After a Slow Start, Starbucks Mounts a Textbook Response to Events in Philadelphia
[By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications]
Starbucks is certainly no stranger to controversy. Past dust-ups include its “war on Christmas,” the year the company issued a simple red cup for the holidays, and the campaign designed to improve race relations built on asking baristas to write “RaceTogether” on coffee cups. Both of those efforts were minuscule nicks to the company’s good name compared to the coast-to-coast fallout that occurred April 12 when an employee in a Philadelphia Starbucks called police because two African-American males failed to make purchases before attempting to use the restroom on the premises. Of course, as many crises start these days, a bystander was quick to record the confrontation on her mobile phone and upload it to Twitter, resulting (to date) in 171,571 retweets and 237,182 likes.
Weeks later, the incident is still generating intense media coverage (my search on Google ended after 15 pages of stories), the debate on how the incident was handled is still going strong on social media, and there is a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking going on in the communications profession as to how the company responded.
In the meantime, there are still lines for coffee in the store located in my office building and CEO Kevin Johnson still has his job. Given the passionate and formidable customer loyalty Starbucks has built globally (the company reportedly had 27,339 locations around the world in 2017), it’s unlikely this event will substantially damage the company’s bottom line despite the calls for boycotts and the threats from some customers to never patronize Starbucks again. However, it has thrust an iconic brand into the middle of the intense debate currently raging across America about race. It’s also added one more case study to the library crisis managers maintain regarding lessons learned. Given all that, what are the lessons we can learn from this event and how it was handled by the company?
Surprisingly, it took the company a day to issue a first response on social media – a tepid statement that Starbucks was “reviewing this incident with our partners, law enforcement and customers to determine what took place and led to this unfortunate incident.” Starbucks must have a significant social media engagement team. It no doubt saw the video quickly, since it was uploaded to the company’s official Twitter account. But apparently, someone must have had to create this statement and get it approved before a response could be made. That relatively slow response is additionally surprising given that Starbucks is first and foremost is a public-facing enterprise. Surely, someone on the crisis team must have anticipated something like this happening and suggested that some messaging be created in advance. The next day, the company tweeted a bit more abject response, but by then public sentiment was turning against the company.
Whether the company intended to pivot to a more authentic response all along after issuing the first statements, or whether the avalanche of media coverage and social media outrage prompted the crisis team to regroup, the tone and magnitude of Starbucks communications response changed dramatically. A more comprehensive statement, attributed to Johnson, was issued by the company later that day, followed by a video apology from him posted on April 16. For a sterling example of how to apologize, take a few minutes to see what he had to say here. Rarely does a CEO utter the phrases “I own this,” “I am accountable” and “I’m sorry” in such a forthright manner. Not only did Johnson take ownership of the problem, he also promised to take action. It’s the classic crisis management protocol experts prescribe: admit you made a mistake; apologize; and describe what you’re going to do to make sure it never happens again.
To further underscore the company’s remorse, Johnson subsequently flew to Philadelphia to apologize in person to the two men who had been arrested, and met with the city’s mayor and police commissioner. And, he went on ABC’s Good Morning America to do a live interview from Philadelphia with Robin Roberts.
On Tuesday April 17, the company went one step further, announcing that it would close more than 8,000 company-owned stores during the afternoon of May 29 to conduct racial-bias education with nearly 175,000 employees across the U.S. Further, it promised to make the training part of its onboarding process for new employees going forward. To see an excellent demonstration of social media engagement, visit the company’s Facebook page where the training was announced. The number of replies Starbucks posted responding to individual comments is impressive.
Could Starbucks have mitigated the response to this event if it had been faster to take ownership of what happened? It no doubt would have helped. It’s certainly a lesson for any organization to keep in mind when a crisis strikes – especially one headed for the minefield that social media can quickly become. But the other lesson to learn in this case is the example of authenticity and ownership. Any organization that winces at the prospect of simply saying “we’re sorry” should note that a true apology can actually go much further and be far more effective.