The Starbucks formula

By Gonzalo López Martí @LopezMartiMiami

Starbucks doesn’t sell quality (forgive me for stating the obvious).
Coffee is not fuel.
Coffee is a craft & a ritual.
You know what I’m talking about, particularly if you are Colombian or Venezuelan.
Starbucks kind of talks about quality but you know quality is the last thing you’ll find there.
They also like to wax poetic about sustainability and fair trade. Yeah, right. But let’s leave that for another rant.
Starbucks pretends to be a wood-paneled coffee shop along the lines of those charming, ubiquitous “caffés” in the north of Italy or Austria.
Yet it’s just Subway with a better color palette and a shorter, overpriced menu.
In short: Starbucks is to coffee what, say, Taco Bell is to Mexican Cuisine.
On a scale from 1 to 10 in craftsmanship, they get a minus 4.
Their formula is quantity.
Their business is volume.
Nothing wrong with that.
Their product is crap, but they are master marketers.
They are everywhere and you know exactly what to expect from them.
You shell out 4 bucks (which would be an exorbitant price for a reasonable cup of coffee, let alone the soiled water in a paper cup Starbucks wants you to drink as such) and they give you half a gallon of burned joe, all the milk and sugar you can help yourself to, WiFi, a rumpled newspaper and, maybe, a comfy chair to kill some time.
Come for the coffee, stay for the WiFi.
It’s called ancillary benefits.
Precisely what we marketers must sell these days.
Whether we operate in the multicultural, monocultural, bilingual, monolingual, B2C or B2B orbits.
We must sell a repertoire of little perks, amenities and freebies.
The proverbial “experience”.
Real or perceived, tangible or psychological.
In the age of “the experience” the inessential takes the front seat.
The icing is the cake.
Behind closed doors: balderdash on powerpoint.
Out in the open: balderdash on social media.
Big ideas are worthless.
As is conscientious execution.
Big branding is dead.
The new paradigm is all retail all the time.
Stream of consciousness is the norm.
As you probably guessed by now, I’m loving it.
When nobody knows anything, only the chameleons survive.
Bumbling generalists like yours truly thrive in this environment.
Jacks of all trades, masters of none.
Hustlers.
The process has no clear top-down leadership anymore.
Everyone has a say, inside or outside the organization.
Not for the control freak or the faint of heart.
So.
How can we marketers earn a living in this state of affairs?
We get paid for the “service”, the “experience” we provide our clients with.
But, strictly speaking, we sell noise and we sell it in bulk.
Collaborative noise.
You want a cup of coffee?
Here’s a pint of brownish boiled water in a paper cup & an easy listening CD compilation for only $8.99
Next in line please.
A harsh reality applying to anyone who sells intellectual assets.
Ready, shoot, aim.
Be quick or be dead.
Forget quality or quality control.
Forget royalties or residuals.
Intellectual property is over.
It’s all about pumping & dumping inventory before its imminent sell-by date.
Bundle up.
Packaging and repackaging it for the highest bidder.
As fast as possible.
At prices low enough to prevent your client from excessive due dilligence, avoiding unnecessary nitpicking or mutual mistrust.
Remember planned obsolescence?
Well, this is immediate obsolescence.
Shelf life has turned into shelf death.
Overthinking is over.
The idea of “craft” is defunct.
It is simply not viable, it kills scale, it clogs the pipeline.
Protracted negotiations & micromanagement only waste time and create a bad vibe.
And no, this new paradigm is not cost cutting in disguise.
It requires considerable amounts of brain power in the form of motivated, highly educated, properly compensated human resources.
Anarchic, idiosyncratic brain power, if you will.
But brain power after all.
Don’t like this business model?
Goodbye forever.
Don’t shoot me.
I’m just the messenger.
And remember: when pricing your services, always go for figures just below a round number, ending in 9.99.
Whoever came up with this brilliant pricing tactic should be induced to the marketing hall of fame.