Coffee with a hint of crisis

Larenda Myres holds an iced coffee drink with a "Race Together" sticker on it at a Starbucks store in Seattle on Wednesday, March 18. AP

A recent blog by Alexandra Smigelschi got me back to think about all the times I’ve seen companies getting backlashed for campaigns that they thought would be fun, innovative and sometimes even provocative, but ended up being a major issue for the company. 

In her blog, Alexandra approaches Starbucks #RaceTogether campaign using Hazelton’s (1993) theory on the six functions of messages that reflect common public relations strategies such as facilitation, information, persuasion coercing, bargain, and problem solving, which represent the goals of public relations when tackling which impact they want the messages to have on the general public. 

Starbucks

Coffee witch a pinch of crisis 

In case you haven't heard about the crisis that affected the global coffee empire of Starbucks, I'll sum up what happened. Starbucks thought it would be a good idea to present a campaign that used #RaceTogether as the main message to encourage customers and employees to discuss race while they waited for their coffee. But unfortunately, the campaign was met great amounts of criticism. Social media mentions increased by 266% (Logan, N., 2016), but at least one third were categorized as “hate”, which resulted in the coffee giant putting an end to the campaign. In case you are curious, I recommend watching Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz interview for CNBC to get a better insight into what the campaign was about.

But how did Starbucks work on this campaign? 

The original blog stated that in the Starbuck’s campaign, they were trying to facilitate conversations between their customers and the public sphere regarding the matter of race. I agree with her point that Starbucks failed to acknowledge that the facilitation strategy does not only consists of providing a topic open to discussion but also actively participating, keeping participants engaged. So, maybe they didn’t think through how the campaign would work once it's out, especially since this strategy implies a lot of follow up on behalf of the company to further engage with the audience.

However, I think it's interesting to take the bargaining and problem-solving functions as they show Grunig, J.E., & Grunig, L.A. (1992) ideas about the direction and purpose of communication and the characteristics of the two-way asymmetrical and two-way symmetrical models of the excellence theory. Specifically, in Starbucks' case, both bargaining and the problem-solving function fit quite well, as an add on to the facilitation function. A bargaining strategy is characterized by an organized exchange of messages between communicators and the use of contrasting symbols to differentiate groups, while the problem-solving strategies are characterized by an open exchange of information where its present that there is willingness to, together with the audience, establish a shared definition of the problem, common goals, and shared positions and responsibilities about the issue (Schuch., 2007) . Which is the case of racial differences in America I think that Starbucks could have benefited by taking a bigger approach using these functions? 

Pepsi Global I Image of the ad Ad

 My colleague made some interesting points but I think that we can take some more lessons out of this case. How many times have you seen companies fall under the same trap of trying to acknowledge racial issues and then getting trapped by the incredible amounts of the backlash they get. Just to freshen up your memory a little bit, I think two examples that show this clearly are the case of Pepsi and the Kendall Jenner fiasco or the Dior Sauvage crisis.

Schafradd, Van Zoonen, & Vehoeven (2016), showed that in the time of crisis, the tandem between media and organizations is crucial since they both feed off each other in a mutually beneficial relationship. That is why, it is key for PR specialists to understand the different factors that contribute to the media picking up a story and the way it is framed (Nijkrake, J, et al., 2015). And if what gets picked up is that you tried to tackle your country’s most important issue but once it has gotten some criticism you retire the campaign, media picks this story in a way that can’t by no means affect positively to your image. 

What can we learn? 

To summarize, I think that the main take-home message for both organizations and PR specialists is that it’s hard to keep a social campaign’s message as the PR has thought of, especially when dealing with as touchy a subject like racial issues. The overall impression of the campaign for both the media and the general public was that it was misguided and offensive. So basically, we have to be prepared both negative and positive feedback and think things out when we touch upon racial problems.

References: 

Grunig, J.E., & Grunig, L.A. (1992). Models of public relations and communication. In J.E. Grunig (Ed.), Excellence in public relations and communication management (pp. 285–325). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 

Hazleton, V. (1993). Symbolic resources: Processes in the development and use of symbolic resources. In W. Armbrecht, H. Avenarius, & U. Zabel (Eds.), Image und PR: Kann image Gegenstand einer Public Relations-Wissenschaft sein? [Image and PR: Can image be a subject of public relations science?] (pp. 87–100). Wiesbaden, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag. 

Logan, N. (2016). The Starbucks Race Together Initiative: Analyzing a public relations campaign with critical race theory. Public Relations Inquiry, 5(1), 93–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147X15626969

Nijkrake, J., Gosselt, J.F. & Gutteling, J.M. (2015) Competing frames and tone in corporate communication versus media coverage during a crisis. Public Relations Review 41(1). 80-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.10.010

Schafraad, P., van Zoonen, W., & Verhoeven, P. (2016). The news value of Dutch corporate press releases as a predictor of corporate agenda building power. Public Relations Review, 42(3), 451–458. 

Schuch, A, (2007) "An experimental analysis of activist message strategy effect on receiver variables". Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2359