Final presentation: Sevenly

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Mid-Term Monitoring Project — Part Two: Starbucks

As I continue to monitor Starbucks in the past two weeks, it seemed to be lazy in social media marketing. Although it had two new products released, there was no campaign coming out. Its official website stayed unchanged for a couple of weeks, while Facebook and Twitter were posting regularly to keep the buzz buzzing. On YouTube, the only video that Starbucks updated was about its new app for iPhone. These were what Starbucks had done during the time I monitored it, which made me a little anxious about its popularity in social media. However, to my surprise, the number of fans of Starbucks still climbed up steadily, and it was still being talked a lot on social media. 

Addictomatic

In this post, I will list all my findings from February 10 through April 1, and examine the data that I have collected. At the end of my post, I will give some personal recommendations to Starbucks; hopefully my points of view could help Starbucks improve engagement with the groundswell in a positive way. 

Two Official News Release

On March 19 and March 20, two news of Starbucks released one after another. The first one was about Oprah's cooperation with Starbucks to make Chai tea. Twitter was the first social media platform that announced this news. 

 People's reaction to this news were positive, giving 818 favorites and 608 retweets to Starbucks. On the other hand, Starbucks responded to customers questions very quickly on Twitter, simply and friendly.

Then on next day, Starbucks twittered again to follow up this news. This time, people were not as active as they were in the first time. 

These were all Starbucks did for this news on Twitter, and it didn't mention this news any more after March 20.

Regarding this news, Starbucks also post on Facebook. Besides using only words to tell its customers about the news, Starbucks added a photo of Oprah to attract attention. 

Impressively, there were over 1,000 comments and almost 13,000 likes on this post. More surprisingly, Starbucks replied to almost every single comment on the post, creating close connections with its customers.

However, just as what it did on Twitter, there were no any follow up post after that day. No videos, no results reports. This news of cooperation with Oprah to make Chai tea didn't even show up on Starbucks' official website, YouTube or any other platform, but disappeared quietly and quickly in Starbucks' social media.

Another news was about Starbucks' new app for iPhone. Compared to the news of Oprah's Chai tea, Starbucks put more energy on this news. Not only did it have video on YouTube, but also it was put on Starbucks' official website. 

Starbucks' official website

PS: this is not the official video because 

I could not find the link through this blogger

The video gained about 6,000 views on YouTube, while on Twitter, there were two simple posts telling customers about the news. For the two posts, they had roughly the same favorites, but with a three times increasement in retweets for the second post than the first post. As for Facebook, Starbucks didn't update the news until March 24, four days later after the news came out. However, once again, there was no other new tweet nor post on Facebook to follow up the news later on. 

Examine the Effect of the News Through Data Analysis 

In order to have accurate data to better analyze Starbucks' social media activities, I collected data every day in the past two weeks. Here are two groups of number from Social Mention. 

data from March 20 to March 25

We can see data varies from daytime to nighttime. However, does it change from data before the two news came out? The following is a group of data that I have showed in my first post of the monitoring project.

data from February 28 to March 12

After comparison, the result disappointed me.

There is barely change after the news came out. Why? Isn't it strange? So I went to Facebook Insight, the figure on the left shows that, there is an increasement after the data reached its lowest point on March 12. Nevertheless, the increasement was not impressive when compared to the data in February. What happened in February? As I mentioned in my first post of the monitoring project, "Dumb Starbucks'" release went viral immediately, which helped Starbucks gain talks on social media. However, Dumb Starbucks was not an official video, nor an activity; it was a resource that came from outside, and Starbucks didn't expect its popularity. So, does the unchanged data mean something to Starbucks? I put Dumb Starbucks, new apps, Oprah and one of the latest products, Vanilla Macchiato, on Socialbakers, Google Trends and Icerocket; let's see what they show to us. 

Socialbakers: twitter following in the past 3 months

Google Trends: interests over time in the past 90 days

Icerocket: daily blogs citation trend in the past 2 months

According to the trends shown above, all of Socialbakers, Google Trends and Icerocket prove that Starbucks' news release didn't push Starbucks to a new height, but only kept it flowed steadily. What's more, this help is not obvious. Being such a big brand in the world, people's attention to a certain product or a piece of news is easily covered by the flood of many other things that relates to the brand. Hence, maybe Starbucks should not rely on news release or new products promotion to catch attention like other brands do, but think about how to better utilize the power of groundswell outside the company. 

Let's see how significant that outside power influence Starbucks' performance on social media. During my monitoring days, several rumors about Starbucks went around online, which were negative to the brand. The red line on top stands for the rumor that Starbucks doesn't support United States' troops; the dark blue line below the red line is Starbucks, the green line is the news of  Oprah's cooperation of making Chai tea with Starbucks; the yellow line means the rumor that Starbucks supports genetically modified organism; and the bottom light blue line is the news of new Starbucks app. As we can see in the figure, the two pieces of news do not help a lot to Starbucks' performance on blogs, but it is obvious that there is coincidence between Starbucks and the two rumors. 

Through the analysis above, it is possible that now people are become more and more interested in creating topics about Starbucks rather than talking about the official topics created by Starbucks. To some degree, this is a reflection of how well Starbucks has done in making connection with the groundswell. Yet for long-term social media marketing strategy, Starbucks may face crisis due to its passiveness to the outside groundswell influence. 

However, compared to other competitors, Starbucks still unbeatable. I compared it with Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds on Wildfire, and the results show that runs much faster than its competitors on social media. 

Starbucks' championship on social media attributes to its patience and timely response to customers comments online. As I mention before, Starbucks replied to almost every single comment on some posts, especially on extreme negative posts. 

Recommendations

1. Do follow-up posts

Starbucks seldom did follow-up posts after they released news or introduced

their new products on social media. However, I think it is smart for Starbucks to do follow up posts because through launching these posts, Starbucks can enhance their interaction with customers, increase customers’ engagement, therefore making the proximity between Starbucks and their customers more closer. On the other hand, Starbucks will get feedbacks, such as the advantages, the disadvantages and the popularity of a product or a piece of news, from customers’ comments in order to accumulate experiences as their references for their future products launch.

2. Create topics at nighttime

Based on my monitoring results, I find that Starbucks a are talked more frequently among consumers during morning than evening, and that’s what I supposed it should be in my Part 1 report. People are more incline to have coffee before they start their work and class in the morning rather before they go to sleep in the evening. Therefore, it’s not surprising that more customers would like to share their feelings about Starbucks a in the daytime. I highly suggest that Starbucks a should be more active in nighttime to exchange ideas with their online consumers, meanwhile creating more topics online so as to enhance their interaction with customers and expand the market. For example, launch night promotion - attract more people to go to Starbucks at night, then share their feelings on social media.

3. Create topics initiatively

My data shows that customers’ attention on Starbucks is not affected by the

official information as much as outside resources. In fact, topics such as Dumb Starbucks, GMO, Starbucks not support the troops, etc., which were made by the groundswell, were the ones affect Starbucks deeply on social media, even some of these topics were rumors. To some extent, it is not adverse for Starbucks to obtain so much public attention; however, from the aspect of obtaining a healthy development for a brand, it would be better for Starbucks to create topics initiatively. For example, the topic of Dumb Starbucks had brought Starbucks to the forefront of the hottest topics in February, yet Starbucks had made no response towards this video. Afterwards, people rapidly lost their passion on this topic, so Starbucks' popularity on social websites such as Facebook or Twitter decreased soon. Thus, I suppose Starbucks should understand how to maintain consumers’ fever by giving feedbacks to some related sources.

4. Treasure good suggestions from customers.

Customers' intelligence and creativity are immense. I know Starbucks has created a very good platform, My Starbucks' idea, to encourage people to share their good ideas about Starbucks online. I suggest that Starbucks can put more effort on this platform, instead of leaving it to customers. There are huge number of good ideas for helping Starbucks go further in the cruel marketing competition. Starbucks should not just leave the treasure there without utilizing the ideas to the real market.

My Starbucks' idea

Resources:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/19/starbucks-oprah-winfrey-teavana-oprah-chai-tea/6610587/

Reading Response 3: How Internal Groundswell Helps Transform the Company

Several months ago, when I went back to China, I chose Japan Airlines (JAL)

by accident. However, this "accident" surprised me by its super nice customer service and satisfiable arrangement during the flight. Plus, I was impressed by the incredible cautious working attitude and the amiable smile of JAL's staffs. In fact, I flew a lot and I experienced many airlines' customer services, but none of them could compare to JAL. I was too curious so I asked one of the flight attendants why they were willing to offer customers such great service. She answered, "That's because our company treats us very well, so we treat you in the same way. In our company, employees' opinions are highly respected."

I searched information about JAL when I was back home. What surprised me more was the fact that, being the third largest airline in the world,  JAL declared bankruptcy early 2010. It was Kazuo Inamori, one of the most famous entrepreneurs in Japan, saved this dying company. Kazuo Inamori believes that creating a friendly and enthusiastic internal community is the key to JAL's revival. Under Kazuo Inamori's management and social marketing strategy, JAL regained reputation and incredibly revived within 2 years, which has broke the Japanese record and shocked the world.  "JAL went through its restructuring just as the airline industry began to realize the importance of social media, and thus became an early adopter of the technology by building up its presence at the same time anticipation grew over its IPO," says Samantha Shankman, the reporter at Skift. 

Let's see how Kazuo Inamori made this miracle happened. 

Best Buy's Blue Shirt Nation

Firstly, similar to Best Buy's Blue Shirt Nation, which is an example in Chapter 12 of Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies, Kazuo Inamori created JAL's internal community, named JAL Group, and tapped the groundswell inside the company. Before he did that, the hierarchy in JAL was extremely strict. Employees did not dare to express their opinions. What's worse, there was little communication among departments, let alone talking to managers regarding the ideas of restructuring JAL. Just as what Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff point out in the book, "the bigger the company is, the more of a problem internal communication becomes" because information flows from up to down. 

Luckily, Kazuo Inamori changed this situation by allowing and encouraging his staffs to use social media to express their thoughts, including criticisms and suggestions. This rapidly enhanced the loyalty and enthusiasm of employees in JAL. The internal community became active, and many useful suggestions appeared from staffs who worked at the front line. Kazuo Inamori knew that these employees were important people who listened to and talked to JAL's customers; they knew exactly what customers needed and wanted. In a word, the protential external groundswell were affected by these people. Thus, it was really smart for Kazuo Inamori to respect his employees.

JAL encourages its employees to participate in social media 

and express their individual opinions

Secondly, Kazuo Inamori took a very important step after he energized the internal community -- he made JAL become a social media wiz among its competitors. In 2012 alone, JAL astonishingly launched 10 mobile applications one by one, while other airlines were still struggling to figure out their mobile and social engagement strategies. The groundswell were on fire after the 10 apps' launch. Kazuo Inamori knew that he succeeded. JAL gained 700,000 fans on Facebook in that year, and people were talking about JAL on every social media. 

 reviews on SKYTRAX

10 apps that launched in a year

Obviously, the revival of JAL is not an accident. It regains its reputation and restructures "step by step." After the two-year transformation, now, JAL becomes one of the best and most popular airlines in the world, again. I hope it has a better future. 

Mid-Term Monitoring Project – Part One: Starbucks

Several days ago, when I was on the New York metro with some friends, one of them suddenly said, "Oh, I want a cup of Starbucks." I was surprised and I asked her why she said so, then she point at a men nearby, told me that it was because she saw him drinking Starbucks. I asked her, "Do you like Starbucks?" She said no, but she want to drink some at that moment. 

This made me think a lot. Starbucks is everywhere.

The coffee tycoon is too famous and has been talked too much that many people have been tired of hearing about it. There are numerous Starbucks' fans all over the world, though there are many people dislike it. However, we have to admit that one of the most successful things for a brand is: no matter you like it or not, you know about it, you hear about it, you see it everywhere, and you even buy its products. Starbucks is such a brand that gains so many people's love and hate. It seems that it even doesn't need to make too much effort to get attention, but the groundswell follows once there is any news relates to it. In fact, Starbucks knows very well how to play the game, and it enjoys the groundswell.

Starbucks' History

Founded in 1971, Starbucks is now 43 years old. The first shop that opened in Seattle, Washington, was a coffee bean roaster and retailer. It was originally owned by three partners: English teacher JerryBaldwin, history teacher Zec Siegl, and writer Gordon Bowker. In 1982, Howard Schultz joined the company and became the Chief Operating Officer (COO). During the 1980's, the whole coffee market in the US was falling. Howard Schultz persuaded the owners to sell traditional espresso beverages in addition to the original products. This strategy was successful and five more Starbucks opened in Seattle. In 1987, the three owners sold the Starbucks chain to Howard Schultz. Starbucks was quickly expanded under Howard Schultz's management. 

Old photo of the building of the Original Starbucks Store at Pike Place

Old photo of early Starbucks 

Nowadays, Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with its tentacles stretching to 20,891 locations in 62 countries. The following picture shows a brief history of Starbucks.

Starbucks map

a brief history of Starbucks

Starbucks and Social Media

Talking about Starbucks, the effort it makes on social media impresses me. In the past month, I use Socialbakers, Social Mention, Addictomatic, Icerocket and Google Trends to analyze Starbucks's performance in social networks,. Let's see how remarkable it performs on different social media platforms. 

restaurant social media TOP 10

According to this chart, we can see Starbucks stands out among famous restaurant brands. It occupies the first and second places in six mainstream social medias. Noticeably, on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Starbucks runs much faster than McDonald's, Subway and other fast food giants. 

Facebook

Having over 36 millions likes on Facebook, every post of Starbucks gains hundreds of thousands of comments and likes. In its posts, Starbucks always tends to be interactive and amiable. It is good at using words, like "so excited," "smile," that easily brings friendly feelings to readers. Besides that, every post comes with a photo or a video, and it keeps the style consistently, which makes you feel familiar with. 

Socialbakers statistic report

According to Socialbakers, Starbucks' Facebook has gained 152,727 new fans in the past month, increasing approximately 0.42%. There were about 3,000 posts talking about this brand, and more than 1 million interactions happened in the past month. These numbers are impressive enough to prove that Starbucks never stops putting time and energy in maintaining its relationship with the groundswell.

Twitter

 Addictomatic

It is very strange that there is no result for Twitter on Addictomatic. However, this doesn't mean that Starbucks did nothing on Twitter.  Actually, Starbucks twits almost everyday, and it has active interaction with its five millions of followers. 

YouTube

YouTube is another important social platform for Starbucks. "Dumb Starbucks," which was not an official store, but a parody store founded by a man who wants to catch public's eyeballs, quickly went viral on YouTube, receiving over 3 millions views from audiences.

Dumb Starbucks

Videos relates to Starbucks on YouTube is countless. Indeed, Starbucks encourages people to make all kinds of videos about it. Responding to the Dumb Starbucks, some videos came out telling some tips to people who want to open their own coffee shops. Obviously, Starbucks enjoys seeing this kind of interaction happens, which help it gains more than 12 millions results on YouTube. Being the hot topic  is always better than no one talks about it. 

Starbucks' data analysis

Social Mention

  

The above are four groups of statistics from Social Mention. I collected several groups of data in the past weeks. Some groups of them were got in the morning, and the others were got in the evening. I notice that the data I collected in the evening were weaker than what I collected in the morning. Thus, here is my assumption: people tend to talk more about Starbucks in the morning rather than in the evening; because having a cup of coffee before going to work or to school is a good idea, and people would like to share their thoughts after having Starbucks. Nevertheless, evening data shows the opposite situation. Few people choose to drink coffee before going to bed; that's why the numbers were weaker in the morning than in the evening. However, my assumption has not yet been proved because datas were not collected consistently. I would like to follow the data in the next weeks.

Icerocket

Reports from Icerocket show the trend of daily citation of Starbucks. We can see that the line doesn't fluctuate to much, with its peak on February 11, which might be because Dumb Starbucks' came out that day. The high percentage indicates that Starbucks is always a hot issue in the groundswell.