strongest-minded women, including Susan Sarandon, Sharon Stone, and Madonna), but her bohemian-chic wardrobe in The Mexican was Anthropologie sourced."
Big drinker that I am (Garland cuts me of the java, because he thinks it goes to my noggin), I read an article about international focus group strategy used by the Jack Daniels distillery to expand its brand and it left me a little troubled.
It assumes that the German, Australian, Japanese and British people studied are one monolithic "culture." Even Britain, made up of several distinct indigenous people (Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, and peoples from the outlying islands) with a host of immigrants (one in five children born in Britain are born to foreign-born mothers. Even in the IPS school system here in Indy, there are over 130 languages spoken in the children's homes (not just English and Spanish!).
Exactly what "culture" were they talking about in this article?
As I travel (5 countries on 5 continents so far), I'm struck by how difficult it is to categorize the people I found. How, exactly could a focus group leader do it?
Of critical importance would be a keen understanding of their home cultures as well as of those of the brand's home country. The article talked about studying their body language and facial movements. I did my graduate work in psychology the first time through and I can tell you that no psychological scientist worth a sprinkle of table salt would assert that they could "read" faces and body language effectively, particularly from those of other cultures and ethnicities.
I remember a college psych class I took. Subjects were to look at pictures of faces and guess what emotion it represented. They did fairly well "reading" the faces of members of their own racial/ethnic/gender group, but didn't fare so well when the face looked different than the ones usually at their kitchen table.
Having a translator who could handle the language is one thing: Having one with a keen understanding of a variety of cultures and of marketing is quite another.
I've been quiet for a while.
Here's the scoop. Everybody's finally fine. Garland just finished his three month treadmill test and his cardiologist is very pleased. He had a little angina (still has some blockages), but his doc said that everything is moving the right direction. Dad came out the other side of his septic pneumonia (a deadly form) looking better and feeling better than he had in years (only Dad could take a running slide toward the Abyss and come out healthier). He's continuing his rehab at a local gym and is strong and quite...well, alive! He went back to visit the rehab center where he stayed for two months. They simply didn't recognize him. He's gorgeous!
In the midst of all this, I found a mole that was getting very large and a very...weird (its own technicolor mole show). When I pointed this out to my doctor, he immediately produced a set of scalpels and started hacking it off (with clear margins to make sure he got it all). Then, off it went for biopsy.
Um, yay....*
Listening to him worry aloud whether it was a nasty skin cancer (I'm Black, people! Mighty melanin protect me!), I just didn't think I could deal with anything else this year--I'd already weathered the one-two punch of Dad's major illness and Garland's heart treatment. Then Dr. Park, still suturing up my leg, said "If it's nothing, you'll know. If it's something not so good, you'll deal with it. That's what you do."
It was that statement that left me with tears in my eyes. No matter now much got heaped on, how the illnesses of these important men in my life left me with a business with no actual business and work I'd never thought I'd need to do, I was there: battling for their health and wellness for over a quarteryear with all the love and hope I had when others had given up.
I'm rebuilding my business. I'll be straight with all of you. And it's not the most fun I've ever had, but like Dr. Park indicated about my dealing with the possibility of cancer, I'll get through it.
This will serve as a $60 million spanking.
So you are ready to take the plunge, you want your website and you want it now. Be careful though about how you chose your domain name. It's gonna take a bit more than a GoDaddy account to get you the right piece of the wild, wild web.
How to Choose a Domain Name for a Small Business » Small Business Trends
spidey yorky sense started tingling, and it hit me. The View got addicted to the sweet nectar of day-time ratings during the Rosie episode. My precognition is firing on all cylinders on this one. Tata Simple Life, watch Paris transform her brand from blondy to brains in 45 days flat and see why the term bad publicity does not exist in the world of branding. It's just how you manage it.
