Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

The New York Times yesterday ran an article, The Starbucks Aesthetic, about how the 5,400-store behemoth is aggressively selling CDs, promoting films, re-packaging food items and oh yeah, brewing coffee; all in an attempt to extend their brand beyond their core offering. It’s been a huge success. Now they’re pushing into book sales, discovering new musicians and considering film production. The results? Satisfied consumers, high sales and a bright, bright future.

There are many points of interest in the story, I liked this idea best: by creating an Exceptional Experience – buying quality, authentic coffee beverages in clean, efficient shops – Starbucks positions itself to extend the brand into new areas of commercial distribution and promotion well beyond coffee. Why? Because the brand is trusted, valued and safe, and consumers are willing to follow a commercial path of consideration and purchase they already have demonstrated their affinities for: quality, authentic experiences in clean environments. (i.e., folk rock without the drugs, moving stories without the existential darkness, films that are smart yet family safe, coffee that is quality, clean and just plain good.)

We talk a lot about brands most of the time, and, to be honest, it seems like a secondary consideration at best for consumers. In my mind, brand values, brand promises, etc., come far after buying a product or utilizing a service because of its material, demonstrable value and quality. I don’t use Orbitz because of the brand, I like it for its ease of use. The moment a new travel site comes out that’s better I’ll leave. Witness the mass exodus from Hotmail to Gmail, or in the smaller world of blogging platforms: I initially used Blogger because of the Google brand, but Blogger is so technically unreliable and poorly executed that I and many others moved to Typepad, which costs more, has a bad UI, but is very, very reliable. In fact, being anti-brand can be a smart strategy for selling products trading on authenticity, value an unpretentiousness – cf. Pabst Blue Ribbon’s (probably over-commented) Anti-Marketing Campaign.