Starbucks : The Mastery Behind the Marketing

Starbucks is a modern coffee mecca-empire that seems to be on the lips of every corporate yuppie in America. And this is not by coincidence, it's by careful marketing design. Why has Starbucks been such a great example of corporate branding success?

Starbucks Coffee and Cafes opened in 1987 with about 11 locations in the Seattle Washington area. Little did we all know back then that by the year 2004, Starbucks would practically be as American as apple pie, and as talked about as another slice of Americana, McDonalds restaurants. Under the management of current CEO Orin Smith, Starbucks does not show any signs of slowing in growth.

How genius is the marketing behind Starbucks? Take for example, that many of us now now what a "Frapuccino" is, and couple that with the fact that this coffee giant has also successfully marketed it's arguably addictive products in bottled form in every grocery store across America and you've got an unstoppable advertising and branding campaign.

Not only can you find bottled, pre-made Starbucks delights in stores, but you can also now brew their famous, turbo-charged coffee at home, thanks to the offering of Starbucks ground coffee and coffe beans in the coffee section of most grocers.

And I'm no different from anyone else. I've got my favorite Starbuck's addiction too, and it's called a Double Tall White Chocolate Mocha. The fact that almost anyone can tell you what size a "Tall", "Grande" and "Venti". What do these translate into? Small, medium and large of course.

But how much fun is it to utter these sizes when ordering? You almost feel like you're part of a coffee-savvy society - this is all by design too. Drinking fancy coffees has now become akin to drinking wine. It's a form of conisseurship now, a secret society of sorts, thanks to Starbucks.

It's almost gotten to the point where carrying around a Starbucks coffee has become a status symbol. We all see the tabloids showing celebrities carrying their Starbucks Lattes and Soy Mochas. Starbucks has it all figured out, right down to the name they picked for their workers, "Baristas", and the very name of the company, which I've read orginates from the popular American classic novel "Moby Dick".

Not only that, Starbucks bucked the system, so to speak, when they didn't pay attention to the accepted price ceilings that were established when they started to get popular. They went over that price, making it seem as though they were offering a "gourmet" specialty product to attract a sort of "it" crowd, and spreading to those of us in the middle class by association.

It's absolute marketing and branding genius.