Starbucks established a new policy in 2005 that baristas should write down customer names on the side of their cups. After that, especially these years, more and more customers have complained that their names were misspelled in many strange ways. They took the pictures of these misspelled names and post them on social media. Soon, there were many Facebook and Tumblr pages created on this topic, like “Starbucks Got My Name Wrong”, “Starbucks Screw-ups”, “My Name is Not Enema”, “When Starbucks Gets Your Name Wrong.” etc.
In September 2014, a video named Why Starbucks Spells Your Name Wrong was updated online and went viral quickly. The whole views have achieved more than eight millions in just a few days. Paul Gale, the creator of this video, plays as a Starbucks barista with an evil glint in his eyes. He tells people that he spells everyone’s name wrong to confuse and annoy us, on purpose! When we take the pictures and share on Instagram or Facebook, he is staring at us, happily. Because we are helping him to market Starbucks for free, and the name of Starbucks will keep staying in our head. Every once in a while, when he spells correctly, we will be delighted to discover the change and feel happy.
After that, the video was reported and discussed on many websites and blogs, and most of them generously gave positive comments. Even though it was not officially made and published by Starbucks, many people tended to believe that this is the real reason that their name got spelled wrong. I visited some of the Tumblr and Facebook pages I mentioned above, and found that rare pictures were uploaded after the viral video.
First of all, I think, to misspell customer’s names might let some of them become irritated and uncomfortable, but it’s not that big mistake. Further, it can even increase people’s awareness and engagement. Sometimes, we love to whine about the brands that we like or familiar with, like Starbucks. According to the analysis from Roger Dooley, Forbes,
“There’s evidence that when one’s brain is expecting one thing and is delivered another, attention and interest spike. That’s the basis of most jokes, and was also a favorite linguistic technique of Shakespeare.”
However, it doesn’t mean that I totally agree with what Starbucks did these years: gave zero reactions on this social media crisis and pretended that people were not complaining. In this digital world, where attacks on your brand spread incredibly fast on social media, you have to do something as soon as possible. It’s better to have wise and clever strategy, but it should be fast! I searched all Starbucks official announcements on Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, it doesn’t give any reaction on this. If it were not Starbucks, which most Americans visit everyday, the brand might in great danger. Lucky Starbucks! You have to thanks Paul Gale!
Based on the facts that we know, this clever comedian created this video and spread it on social media. He used Starbucks’ logo and we don’t know it was unsanctioned or not. Starbucks didn’t say any word on it. So I want to boldly imagine that maybe the brand allowed him to do so. It is because if Starbucks explained and defended by himself, people might refuse to believe. But if it was said by a third-party in a humorous way, it led to better results. Again Starbucks, if you allow Paul to do it, you should take action many years ago!
Although the misspelled names has damaged Starbucks’ brand image to some extent, but the policy of writing customer’s names on the products should be encouraged and has been used by many brands. For example, it was firstly used by luxury brand like Louis Vuitton. They put customer’s name on purses, handbags and belts. They call this service “stamp”. Similar strategies were also used by Nike, Apple and Coca Cola.
Using this strategy is effective to increase people’s awareness and build emotional relationship with customers. It makes brands become outstanding and shows their attitude that they care about their customers. Response rates will also go up if marketers try to insert personalized content in marketing.
But remember to write their names correctly, unless you are deliberately misspelling their names!
Crystal Perspective 