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When I first read The other week when Starbucks was encouraging his staff to write notes about customer coffee cups such as “You’re Aviurs” and “Take advantage of the day”, I thought it was a joke.
But not. The company turns out to have a completely serious plan to foster the “moments of connection” with customers that means that any unfortunate buyer of a Brumee caramel Latte now runs the risk of such experience.
Customers can also receive a cup with a smiling face or, if they seem familiar, a note that says: “Hello again.” Everything is part of a change strategy ventured by its last executive director, Brian Niccol, to boost his sunken sales. Niccol, former head of Chipotle’s Burrito chain, became Starbucks’ Fourth Chief In less than three years last year and, for the sake of the 360,000 people he uses worldwide, I hope he succeeds.
But I am also pleased that the idea of cup writing is so limited to American Starbucks operations because I find it difficult to imagine that writing this type of messages full of joy.
On the one hand, Niccol’s response plan takes a long time and another being delivered His coffees in four minutes.
More irritically, messages are not sincere. In general, I am not surprising and even if it were, how would a stranger know behind a counter in Starbucks?
Similarly, it is possible, although it is unlikely, that the next time I buy a coffee I have already done everything possible to take advantage of the day. Anyway, I wouldn’t need someone to do it for someone who I don’t know.
Niccol’s strategy is based on his fear that some customers, especially Americans, feel that their Starbucks experience is “transactional.” But an exchange of fast, educated and successful money of the goods is exactly the transaction I want when buying coffee.
It is the same if I ever take a Eurostar train at Stan Pancras station in London. When I hope my train, I want to hear ads that tell me when it has arrived what platform I need to go. I don’t need to listen to the company slogan Eurostar was launched in 2023: “Together we go further.”
So I was not surprised to read one complaint on social networks the other week of a regular passenger, the political journalist Jon Stone, who was dismayed when he listened to the staff to recite the phrase at the end of the regular ads in st pancras. “Please stop,” he wrote. “It’s incredibly shocking.”
In fact, it is, and also annoying. Divine the meaning of the bubbling station ads is quite difficult. There is no need to grocer them with a deceptive corporate grain.
Fortunately, Eurostar says that your staff is not expected or the slogan is required. The announcer Stone Heard had chosen to include it that day, a spokesman told me. “But there are no additional incentives or repercussions to do so.”
I am not sure of a slogan like “Together we go further.” Actually, it does not go beyond Eurostar, together or otherwise, where your ticket allows it.
But at least the idea had a purpose. Eurostar was trying to highlight the fact that its network had expanded to five countries: the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
The same cannot be said of a surprising marketing magic that emerged in Australia last month.
During the last 36 years, the national athletics agency of the country has managed to survive with the perfectly sensible name of Australia athletics. This has the benefit of transmitting brief, simple and precision of what the organization is and what it does, which is always useful for a name.
But here, at the end of January, the body issued a press release to announce that he was entering 2025 “with a new bold identity.” From now on, its name would change Australian athletics to Australian athletics.
“This brand change is not just a new appearance,” said executive president Simon Hollingsworth. “It’s about reinventing what athletics means for Australians.”
This, unfortunately, is garbage of the gold medal. On the positive side, the movement has been an applauded distraction. In fact, I have rarely seen such a daring piece of antipodean marketing since 2015, when Western Sydney University declared It would become the Western Sydney University.