STARBUCKS EGYPT: "We proudly serve WEAK coffee."

Ever walk into a coffee shop, and they remind you that they serve weak coffee? It is probably not really the smartest idea, but come to the Starbucks Egypt franchise chain, and they seem to be okay with that. Actually, more than okay as they like to emphasize it every single time!

Before I get into this, let's highlight three things quickly. First, Starbucks does not sell a product; they sell a whole experience. You're not paying for the coffee cup; you're paying for every single touchpoint that comes with the brand. This is what made it extremely successful by moving beyond a commoditized item and by selling the experience. Second, you have to be pretty damn good to do that. It's really a masterpiece of a marketing case, if you ask me. Third and more importantly,  every touchpoint matters EQUALLY, which is what makes marketing positioning extremely difficult and tricky. You get 1 thing wrong, just 1 thing, and it all falls down! I don't need to prove it to you; history does. 

So let's get into this.  You walk into a Starbucks anywhere, and I mean anywhere, across the world, and everything single thing is exactly the same. Having had some experience in the Food & Beverage field,  it blows my mind how strong their franchising program is. Come to Egypt, though, and their franchise company seems to think that they can outsmart it. 

So you walk into any branch in Egypt (they are all owned by the same franchise company), and you approach the counter to place an order, and this is the exact conversation you're going to get. 

The customer: “I would like a  grande cappuccino, please.”

Starbucks employee: “Here or to go?” 

The Customer:  “To go, please.” 

Starbucks Employee: “And would you like your coffee Strong?”

Me: “What? What do you mean?” 

Starbucks Employee “Umm, strong or medium coffee?” 

Me: “Do you mean dark roast or medium roast?” 

Starbucks Employee “No, just strong or medium coffee?” 

Me: “Just give me a regular cappuccino, please.” 

So if you say you want a strong coffee, Starbucks Egypt will sneakily add an extra shot to your coffee and charge you an extra 15 pounds.  Besides being unethical, it's seriously BAD MARKETING and hence BAD BUSINESS. The Starbucks Egypt franchisee management team thinks that instead of asking you if you would like to add an extra shot to your coffee, which would make it stronger, they should play the game "smarter."  Consumers don’t want to pay an extra 15 pounds for their coffee, so they just ask them if they want a stronger coffee. The issue is that it's not just that you're trying to fool your consumer and being extremely manipulative; you're actually indirectly or directly saying that your regular cappuccino is pretty damn weak! 

I took a constructive approach and tried to explain this to the Starbucks employee at the branch I ordered from, as I initially thought it was an employee issue. However, I realized that they are just following a written script and are trained to up-charge their customer's bills. How do I know that? I sent an email to Starbucks Seattle HQ. They looked at my email and forwarded it to the Egypt franchise company to deal with. I received a call from their Operations Director, who I thought would apologize for the incident. To my surprise, he argued that it's my own issue that I don’t understand that when they say do you want a strong coffee, it means we will add an extra shot.  My response was, then why don’t you just ask me in plain and simple English, “WOULD YOU LIKE AN EXTRA SHOT IN YOUR COFFEE," just like EVERYWHERE in the world! 

Now I have an issue with having a constructive conversation with an unethical approach, and hence the conversation stopped there. You see, the foundation of any good business is honesty and transparency, so we couldn’t really get to the stage for me to explain to them that besides being EXTREMELY unethical, you're seriously harming the brand. By asking your consumer if they want their coffee strong, you are equivalently stating that if they don’t opt for that and decide to have a regular Starbucks worldwide known cup of cappuccino, it will be a WEAK cup of coffee!! 

You see, I really mean that positioning your brand could be one of the trickiest parts of a marketer's job, and whatever you say or do as a brand, it becomes part of its DNA, its character. The more you consistently hammer on that, the more and more it becomes an association with your brand, Now what is the last thing a marketer, the custodian of this brand, wants?  A negative, wrong positioning of their brand, because it will mean BAD business down the line. 

I hope you have enjoyed this month's blog. Feel free to write me at Shereba@brandmeup.co or leave a comment below. 

Have a good one. 

Shereba