Since I wrote the blog post on mystarbucksidea.com, I have read a lot of other’s posts about it. The majority consensus is that they are doing it wrong. Why I thought? So many people believe that it is a poor strategy, yet I believe its good? I knew that I had to trust that my gut was right, but why was I thinking the way I was? I’ll tell you. It boiled down to 2 influences, Seth Godin and the anti Starbucks blog.
I was just reading a post by Seth Godin this morning. He was speaking about the power of organization, and that people are more effective and powerful when they are organized. This is very true in society, and he gave a good example of Wikipedia.
Second, I was reviewing the site that supposedly started the mystarbucksidea.com, Starbucks Gossip. These people organized a blog together to start gossip and slander about Starbucks in hopes of deteriorating the brand name and image of the colossal coffee giant.
So what did Starbucks do right? They built a platform for their customers, happy or not, to organize and change Starbucks in a positive and beneficial way. Not only is their Alexa ranking tens of thousands of places higher than the gossip column, but look at all the real life value Starbucks has been able to create for their customers. To me that is brilliant digital strategy.