Starbucks: product + meaning = Brand

For entrepreneurs, telling a convincing story is the best way to do business. If you master the storytelling power, you can enhance your competitiveness. Starbucks is such a storytelling enterprise, through storytelling to have emotional communication with customers, thus winning a group of loyal customers.

Tell the rule of brand story

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz said, "Product-meaning = commodity, product + meaning = brand, we are not in the coffee business, we are in the human business." Starbucks, which is known as the "third space", connects customers with emotion, which is the real proposition of Starbucks values. But the idea is so subtle that many businessmen cannot copy it.

A barista at Starbucks learned that regular customers were waiting for a kidney transplant and did a matching test himself and the transplant was successful. A female employee of a store shaved her head to encourage a young girl with cancer to fight bravely. After recognizing the moral values and values of the company, employees are willing to provide customers with a perfect coffee experience through each service. And behind every experience is a commendable story.

What on earth is experience? One theory is to shape sensory experience and thinking identity from the perspective of life and situation.

Over the years, Starbucks has gradually become a distribution center for people with little bourgeois feelings in the city, with a cup of coffee, a computer and a book, which can pass the day in a cozy environment and ignite the most subtle emotions of human beings. Some people say that half of the price of Starbucks coffee is that consumers are paying for their illusory feelings.

So, where does this good feeling come from?

The story begins with smelling incense.

"raise your cup, get close to your nose and take a deep breath, which is the first step in tasting coffee, called smelling fragrance." A big sunny boy in a Starbucks green apron stood among the customers, holding a coffee cup for a demonstration, and immediately a faint smell of smoke filled his nose.

"our tongues can only distinguish five flavors, but our noses can distinguish thousands of flavors, so smelling incense is an important step in understanding the characteristics of coffee. Imagine, what flavor is it similar to? "

"next, let's sip. Be careful not to drink, but to suck the coffee into your mouth. " The big boy gave an exaggerated performance of "sipping", and the customer laughed into laughter. He said seriously: "this is the standard action of tasting coffee, which can spread the coffee evenly on the tongue." After a hard "sip", the coffee rushed straight behind the tongue, and the rich aroma filled the mouth in an instant.

"the third step is feeling. Do you feel the tip of the tongue and both sides of the tongue? The tip of the tongue is sweet, the side of the tongue is sour and salty, and the root behind the tongue is bitter. " After a little poking, the tasters felt vaguely that there was a sweet smell of barbecue and a little sour in the smoky mouth, and after a while, the fragrance changed from strong to light, blending with the taste buds. At this time, a chocolate cake was served in front of the public. "this Italian deep-roasted coffee is best to taste with the chocolate cake, it can collect the aftertaste of the coffee, and of course the last step is to share the feeling." Take a bite of the cake and really complement each other.

In the wonderful feeling, people find that there is still so much knowledge in tasting coffee that the significance between customers and Starbucks is more than coffee.

Tell the story of coffee in the way of wine

Why can two bottles of wine with similar appearance be so far apart in price? What's the difference between Starbucks coffee and other coffee?

In the beverage industry, product homogenization is a common thing. The wine industry has formed a set of standard procedures, origin, brewing process, history, flavor, and even with what kind of food to match determine the connotation of the brand, even the price, even adjacent wineries, the elements of these stories are different, the price is also different.

The story of Starbucks Coffee also begins here. Howard Schultz decided to apply wine tasting to coffee and called the strategy "geography is flavor".

Suppose we are in a coffee shop, you need to describe to the clerk your favorite coffee flavor, is it refreshing sour, mild, or subtle nutty? In fact, most consumers are not very clear. In 2005, Starbucks decided to use coffee packaging to guide consumers to distinguish the nuances of coffee and help them find their favorite flavors.

Starbucks coffee beans are mainly produced in the Americas, Africa and the Pacific. Coffee beans in each region have a unique flavor, and the process of evaluation is the process of discovering flavor, acidity, mellowness and smell.

Both Kenyan coffee and Stammer coffee have the obvious acidity and fruity flavor of East African coffee, which is not found in ordinary coffee, but the difference between Kenyan coffee and Sumatran coffee will be obvious. Coffee from the Pacific region has earthy and herbal aromas.

A delicate way of life

Since then, Starbucks has adjusted it on the basis of "geography is flavor". Through consumer research, the company found that many consumers do not drink deep-roasted or highly flavored coffee, so roasting experts in Seattle tried more than 80 recipes in eight months to launch a light-roasted integrated coffee. allows consumers to enjoy softer, more subtle and round coffee, resulting in deep, moderate and mild three-dimensional layering Attract consumers who are easy to "get drunk" and crave coffee.

The packaging of coffee beans has also been adjusted on this basis. Because color is the first reaction for people to recognize objects, Starbucks gives three colors with different baking depths as the first element of taste communication. The "geography is flavor" feature is still retained, but as a secondary communication element, it is displayed through regional feature pictures of the same color, and some functional pictures are also added. For example, the picture of medium-roasted breakfast coffee is a room, but all packages continue to retain descriptions of region, function and taste. Just as alcoholic beverages with different alcoholic contents have different consumers, Starbucks' packaging method helps customers open a simpler way to identify tastes. All right, look at the picture and start talking. Pick up the package, how many stories can you tell about coffee?

Old Huang Li tells a new story

Stories usually start by sharing insights and ideas from life. Of course, the story should include facts, and then use emotion throughout to make it more infectious and persuasive.

The Ephemeris is the introduction of the story, that is, the introduction of the plot. The theme of the story marked by the ephemeris from February 6 to February 17, 2014 is "Yijiao Cup", and the plot explanation is "Honey, will you exchange love luck with me for a lifetime?" Next, Starbucks retreated behind the scenes, and customers unwittingly stepped onto the stage in the plot and became impromptu performers of stories.