By Lindsay Higgins
In public relations, your organization’s brand and image are
of utmost importance. So when your brand
changes its image or tries something that doesn’t align with the typical
aspects of the organization, there is bound to be some backlash. Re-branding is a dangerous game and the
culprit of this week is Starbucks.
Obviously
with everything that has been going on with the election and the bickering
between Americans, times have been tough and divided. So Starbucks, in an attempt to celebrate
community and somehow bring the country back together, released a new cup
design on November 1st. The
green cup, with a drawing by artist Shogo Ota, depicts a crowd of people. What’s impressive though is that she used
only one line to draw the entire picture on the cup.
“A symbol
of unity as a reminder of our shared values, and the need to be good to each
other in this divided election season,” CEO Howard Schultz said.
One would think that this is a very
touching sentiment and would go over pretty well with the general public. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The first response was of horror, mainly
because consumers thought this green cup was replacing the traditional
Starbucks’ Christmas cup. (A very controversial subject in its own entity with
outrage every year.)
However,
even after Starbucks corrected this misperception, there was still outrage
about consumers. They found the cup to
be offensive because it seemed like “brainwashing” or “liberal bias”. This added to the fact that Donald Trump
suggested a Starbucks boycott earlier this year, left people having extremely
negative reactions.
So what can
we as public relations professionals learn from this debacle? Probably first and foremost, stay away from
politics. Even if you’re heart is in the
right places, chances are somewhere, somehow, someone will be offended. Second, switching your brand up and trying
something new is always risky. If you
are re-branding or trying something new, make sure to be extremely clear to the
public in order to do the least amount of harm.
Citations:
"Starbucks Green 'holiday' Cup
Already Drawing Mixed Reactions." Fox News. FOX News Network, 2016.
Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
"Starbucks Green Cup Celebrates
Community." Starbucks Newsroom. N.p., 2016. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
Https://www.facebook.com/NBCNews.
"Starbucks' Green 'unity' Cup Causing People to See Red." NBC News.
N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
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