Watch Neil Cavuto and Dave Sutton Go Head-to-Head

For three hours this week, customers were unable to get their caffeine-fix at the nations largest chain of coffee houses. Under the auspices of improving customer service, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz shut down over 7,000 stores to re-train the company’s 135,000 employees. Was this an honest attempt to make an investment in improving the customer experience or was it just a shameless publicity stunt?

Well, it’s the morning after and it seems that it was the latter.

Millions of loyal customers returned to their local Starbucks this morning to find that… nothing really changed. When I asked my barista this morning what they did last night, her response was: “We had a lot of fun – we learned how to make espresso again…”. Honestly, I was glad to hear that they had a good time and returned to work energized and ready to “transform the customer experience” as Howard Schultz promised. However, couldn’t they have taken their “coffee break” on their own time rather than inconveniencing their customers? Every other quick serve restaurant chain manages to train their people without closing up shop. Why couldn’t they have one shift serving coffee and another shift going through training – then switch it up and you don’t miss a beat? The answer: this move was clearly not about training. It was about getting a lot of free publicity for the brand and making a statement: Starbucks wants us to know that they care about customer service. Got it. But here’s the thing, it takes a lot more than a 3-hour training session to transform an organization of 135,000 into a high-performance service culture. Howard should have checked in with the folks at Ritz Carlton to see what this really takes before making this kind of promise.

I was happy to see that the competition did not miss the obvious opening here: Starbucks put all of their customers in play. For those seeking a little after dinner coffee drinking experience, there was no choice but to try something different. Dunkin’ Donuts quickly responded by offering 99 cent espresso drinks between the hours of 1pm and 10pm – hoping to lure loyal Starbucks customers over to their side. Part of me kinda’ hoped that they would have gone a step further this morning and launched a campaign claiming that: “The Dunkin’ Donuts coffee drinking experience is so great that they forced Starbucks to shut down to play catch-up.” The marketing executives at McDonald’s must be lovin’ it as they watch this play out… McDonald’s hasn’t even launched their espresso beverage program yet and they’ve already got Starbucks going on the defensive, shutting down their business and scrambling to convince their customers that they are committed to improving the customer experience.

Looking back, the 70’s were a great decade for the marketing discipline thanks to the spirited competition of the “Cola Wars”. For consumers, it was fun to watch! But more importantly, the fierce competition forced marketers to innovate and hone their craft. Looking forward, this decade could be shaping up to be just as exciting for consumers and marketers as we gear up for the “Coffee Wars”. Gulp!

Undoubtedly every company is thinking about how to best weather our recent market downturn. Without delving into the debate of whether or not we are in a recession, I do want to pose a question to all of you: How should companies be shifting their marketing and getting the most out of their budgets? Eliminate entire marketing channels or vehicles? Scale back overall spending with the same allocation? Spend more? Try new things?

With so many more ways to reach customers than during the last downturn in 2001, we may see either some extinctions of recent innovations or the decline of some old standbys. If 2008 is anything like the (pre-market downturn) end of 2007… there will be blood. Second Life is one such recent innovation, but it was most definitely not the first attempt to bring users together in a 3-D interactive environment.. In fact, I met with companies from North Carolina, Israel, and Japan between 1999 and 2002 that, quite frankly, were not much different. The difference seems to be that Second Life “tipped”.

Having grown to 12 million registrations, growth has slowed and the population online right now (at night even) is just over 45,000. That number seems even worse when you think how vast Second Life is. Marketplace reported last month that companies were leaving. “American Apparel led the in-world exodus last spring. Starwood Hotels, AOL and Wells Fargo followed”.

I have not heard of advertising success stories, but the fact that a company is willing to try still seems to generate positive press—and reach more people than the intended campaign. For example- I just searched and found that Turkish companies were advertising on Second Life. Good for them.

So why is Second Life “failing”? It’s a hassle to set everything up? We’re all too busy? There’s a fundamental disconnect between real life products and a world populated by people trying to escape it? Perhaps a company positioning itself more around people’s real personas will do better with branded environments and metaworld promotions. Kaneva is one such company. Still, Kaneva is a walled garden and anything that can be replicated or bettered in an open environment probably will win the battle for virtual mind share.

Even if advertisers all leave Second Life, it will still be a fun place to go. Besides–my alter ego is hard to shop for anyway..

The company that did the best job conveying it’s Brand Image, Product and Service offerings, leveraging cross-sell, up-sell and any other “sell you can think of” opportunities and did so in an entertaining, highly integrated manner that should make all marketers sit back and reflect on the opportunities they missed on a daily basis. And the winner was, none other than the host of the event – - FOX.

Every company – and particularly Fox’s media competitors – should take notice of how Fox leveraged its investment in NFL football and its sponsorship of the greatest social spectacular invented by mortals. As the event played on, I became less interested in the vitamin water horsing around, lackluster auto hybrids and gratuitous Go-Daddy ads and more interested in how Fox made the most efficient use of promoting its programming and other media properties to the millions of “captive eyeballs”. And they did so in interesting ways that integrated not only the NFL, its players and the Super Bowl, but also its advertisers to promote the various Fox properties. Importantly, they were true to their Brand identity – consistently using technology and edgy creative to support their sports and entertainment programming and a brilliant rendition of the Declaration of Independence supporting the American values of patriotism, equality and support of our armed forces, which sounds like Fox News. (Whether you like Fox News or not, this is what they do)
Unfortunately, I was not prescient enough to realize what I was about to witness, so I must rely on recall – and I am confident I can recall more of their tie-in opportunities than I can the commercials! Let me count the ways:

1. The pre-game show was different from previous years and attempted to replicate the Academy Awards. It was filled with interesting features all hosted by various Fox personalities including Ryan Seacrest as the MC, Jillian Barberie providing an insider’s view of the Super Bowl “Hot” Parties and interviews with celebrities and former football players hosted by non-football Fox personalities from the various Fox Groups. They turned the time prior to the game into a social event, not just 5 hours of football “talking heads” and leveraged all of their assets to do so.
2. Next, American Idol winner Jordan Sparks, whose father was a former pro football player, was front and center for the Star Spangled Banner. Later, Fox and Idol used Ben Roethlisberger, a recent Super Bowl star, to hawk American Idol. Some have said Ben qualified for the worst performance; however they miss the point of why Americans like the first few weeks of Idol so much – they can relate to the bad singers, can’t imagine embarrassing themselves like this and certainly can’t understand why the contestants would put themselves in this position. Great job Ben!
3. Joe Buck prominently and frequently reminded people to go to MySpace.com to see any commercials they may have missed. Nice way to help the advertisers get additional exposure; and by the way, Fox owns it.
4. Leveraging the imagery and equity of the Fox Football robots to tie into the sponsorship by the Sara Connor Chronicles (Terminators) and staying with the metal theme to hawk the start of NASCAR.
5. The selection of Tom Petty for the Halftime Show not only resulted in great entertainment, but enabled Fox to plug King of the Hill a Fox Show featuring Petty as the voice of Luke, one of the animated stars.
6. Finally, Hugh Laurie doing his version of Tom Petty setting up his special broadcast of House following the Super Bowl.
I could go on and on. The point is, networks buy sports properties to sell their programming. Fox did a great job of doing this and doing it in a way that fit with its brand image.
How many companies / large brands can honestly say they integrate their marketing efforts or take advantage of every opportunity to deliver their brand consistently as well as Fox did during the Super Bowl. Most companies fail to do so because they don’t plan far enough out or are unable to cut across functional walls or multiple Divisions within their organizations. Yet, this was not an issue for Fox – they cut across multiple Divisions to integrate and cross promote – and the consumer knew it was coming from Fox, as it had edge and was bold and in your face – what Fox sells.
My hat’s off to Fox – I am quite confident they will continue to print money while their competitors continue to face challenges. We can all learn a marketing lesson from the Super Bowl.