Howard Schultz, CEO and Chairman of Starbucks, is calling on his fellow CEO's to boycott campaign contributions in an effort to force politicians to start fixing things.
From a PR perspective this is a great move by Starbucks. It does a number of powerful things:
A lot of spokespersons are doing this lately and it's bad. It's the same as saying 'no comment'. In fact, it's even worse because you can easily come off as arrogant and rude.
Spokespersons should always arm themselves with transition phrases to get themselves away from a side topic and back to the main topic. Schultz could have said "We could debate whether corporations should hire based on moral grounds but what's far more important, and what I'm trying to bring to the forefront, is that we have to stop encouraging bad political behavior."
That aside though, I think this is a brilliant move by Starbucks. If you believe, as I do, that the economy is going to weaken, that unemployment will remain high and that inflation is going to kick in over the next 12 months, it doesn't take a genuis to predict that people are going to become stark raving mad at everyone they perceive as controlling the economy - the politicians, the businesses, the banks, the rich, etc.
Getting out in front of that and establishing yourself now as a company fighting to get Washington to act is just about the only thing you can really do to seed the populous with the notion that you are on the little guy's side.
From a PR perspective this is a great move by Starbucks. It does a number of powerful things:
- Aligns the Starbucks brand with the sentiment of the people
- Positions them as a thought leadership brand not just on the product side, but within the context of America as a whole (which is a hard thing to normally do when you sell coffee products)
- Protects their brand from populous backlash against emerging resentment towards successful corporations (which, rightly or wrongly, are seen as part of the problem - and could destroy some brands in the future if the economy gets bad enough).
- By using their CEO as the catalyst for this they are sending an indirect message to the market that Starbucks is run by a proactive, common sense CEO (which helps support their stock price).
A lot of spokespersons are doing this lately and it's bad. It's the same as saying 'no comment'. In fact, it's even worse because you can easily come off as arrogant and rude.
Spokespersons should always arm themselves with transition phrases to get themselves away from a side topic and back to the main topic. Schultz could have said "We could debate whether corporations should hire based on moral grounds but what's far more important, and what I'm trying to bring to the forefront, is that we have to stop encouraging bad political behavior."
That aside though, I think this is a brilliant move by Starbucks. If you believe, as I do, that the economy is going to weaken, that unemployment will remain high and that inflation is going to kick in over the next 12 months, it doesn't take a genuis to predict that people are going to become stark raving mad at everyone they perceive as controlling the economy - the politicians, the businesses, the banks, the rich, etc.
Getting out in front of that and establishing yourself now as a company fighting to get Washington to act is just about the only thing you can really do to seed the populous with the notion that you are on the little guy's side.
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