1 Discuss Starbucks listening plan and how the company has compensated for some of the potential negatives in that plan Starbucks s listening plan includes 4 main points of contact Quenqua They maintain a Facebook page with international reach a Twtter feed a YouTube channel that features branded content as well as short documentaries of charitable work and their own personal MyStarbucksIdea com where customers can post suggestions for products and services as well as complaints Starbucks VP of content attributed their recent social media success to playing it cool York Rather than pushing offers to subscribers Starbucks online experience has tried to foster the same environment that gave the company its good reputation and success in the first place By creating a open online community where fans of the coffee can come together and share experiences suggestions and voice complaints Starbucks increased the value of its social marketing and allowed crowd sourcing to help the company in times of need Instead of pushing a marketing channel and potentially alienating its customers Starbucks social community made it easy to create an app that offers store locators and nutritional information and another that supports their loyalty card York On the same note the online community is meant to bridge the gap between the online and brick and mortar experience Instead of intensive TV ad blitzes social media marketing and the awareness and buzz of the availability of promotions online lead to successes such as Free Pastry Day which featured a voucher for a free pastry online Starbucks bread and butter social media tool MyStarbucksIdea com has lead to 50 customer suggested improvements in its stores that could only have come from a listening approach Rather than forcing their premium priced product down customers throats they have allowed their customers to share what products they like and how they like them Playing it cool is another factor that no doubt allowed for Starbucks to bounce back from declining profits 2 Based on the case how would you say Starbucks is measuring the impact of its social media campaign What is the key performance indicator suggested by the text Rather than measuring the impact of their social media efforts on the social media measurement or PR KPI s it seems that the main focus of their efforts is measured by the social media monitoring KPI Starbucks has appeared to use the mix of their four points of contact to their optimal advantage rather than invest heavily in any specifically with the intention of measuring a return Starbucks CFO even quoted one her colleagues in saying that keep the investment so low that no one is worried about the return and failing to break out social media spending by sector Further it would not seem that Starbucks was using social media to improve its Public Relations The world is undergoing a financial crisis Starbucks reputation is not in question they have not done anything socially unacceptable They are simply a company with declining profits It is clear that Starbucks key performance indicator is the social media monitoring measurement MyStarbucksIdea com is the most apparent example of this The sites focus is on improving customer service and experience and has directly correlated to 80 000 ideas submitted by customers York The mix of social media tools is itself is a form of prospecting even though the mega corporation has very little need Facebook Fans Twitter Followers and registered users of MyStarbucksIdea com are all probably current customers Facebook friends of fans followers of followers and friends of registered users engage in word of mouth and viral marketing that leads to new customers for Starbucks It would appear that their four points of contact are performing relatively well as all its efforts have lead to an eightfold increase in profits in the second quarter of 2010 and an increase in international profits to 217 3 million Starbucks Corporation
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