As many of you may have heard, Starbucks stock is not doing so well and they are hoping to get back to the basics, returning to their more hands-on entrepreneurial roots.
One means for accomplishing this is an open invitation to customers to offer "great ideas" in a variety of store and sales-related areas that other loyalists have the opportunity to vote on.
Now, we must come clean and say that we rarely hit Starbucks unless we are in the airport or are craving one of their killer maple scones. That said, we don't have anything against them or their corporate ways, though frankly even if we did, we would have ignored our feelings, because where Starbucks sees grassroots growth opportunity, we see a wonderful opportunity to market Lucky Man to the masses.
So, we submitted the following "great idea" on March 24th under the "Merchandise and Music" section:
"How about carrying a truly off the radar and obscure independently published debut novel and giving a percentage of the proceeds to the charity of the author's choice?
Because I have written such a book - Lucky Man - and have such a charity in mind - Prevent Child Abuse America - where I am the Director of Strategic Communications.
Cool idea, right?"
The "I" referenced above is TBWCL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and the idea would seem to appeal to all the kinds of vectors Starbucks seems to love and embrace - selling anything they can, independent media, quasi-hipster cred and social causes.
Thus far we have not heard from the brass at Starbucks headquarters about our "great idea," nor has our "great idea" received any votes or comments. We of course are as surprised about this as you probably are, and so we invite you to visit the Starbucks website and vote for our idea.
We thank you in advance for your time, and while It's not clear to us at this point what we can offer you for doing so, we will think of something, for sure. No, really, we will, because like Starbucks we too appreciate customer loyalty.
2 comments:
Great idea, Ben! But please, for your own safely, put the Cup o' Joe shirt away when you deal with them. :) Much as I love CoJ, you're not dealing with Dunkin' Donuts now--the 'Bucks is fully capable of pulling some old-time gangster stuff! I'd just hate to see you turn into a statistic.
Your warning is duly noted, your desire to protect us is greatly appreciated. That said, long live the CoJ.
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