Starbucks defends itself on YouTube
What do you do when you're getting attacked online? Respond online.
I don't know all the details, but Starbucks is under attack from Oxfam for its business practices in Ethiopia.
So, Starbucks has responded with a short video on YouTube with a quiet, thoughtful reaction:
Hat tip to New Media Strategics.
Kari Chisholm | January 3, 2007 | Comments (6) |
Your Name: Your Personal Note: | Your Email: Friends' Emails*: |
Comments
Why is it illigal to allow Ethiopia to trademark its coffee names? Where is the illigality? Starbucks is a company who is leeching on the community selling watered down coffe and make billions. It is easy money, no questions, their strength is in branding. They cannot let of branding names slip because it means sharing the profit with others. The fact that they appear on-line looking polite and honest makes me puke. Its not cool to leech on poor people, what did they invest, 2.4 million? Very nice, a company making billions on the backs of these poor farmers is bragging because they invested 2.4 million. My respect to them is through the roof, shhishhh!!!!
Posted by: des_pes | Jan 3, 2007 7:54:29 PM
Astonishing how little understanding of the market and profit-making is displayed in the first comment. Any "poor farmer" who wishes not to deal with Starbucks doesn't have to. Any poor customer who dislikes Starbucks coffee is not obliged to buy it. If you don't want to participate in a market transaction, don't, and nobody will "leech off" you. The poster might also consider how a Starbucks or any other well-known, successful company achieves its brand name.
Posted by: David M. Brown | Jan 7, 2007 12:28:11 AM
Starbucks' brand is based on character not quality. We all know the product as it stands on its own really suck and is too expensive. People flock there because it is cool, its fashionable to be in starbucks. They have positioned themselves to be accused of leeching off the poor. Here is one for all of you, Starbucks = Paris Hilton, sleazy, famous for being famous, nothing more.
Posted by: des_pes | Jan 14, 2007 1:18:24 AM
No, Des_Pes, it's envy-ridden ideology like yours which is "positioned" to interpret any great commercial success as riding "on the backs of the poor." If you don't like a particular vendor's coffee, there's a very easy cure. Don't buy it.
Too expensive, eh? Too expensive for what, or for whom? It's certainly true that the atmosphere of Starbucks, the variety of coffees, the designer aspect of its presentation all have much to do with why the firm is popular and has built up such a loyal clientele. It's clearly not "too expensive" for those people. Otherwise they wouldn't buy it.
I don't doubt that what appeals to others in Starbucks coffee or in Gap jeans might not appeal to you. Maybe style means nothing to you. Maybe you wish for nothing more on the menu than bread, pork chops, rice and water, unadorned, without gravy or butter sauce. So be it. I'm not a tuxedo man myself, and I prefer soda to coffee. But I don't think the fact that others enjoy the taste, or style, or taste-plus-style of Starbucks coffee takes anything away from you. Nor does the firm's success take anything away from you. There is no reason to slam Starbucks because its product appeals to tastes that are not your own -- nor, for that matter, because it has earned billions, the so-called "easy money," which you have not.
Posted by: David M. Brown | Jan 15, 2007 6:55:52 AM
"it's illegal" What laws are they talking about? No one denies the rights of the French to brand wine (Champagne, etc.). Sounds just like when, after allegedly boosting the caffine content of their coffee, their top corporate officers denied caffine was addictive.
Posted by: MM | Jan 23, 2007 1:27:22 PM
To David Brown.
I have a test for quality when it comes to coffee. That is why I do not go to starbucks.
In any case, one cannot win against the overwhelmingly inferior without hurting it’s image and image is what starbucks is all about.
Posted by: des_pes | Jan 31, 2007 4:45:08 PM
