Starbucks “Got” it wrong
by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC
Have you seen the recent Starbucks/Got Milk advertisement? Not only a old and tired play, but as misleading as the original version.
It shows an aproned and smiling employee, holding up a latte
with the “Got Milk?” tag underneath, including the misleading health claims about the getting “half the dairy you need” from the milk in your Latte Grande. Not a regular, reasonable latte, but a super-sized high-$ version.
Because of hormones, pesticides and antibiotics, non-organic milk is not healthy in the first place. And although I enjoy lattes occasionally (the soy version), I’m not going to be convinced that it’s part of a healthy diet. We don’t need the daily “goodness” of super-sized caffeinated drinks, nor does the planet need the paper cups and plastic lids that comes with them. From Lime.com:
According to Metaefficient.com, we used and disposed approximately 14.4 billion paper cups in 2005 — or a mind-boggling 410,000 paper cups every 15 minutes. That number is expected to grow to 23 billion by 2010 unless we change our current coffee-drinking ways.
I had heard whisperings about Starbucks moving to organic milk last year, and maybe a few stores carried it briefly, but it’s been confirmed that the initiative has been dropped. Looks and feels a lot like their same half-hearted efforts to support Fair Trade. And just what about all those paper cups?
Like many mega-businesses, Starbucks had an opportunity to make a positive impact on consumer habits as well as the organic coffee and milk industries. They missed the mark and then some.
March 11th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Great post. I always have hope that companies will make the ‘right’ decisions for their customers. Sometimes they do (offering fair trade and organic coffee) and sometimes they just blow it (as in Starbucks dropping the organic milk initiative). Then again, these are the big boys of business: mega-revenue is at stake, and any dent in those cause executives to balk. Or it can.
So, why not have stores pilot the idea in certain locations? Do it from a geographic standpoint: if all Starbucks in San Francisco went to organic milk, wouldn’t it solve two open items?
#1: they get to test the effectiveness of making this change.
#2: the positive PR, especially in a textbook liberal city, would be enormous.
Is this just too obvious, or am I dreaming?
March 14th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Jerry from The Change responding here:
I don’t think you’re dreaming. I think you’re right on. If Starbucks did as you’re suggesting, they would reap the benefits you’re suggesting. I just think that Starbucks has reams of market research that has made them feel that the kind of committed customers who would pay more for organic milk and respond to it — represent only a tiny non-growth segment of their business.
Some companies genuinely care about sustainability — and behave accordingly. I think this is true of Patagonia and all the companies we at The Change work with. It’s evident to me from Starbuck’s decisions about Fair Trade and their use of paper goods that they have no underlying commitment to those values. If they really cared about the environment, they wouldn’t have made the decision to start serving all their drinks in paper as their default position.
Going organic with milk would be a great way to compete with Starbuck’s.