“aroma” a stage of coffee making rather than, say, “serve”? The answer is that Starbucks is interested in the senses so that it can create a true coffee experience. Aroma is integral to the coffee itself.
Does it work in practice? It does, because it provides a rich matrix of possibilities, all anchored to core ideas in the Starbucks brand. For example, the color palettes offer consistency within variety. The “grow” design scheme is predominantly green. “Roast” is shades of red and brown. “Brew” brings in more blue for water. And “aroma” is lighter pastels, with yellows, greens and whites. But the idea is for each scheme to work harmoniously with the others, so in many ways the quintessential Starbucks design is for a shop that is spacious and separated into different compartments, rich in the diversity of the design but deep in its sources. Other design disciplines follow this lead. Different materials can be specified for furniture within each of the themes, but these are not a set list. You can vary them, adding or discarding elements to make a store idiosyncratic.
Even within Seattle the contrast the design achieves while maintaining a clear Starbucks feel is impressive. The store on 23rd and Jackson, in a predominantly African-American area famous for its jazz history, has a community-painted mural on one wall with black and white photographs from the 1940s all around. The photos – stylish shots by Al Smith of Quincy Jones, Ray Charles and other jazz greats who played in the area – provide a backdrop for new musical activity from the students of the neighboring arts college.
Just a few miles down the road, the neighborhood of Belltown is completely different, and so is the store. Belltown is like New York’s SoHo: bohemian, arty and laid back. The Art Institute of Seattle is nearby and its students hang their works on one wall of the store, creating exhibitions that change every two months. If paintings are sold, the money goes direct to the student artists. The collegiate, artistic feel continues with the furniture, old if not antique, with another wall featuring individual mirrors in ornate frames. The whole is designed like the extension of a living room inhabited by Armistead Maupin’s Mrs Madrigal.
In between these shops are scores of others, all individual and different, yet all unmistakably Starbucks. It’s a difficult trick for any brand to pull off, but Starbucks does it not just across one American city but every US state and 32 different countries.
The foundations were made strong by the work of Scott Bedbury. The greatest advantage from the kind of information followed by analysis that Scott instituted was that from 1996 onwards, and perhaps for the first time, Starbucks had a rational means of making decisions about how to develop its business. The brand provided a touchstone, a steady guide to decision making. Previously Starbucks had relied simply on the intuition of Howard Schultz and its own people. Those who “got” the brand but could not articulate it, and those who did not “get” the brand and so could not fully accept its obligations, were sometimes left agonizing. As Starbucks got bigger, the danger that people would not have that intuitive understanding grew. The wrong decisions could easily be made for perfectly good reasons. For example, opportunities kept coming up to sell more volume through a partnership, and to make more money as a result. Now, with a stronger sense of what the brand stood for, it was easier to say no to ventures that might make money in the short term but destroy reputation in the longer term.
A tool that Scott Bedbury imported from Nike was the brand mantra. This is simply a short phrase – not a strapline that runs in advertising – that sets out the essence of the brand. It is not something that the outside world ever sees or hears through direct communication. Indeed, many of the internal audience may never hear the mantra
Does it work in practice? It does, because it provides a rich matrix of possibilities, all anchored to core ideas in the Starbucks brand. For example, the color palettes offer consistency within variety. The “grow” design scheme is predominantly green. “Roast” is shades of red and brown. “Brew” brings in more blue for water. And “aroma” is lighter pastels, with yellows, greens and whites. But the idea is for each scheme to work harmoniously with the others, so in many ways the quintessential Starbucks design is for a shop that is spacious and separated into different compartments, rich in the diversity of the design but deep in its sources. Other design disciplines follow this lead. Different materials can be specified for furniture within each of the themes, but these are not a set list. You can vary them, adding or discarding elements to make a store idiosyncratic.
Even within Seattle the contrast the design achieves while maintaining a clear Starbucks feel is impressive. The store on 23rd and Jackson, in a predominantly African-American area famous for its jazz history, has a community-painted mural on one wall with black and white photographs from the 1940s all around. The photos – stylish shots by Al Smith of Quincy Jones, Ray Charles and other jazz greats who played in the area – provide a backdrop for new musical activity from the students of the neighboring arts college.
Just a few miles down the road, the neighborhood of Belltown is completely different, and so is the store. Belltown is like New York’s SoHo: bohemian, arty and laid back. The Art Institute of Seattle is nearby and its students hang their works on one wall of the store, creating exhibitions that change every two months. If paintings are sold, the money goes direct to the student artists. The collegiate, artistic feel continues with the furniture, old if not antique, with another wall featuring individual mirrors in ornate frames. The whole is designed like the extension of a living room inhabited by Armistead Maupin’s Mrs Madrigal.
In between these shops are scores of others, all individual and different, yet all unmistakably Starbucks. It’s a difficult trick for any brand to pull off, but Starbucks does it not just across one American city but every US state and 32 different countries.
The foundations were made strong by the work of Scott Bedbury. The greatest advantage from the kind of information followed by analysis that Scott instituted was that from 1996 onwards, and perhaps for the first time, Starbucks had a rational means of making decisions about how to develop its business. The brand provided a touchstone, a steady guide to decision making. Previously Starbucks had relied simply on the intuition of Howard Schultz and its own people. Those who “got” the brand but could not articulate it, and those who did not “get” the brand and so could not fully accept its obligations, were sometimes left agonizing. As Starbucks got bigger, the danger that people would not have that intuitive understanding grew. The wrong decisions could easily be made for perfectly good reasons. For example, opportunities kept coming up to sell more volume through a partnership, and to make more money as a result. Now, with a stronger sense of what the brand stood for, it was easier to say no to ventures that might make money in the short term but destroy reputation in the longer term.
A tool that Scott Bedbury imported from Nike was the brand mantra. This is simply a short phrase – not a strapline that runs in advertising – that sets out the essence of the brand. It is not something that the outside world ever sees or hears through direct communication. Indeed, many of the internal audience may never hear the mantra
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