Today’s Wall Street Journal ran a story (reproduced in prior post) chronicling the story of legendary Starbucks founder and Chairman who is re-assuming the office of CEO of Starbucks to return the company to its origins; and Hillary Clinton confessed to her supporters that New Hampshire voters have taught her to listen again and “find her voice”. Asking “what went wrong”, the Wall Street Journal concludes: “The details vary but, in each case, companies with longstanding records of success are acting as though their trusty playbooks suddenly have vanished.” Both Hillary and Starbucks have panicked and have resorted to shotgun tactics of “try anything and everything” to reach their market.
The real problem is not their playbook or tactics; the problem is that they have ignored, or forgotten, their brand equity: their core message. They have abandoned the message which enabled them to differentiate themselves from their competition and encouraged their audience to trust their message.
At its inception, Starbucks dedicated itself to emulating the European coffee house experience and to bring that experience, service, ambience, smells and coffee to its American consumer. Coffee should not only be of luxury quality but the experience of drinking it should be relaxed, reflective and indulgent.
But the pressures of being a public company and the quarter over quarter growth objectives, which this implied, led Starbucks to embark upon a program of international expansion and diversification of product and services, that took the company further and further away from its core. You can’t deliver the European coffeehouse experience to Europeans; you must Americanize it. Starbucks was no longer able to fulfill its promise of a recognizable coffeehouse experience to its loyal consumers and its consumers reacted in the same way anyone would react to a broken promise: they lost confidence and their loyalty diminished.
Similarly, Hillary has not consistently kept to her promise of being a bright, liberal, independent and accomplished woman in politics; instead, she has adopted the “vote for one of us and you get two Clintons” message, and increasingly turned to her husband, Bill, to bail her out when the going gets tough. We vote for a political candidate because they stand for something we admire, or to which we aspire. If we are not sure what they stand for, we are less inclined to support them. If as a loyal supporter, you were invigorated by the opportunity to vote for a talented and independent woman for public office, you became confused, if not disillusioned, by the prospect of also (re)-electing Bill hiding under his wife’s skirt.
While it might seem a bit crass to introduce brand strategy lessons into the world of politics, I think the message is clear: in both arenas, the goal is to develop a relationship of trust with your audience; it’s to develop a clear, consistent message which reflects what you stand for and differentiates you from the field of competitors. Everything you do, your statements or speeches, your campaign tactics or the manner in which you sell your goods, your political team or your executive team must be consistent with your message. When you relinquish this clarity of message and behave inconsistently, you lose your audience and become one of a large group of competitors.
