We all have heard the phrase, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. A brand is only as strong as its weakest link. The Starbucks brand came under negative press exposure this past week due to a weak link in their brand
Earlier this week, I recommended to be proactive in regards to your brand by reviewing your brand along with your company policies, procedures and employees. I also recommend to review the process perspective and existing customers go through when interfacing with your brand and company. Make sure that in each step of the process that you are living up to and exceeding your brand promise.
Make reviewing these processes a part of your annual brand continuous improvement program. “People respect what you inspect” What have you not inspected lately?
When something goes wrong in your brand, face it honestly, work to fix it and make it right. Your brand is based on trust.
Example: A follow-message from the Starbucks CEO in regards to the incident in our Philadelphia store: “Kevin Johnson apologizes, says he will personally address issues that led to situation in Philadelphia: I will fix this.”
Starbucks Newsroom: We apologize to the two individuals and our customers and are disappointed this led to an arrest. We take these matters seriously and clearly have more work to do when it comes to how we handle incidents in our stores. We are reviewing our policies and will continue to engage with the community and the police department to try to ensure these types of situations never happen in any of our stores.
Starbucks announced it will be closing its more than 8,000 company-owned stores in the United States on the afternoon of May 29 to conduct racial-bias education geared toward preventing discrimination in our stores.
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