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RSSGranted, it's way too easy to dump on Starbucks these days, but I was taken aback when I started to Google the name of the coffee chain's so-called social networking site on Monday and discovered the glee people seemed to take in dumping on MyStarbucksIdea.com.
"You know social networking has jumped the shark when Starbucks gets into the act," said Elinor Mills at News.com's News Blog. At Jim Romenesko's (yes, that Jim Romenesko) Starbucks Gossip blog, one commenter said that "the new 'site' is just a rebranded Starbucks centric Digg. Just kind of bland."
Said another: "The website is a complete joke. All of us know they already view this site [Starbucks Gossip] to read everyone's opinion. Although I'm sure they will read and maybe even use others' suggestions, it's nothing more then another PR move to let customers know they're here to listen and to be able to monitor something, unlike starbucksgossip.com."
New York magazine called it "The biggest (and possibly worst)" idea to come out of Starbucks' annual meeting last week.
So is the Starbucks social-networking site that bad? Well, yeah. At least if it's defined as a social network. New York termed it "a virtual suggestion box" and that description comes closer to fitting the bill, except that visitors can vote on ideas submitted by other Starbucks registrants (yes, you have to register), and comment on their ideas. Not that the most popular ideas will necessarily be implemented, mind you. To me, being able to comment and vote is a big "so what?" That level of interaction is just the baseline cost-of-entry for this kind of site these days. There's nothing particularly special, or all that social network-y, about My Starbucks Idea, though it would have been considered revolutionary three or four years ago.
In fairness to Starbucks, the company itself doesn't seem to be calling it a social networking site. After combing Starbucks' own release about the site and other "Strategic Initiatives To Transform and Innovate the Customer Experience" -- enough of the corporatespeak! -- all I could find was a reference to it as an "online community network," which might be something slightly different... I guess.
But I'm probably splitting hairs with the definitions. Some of those who complained about the site on blogs and news sites can rightly be charged with indulging in gratuitous Starbucks-bashing; Starbucks has been built up, even revered, over the years, so now it's time for the tear-down. But the site -- and the Starbucks brand -- does have deeper problems than a bunch of people who like piling on. Whether it's called a social network or an online community network, My Starbucks Idea doesn't do much to connect Starbucks loyalists -- or even haters -- to each other. In fact, somehow, even though it solicits ideas and feedback from consumers, the site feels like it's much more about Starbucks than the people who go there. It's like the popular kid who wants dozens of friends around her, as long as all they do is talk about her.
Allowing Starbucks consumers to connect with one another is a missed (or maybe future) opportunity. Few brands have the opportunity to build a real-world community into a virtual one, and vice versa. Think of the ways you could expand this virtual community out into the real world of baristas and chai tea lattes, by building communities around individual stores, adding Twitter-style feeds to let consumers weigh in on whether the new Pike Place Roast was any good, and building upon some of the corporate responsibility initiatives the company has in place by further involving customers. Instead, the site is a series of disconnected blog posts, and while some of the posts have garnered hundreds of comments, the site, as it is today, isn't particularly sustainable.
Though one person who responded to a tweet about the site I posted on Twitter said she'd stayed engaged with My Starbucks Idea for 30 minutes, there's only so long that one can read about ideas for in-store coffee tastings and drink-of-the-month specials before the content gets old, and you find yourself thinking it's time to head over to TMZ to catch up on the latest with LiLo and Brit. They are endlessly fascinating; MyStarbucksIdea.com isn't.
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He suggests that "asking customers for management input...is problematic because customers don’t share the organization’s mission – they have their own agenda. (That’s why they think it’s a great idea to give away the store.)"
He points to similar site "IBM Jam Session" aimed at collecting feedback from employees - who are better aligned with the company's mission. He concludes that the best approach might be a combination of the two: solicit suggestions from within, then ask the customers to rate them, resulting in a beneficial decoupling of idea and originator. "An idea would get traction or not based on its own merits, irrespective of the popularity or political capital of the manager proposing it."
Full post here: http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/hbreditors/2008/04/advice_for_starbucks_ceo_howar.html
Proof will be in the pudding. Will Starbucks follow any of the recs? Oh, and props on the "jump the shark" reference. Long live the Fonz.
To Shel and (oh, crap, I'm getting into semantics again), my column says that the term "social network" did not come from Starbucks. Just want to make that clear.
Jeez, someone should just shut me up. Have a good weekend everyone, and if you have a topic for a column next week that we can all be happy and agree on, let me know;)
Cathy
Must all my comments languish in moderation? Post them, or block me!
In any case, there's no need to undertake a discussion on the definitions of these terms. Believe me, that debate is fully joined in plenty of other places.
Lee, I remember when Dell launched its blog, Direct2Dell. Immediately, condemnation was rampant in the blogosphere. "They've got it all wrong!" bloggers proclaimed. But they stuck with it, then launched the Dell Ideastorm, which uses exactly the same Salesforce.com platform Starbucks is using. (See my blog post for image comparison: http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/starbucks_adopts_ideastorm_concept/
The first idea to rise to the top at the Dell Ideastorm was an equal no-brainer: "We want Linux on Dell computers." Dell had previously rejected the idea, but the overwhelming voice of the customer led them to reconsider and now you can get Linux on a Dell.
The point is this: Rather than jump all over Starbucks within the first couple days of an initiative, why not wait and see if it's sincere while giving them a chance to iron out the bugs? So far, what I see is a company that is making an effort to listen to the customer and, so far, taking action on the most popular ideas, just like they said they would.
As for B2B, Sun Microsystems and IBM are purely B2B companies, and they have embraced social media with considerable success. They're not alone.
I still remain a bit skeptical. The tone of the site is a bit like a cheerfest, we love our customers thing. I do find it interesting that a "frequency discount" is "under review." Did Starbucks really need this site to understand that frequent customers want to be rewarded for their loyalty? Isn't this customer service 101?
Bottom line, from a business perspective, if it makes the customers feel listened to and they get something better from the experience (whether it's a PR stunt or the real thing) the customer wins.
I agree that in the end it only matters what the customers think. And, what works well in the B2C space won't necessarily translate to B2B (my world).
I agree with nearly everything you said.
My only quibble is your quibble with my quibble. Huh?
I DO think the social media trade press makes a huge mistake by talking endlessly about what's cool, what's hip, what's new. Lost in the conversation is what really matters: What does the intended audience think? And how do they respond? Isn't that what social media should be about?
I have seen so many social media sites crash and burn because they miss this fundamental point. Sure, they're hip and sexy, they have all the bells and whistles. But they go dead in a week because they're not in touch with the real-life needs of their customers.
Our social network site, MyRagan.com, is a joke to the "trained social media professional." In fact, one blogger called it "social media on training wheels." But guess what: It has changed the market I serve fundamentally. My customers, who also subscribe to our news site, rely on it repeatedly to trade tips and strategies with colleagues they wouldn't have known existed before they joined.
Is it Facebook? Hell no, but it's far more useful to them than Facebook because it aggregates a niche audience into one site, and that site is seamlessly integrated into the top trade publisher in their market.
So what is good and bad in Web 2.0 is impossibly relative. You cannot paint it with a broad brush--though some try.
Mark Ragan ceo www.myragan.com www.ragan.com www.myragantv.com
I do think that in some ways people deep into social media may be more skeptical and hard to please, but I don't think it's because we live in our own "echo chamber, sharing that space with other social media aficionados" as was suggested. It might actually be that there's a deeper understanding of what it's all about (and I'm not talking about the semantics debate), and a desire to ensure that the customer is "served."
Let's face it, nobody has the answers. This is a new and ever changing area. What seems right for one company, may bomb for another.
In the end, no matter how the discussion goes, and regardless of whether we're right or wrong in critiquing Starbucks new site, the real proof on whether this is a genuine effort to reach out to customers and improve the experience will be in how Starbucks deals with the suggestions and whether they move closer to the perfect experience they're hoping to create.
I'm just hoping that I learn from others mistakes and successes and avoid getting barbecued in the process.
You got back the tone you put out.
Seriously. You're a great writer, but if you're going to hit someone hard, then it's only fair to be hit hard back.
Your headlines says it all, "Ewww...what's that smell."
My father, the founding editor and publisher of what is now Ragan.com, once said, "you want to draw a crowd, start a fight."
You did that nicely. You drew blood with a very effective attack. But now the crowd, me included, needs to tell you that you're wrong. Sometimes that crowd matches the tone of the combatant that started it all.
But whatever the case, my point is that social media insiders and bloggers need to connect with's going on in the real world. Yes, you need to be plugged in to every Web 2.0 tool and gadget, but don't lose sight of where 90 percent of the world lives.
Even my 18-year-old, Facebook-obsessed daughter didn't know what Twitter was. She certainly wouldn't have understood your complaint about the Starbucks site being oh-so four years ago.
My next door neighbor here in Chicago is a stunningly successful marketer. She owns a high-end, glitzy shoe store in Winnetka. She also drinks coffee at Starbucks. Let's look at her as an example.
She's hip, faily young at 39 and successful. But you'd have to explain to her what social media means. She's have no idea whatsoever about digg and Tweets to her are the sound of birds outside her window. Yet she's smack dab in the middle of Starbuck's target audience.
You and I like to live with our fellow social media-obsessed friends on Twitter, Digg, Jaiku, sumbleupon, LinkedIn, Ning. That's true. But as a journalist reporting on these things, we must always keep in mind that we are still only a tiny slice of the consuming public.
Those folks really are "so four years ago."
Thanks for reading.
Mark Ragan CEO www.ragan.com www.myragan.com www.myragantv.com
I appreciate some of your points. Don't always appreciate the tone of some of the posts though, but, hey, that's life. I am extremely thoughtful of what I do and always have been, but realize that in a column like this, there is wide room for disagreement.
What I think we've gotten into here is partly a debate about semantics. And maybe that's not entirely the right debate. However, it does make a difference if a company says they are delivering one thing and delivers another. That sets up an expectation. It's like being told you are going to a Broadway show and then when you show up, you find the play is actually in a basement two blocks down from the Lunt-Fontanne. Now, I'm not saying that the site is anything like a seeing a play in a basement--sheesh, how I'd get on this tangent?--but when I got to the site it delivered something different.
Cathy
Let's say, just for the sake of argument, a customer submits an idea like, oh, I dunno, a punch card that results in a free drink after x number of purchases. And let's say, just to continue the entirely hypothetical scenario, that 31,680 other customers -- all of whom had to register in order to do so -- voted to promote the idea. What's more, let's imagine that the comments added to the idea by some of those 31,680 customers reinforce how great the idea is. Then, let's go the extra mile, and consider that Starbucks puts the idea into the review process. And what if that idea measurably improves customer loyalty and brings in some new business?
Oh, wait. That's not hypothetical. That happened.
And that just sucks, doesn't it? Customers given the opportunity to "digg" an idea to the point that management embraces it and makes it a reality? What a horrible, lame, so-four-years-ago idea. I'm with you, Cathy. There's no reason Starbucks should want to own the conversation about what they can do to improve; they should just keep reading someone else's blog.
Starbucks launches a laudable site that allows customers to speak candidly. It opens itself up to criticism and asks for ideas on how to improve, and you slam it as so yesterday?
Excuse me, Cathy, but what planet do you live on? If this is such a tired old idea, then why don't we stumble over these "online suggestion" boxes at every major retailer and consumer site on the Fortune 500?
Ok, so it's not a social networking site. Who said it was? Who asked for one?
We should be praising companies that allow customers to provide public feedback for all of the world to see. Look at the success of Nuts about Southwest, a blog that drew 500,000 comments last year and helped tweak the airline company's new seating policy.
The problem with social media reporters and bloggers is that you live in your own echo chamber, sharing that space with other social media afficionados. You lose sight of the fact that 90 percent of the public is about 100 miles behind you and may actually appreciate the Starbucks site.
Twitter, you say? The world hardly knows Twitter exists. At our recent social media conference in Las Vegas---a conference attended by PR people and internal communicators--only a dozen people raised their hand when I asked the 675 attendees if they had even heard of the micro-blogging site---a site, by the way, that is virtually useless in the real world of the real consumer. And these are Fortune 1000 corporate communications and marketing people!
Those silly people at Starbucks with their silly site. They didn't realize it was sooooo four years ago.
Mark Ragan www.ragan.com www,myragan.com www.myragantv.com
I do think there's a legitimate question here as to whether more "community" features would have improved this effort, or future ones like it. Personally I tend to agree with Greg Andersen's comment above -- I too think less is more in these kinds of executions -- but I hardly think it's an open and shut case.
Would additional features to create greater social connection (or any other features generally) that could improve MyStarbucksIdea?
And hey, if we think of any good ones, we should submit them to MyStarbucksIdea and all vote for it! ;-)
I will say that the URL freaks me out...I don't like being forced to "force.com". Besides, just imagine the missed SEO lift of this content being hosted on their own domain. They really must not have anyone on their team who knows anything about search marketing.
If you had clicked the link at the bottom that said "powered by Saleforce.com" you would have been taken to http://www.salesforce.com/products/ideas/ which describe it as follows:
"Salesforce Ideas makes it easy to unleash the power of your community. By creating an interactive Ideas forum where people can vet their best ideas, you can become a more responsive company, uncovering new opportunities and instilling a sense of co-ownership with your most passionate evangelists."
Also, an "online community network" is not interchangeable with "social network" and we all need to be careful to distinguish that.
p.s. Dell won a PR Innovation of the Year 2008 award for their Ideastorm site which runs on the same exact software from Salesforce that Starbucks is using.
So, while we're ending honeymoons, I've been complementary of this blog and its commentary. It is quite good in most respects. But it is entirely lacking in supporting links. [Like, zero, you guys.] These links are the essence of good blogging. It links the ideas together. I blog here, but also here. And I comment here and here.
There's a great discussion of whether you're a Web 2 Purist or Web 2 Corporatist here and here among these Forrester people. Apparently, someone called Frymaster seems to drink quite a bit :-)
I just got to commenting on a href="http://blogs.mediapost.com/social_media_insider/?p=7">last weeks post
, and I left some code to make "inline links" and instructions on how to use it.Ah, the first fight. It only deepens our commitment...
For my money, Elinor Mills is the one who looks foolish. In no way has [buzzword=?user-centric_internet] [buzzword=?past_peak]. That's silly. The Internet is toddler and web 2 is its limited vocabulary. I view almost all the website/applications as transitional. The only part that's permanent is the data that are gathered, or, in the jargon, the data persist.
Projects like these - company engages in direct market-conversation - are something I'm watching closely. I want to see what happens over time. It doesn't really matter what the industry or even Starbucks customers SAY about this site. What matters is what HAPPENS on this site and, then, in the stores. And it's too early to have any kind of a read, IMO. How will corporate respond, adapt, engage, etc. That's what I want to see.
Hells, I'm an old-school dot commie. I'm all about my local. What do I care what happens in a Starbucks.
There's one good, substantive point: registration and email. The magic word is "trust." I register with all kinds of places using my Gmail, of course. Who doesn't have an email account for just this sort of thing? The question, as a user, is: how is this website going to deal with this trust situation? Will they do me a solid or will they get skeevy and sell me out to spammers? Starbucks, regardless of this whole mess, has a powerful connection with its core customers. I doubt they'll screw with that.
It's not a social network or most any other trendy media handle people only use in discussion but aren't really familar with.
It's a genius and simple idea...use the people that use your product the most to contribute ideas on how to make it better. Period.
LEGO has used its fans to build an entire product line, one of Google's key competitive advantages is open sourced innovation. Wikipedia is entirely open-source.
I applaud Starbuck's for having the guts to recognize that not every great idea has to come from within their own four walls.
You say "My Starbucks Idea doesn’t do much to connect Starbucks loyalists — or even haters — to each other." What I saw in visiting the site was the ability for users to post their ideas or comments on others ideas. It seems they can respond to the original post or to other commenters. I saw a number of examples of comment posts that started with "I agree/disagree with user-x".
It's fairly rudimentary, and obviously focused on the specific feedback, but it is community interaction, isn't it? Or I am the one missing the point here?
With all due respect, for those of you who blame the media for this, go back and read the column closely. You'll note that even if the media called it a "social network" Starbucks itself described the site as a network. The header on the section of the press release that announced this is " Creating an Online Starbucks Community Network at MyStarbucksIdea.com." "Online Community Network"--that would imply that there's some networking going on, no?
Because of Starbucks' own description of the site, not only did I visit the site once over the last few days--it would've been irresponsible for me not to, given the column--I went back again and again and again trying to make sure that I wasn't missing some networking opportunity that I didn't initially see. Perhaps if Starbucks had given it a more accurate name, I, and some of the other critics I read, would've felt more kindly about what we found there.
Thanks for reading and commenting, though. Seriously.
Catharine P. Taylor
We all know that companies are embracing social media to drive awareness, product innovation, and build up the bottom line. And I've got no problem with Starbucks wanting to do that too - after all that's why they're in business.
Where it falls short for me is that in order to share, vote, and discuss anything, you have to give up your email. It sends the message that they only care what I think, if they can put me in their database.
They've missed out (or more likely their agency missed out) by not understanding the power of just engaging customers in conversation and the impact that has on brand and sales.
The site is a feedback site. Yes, there are some social computing features -- but those are only to enhance the feedback and advice sharing experience.
Really disappointed in Social Media Insider for this one.
Was their goal to connect customers with each other? I certainly didn't think it was when I looked at it -- I thought the idea was to elicit feedback about their service in an interactive way.
This isn't a content site, it's essentially a real-time referendum about what customers want. Assuming Starbucks takes some of their ideas to heart, aren’t customers getting their value in influencing improvements in what is presumably one of their favorite services?