Starbucks #RaceTogether Campaign

The first Starbucks was created in 1971 in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market. To many people, especially those who weren’t from Seattle had no idea what ‘Starbucks” was. In 1981 a man by the name of Howard Schultz ‘s entered into the single-owned Starbucks. By August 1987, Howard Schultz’s purchased the Starbucks store with the help of investors. That was roughly almost 30 years ago. Since 2014 Starbucks has about 21,366 stores in the world. That’s a lot compared to the single Starbucks purchased back in 1987. The estimated network of Starbucks is set at $70.9 billion.

Starbucks has done a few different campaigns in the past. Some of those campaigns included: Race Together, Come Together, and there first ever brand entertainment campaign.

The Campaign I chose to focus on is Race Together. Starbucks had the idea that if they could incorporate race into conversations with customers then it would somehow make things better. Sadly this is the opposite of what happened.  The campaign was put together after killings of unarmed black men from Ferguson to New York. There started to be riots all over which sparked a lot of tension about race.  Schultz’s had the
idea to bring the conversation forward rather than remain “silent”. He said that by remaining silent we become apart of the problem. So, Starbucks employees were instructed to right hash tag #RaceTogether on cups and social media. In a statement released, Schultz said, “If we keep going our business and ringing the Starbucks register every day and ignoring this, then I think we are, in a sense, part of the problem”. Only after the company received a lot of backlash, they campaign was taken down and brushed under the rug.

The target audience was everyone- to come together as one and stop the feud that has been ‘brewing’ for quite some time now. A public advocate was cited on the, Fortune webpage where Apple was applauded after successfully engaging in a campaign where the CEO, Time Cook, condemned religious freedom laws. Companies such as Apple, Wal-Mart, the NBA, and Angie’s List noticed that the religious freedom laws in which legislators were struggling with wasn’t being solved. Tim Cook, Apple, stepped up and released a statement directing it at how “ we were too slow on equality for African-Americans. We were too slow on interracial marriage, and we are still too slow for the equality for the LGBT.” With this statement alone, Cook received a lot of encouragement from the public for speaking up- not how Starbucks did for Race Together, but about all minorities in America.  All the while, later on in that same week Cook released that he was gay and proud of it.

According to an article written by Nicholas Pearce of the Fortune, he stated “all discrimination is indeed bad for business, Starbucks should not have had to stand alone to face critics questioning whether the company had a compelling business need for encouraging a national conversation via its ‘RaceTogether’ campaign, while Apple’s Cook is met with admiration and joined by a veritable who’s who of corporate titans and Hollywood A-listers.”

Although Starbucks strategy attempted to bring awareness to the racial tension in society, it did receive feedback. Whether that feedback was good or bad, it still was a risk they were willing to take, or a risk they thought would be successful. There is no doubt about it that the strategy is driven by racial tension. The power of racial tension in today’s society is bad and for Starbucks it was almost like a free ride to more money, thinking that stirring racial controversy up would help. This may be the difference in approach from Starbucks to apple.

                        -Sharnae White

Cites:

 http://fortune.com/2015/04/03/the-discrimination-debate-why-it-hurt-starbucks-but-worked-for-apple/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/30/tim-cook-comes-out/18165361/

https://storify.com/cnsmi100/race

Old Spice Breach in Persuasive Ethics

A lot of times companies violate persuasive ethics, and the sad part is – they know they do. Companies violate persuasive ethics to be more pleasing to there audience they’re targeting. A way for a company to successfully do this is by drawing you into their product, but even that receives backlash from consumers.

An example of a breach in persuasive ethics is the Old Spice Commercial, which is labeled “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”. The commercial first starts off with an African-American male talking to his audience, women. The man started the commercial by saying “Hello Ladies!” It is a bit odd that women are they target audience of a men’s fragrance commercial. The man proceeds to tell woman that “If they’re man used Old Spice” then they would be able to have everything they’ve ever wanted.

            Throughout the commercial, which was roughly 35 seconds, the man moved from a shower to a boat. He told women “if they’re man used Old Spice” they could be on a boat. Following this, the Old Spice bottle disappears from his hands and two tickets pop up then pearls. The man insists that women have been dying to go see ‘that’ show or wanted ‘that’ jewelry.

This is a great example of a violation in persuasive ethics because Old Spice is targeting women, but not in a good way. They ‘assume’ that women want a man who has a boat, can buy her pearls, and tickets to a show. This makes men look good, but it gives the implication that women are money hungry. It doesn’t make sense to target women- when reality is that your target audience is men. After all, it is a men’s product they are promoting.

This is also a breach in persuasive ethics because it encourages men to buy the product for all the wrong reason. Old Spice doesn’t simply say “buy our product because it smells good”, because to be honest- its plain and boring. Men are also being sexualized to look the part of a ‘macho man’, which a fit, strong, and the perfect man. The false reality that Old Spice gives off is that if you purchase their product you will also become (if not already) strong, fit, and the perfect man.  On the Old Spice webpage they stated, “We're not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it.” So, I guess in a sense they aren’t “lying”, but the rest of the sentence ‘but we are insinuating it” as if it will really happen.

This leads to be disliking a product. If they ‘think’ that purchasing a product with ‘enhance’ there ability at something then the likelihood of them purchasing the product is very high. This breach of ethics impacts the situation because it gives off a false reality of both men and women.

                                 -Sharnae White

Courses:

http://oldspice.com/en/content/the-man-your-man-could-smell-like
https://advsoc2013.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/the-man-your-man-could-smell-like/

Clock or Bomb?

A very big issue or conflict that has come about in the past couple of weeks, is the supposed "Homemade clock" or so they thought it was a "bomb" made by a high school student. The high school students name is Ahmed Mohamed, who went to school in Irving, Texas. There are two contrasting viewpoints after the "homemade clock" was confiscated by police. One side is that the boy intentionally brought the clock in to school to perhaps scare people or make a statement, but on the other side, he's just a very intelligent young man who wanted to show off what he could do- wanting no harm.  

The first source I came across was the New York Times, who wrote there point of view more-so on the young mans side. The New York Times gave examples of the boys interest (such as NASA), or how he wants to go to M.I.T. This article also stated who reached out to Ahmed, President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and even Mark Zuckerberg; all who which congratulated Ahmed on being so talented and intelligent to make such a cool gadget from scratch. these three public figure didn't want this to turn into other young students perhaps not trying there best or feeling discouraged, all of which different media sources or reporting due to his religious beliefs. One might argue that President Obama involving himself in a situation like so was not appropriate or what he should be focusing on. The reason for President Obama responding to this could be for a couple of reasons, but none that have been spoken about by the president and/or his staff. Some might assume because he's Muslim himself, but then again that’s just allegations. 

The other article I read was by CNN, who wrote more toward a general and not so biased opinion. in this article CNN stated that, "Irvin police spokesman Officer James McLellan told the station," we attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only tell us that it was a clock"". Now this is crazy, the police department obviously doing there job and taking the proper precautions, were implying that it was a bomb. seeing that this was a statement made by the spokesman of the police department, in the statement he made it wasn’t included that they didn’t take proper precautions when they first got to the school about not putting everyone on lock down. From this point of view one might argue that it was due to his name or because he was Islamic.  

All in all this topic is getting global attention. This was a juvenile who was accused of making a "bomb", which ended up being an actual "homemade clock". This is about the fact that to some extent did his race or religious views play a part in this? Or is it that he knew bringing this clock to school wasn’t a good idea, but he knew something would brew from it? These are all questions and statements that may never be answered, but one can only wonder is this was just an intelligent mind, showing off his talents; or someone who wanted to make a scare out of it. 

More later, 

Sharnae W(r)HITE(s) 

Sources: 

CNN -  http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/

NYT - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/texas-student-is-under-police-investigation-for-building-a-clock.html?_r=0

Good afternoon Bloggers!


Get ready for some awesome blogs to come.


Thanks!!

Sharnae