Tapping into the Starbucks “flex”
As we consumers become more and more distracted, across more and more channels, the bar for ads has gotten higher and higher. Cutting through the noise is hard (especially for brands like Starbucks that once had a cult following, but now has to compete in a more crowded and commoditized industry).
This is why good ads are like mini movies. We expect to be entertained - to laugh or cry and feel pulled into the story. And the hope is that if the ad can achieve this, it will stick in our minds and influence our purchase behaviors.
But the reality is that not all ads, even really great ads, translate to behavior. If all it took was liking an ad, having an emotional reaction, and remembering it, business would be booming because there are a lot of ads out there that check these boxes.
To drive behavior, ads have to do more. A behavior is driven by a complex and unique set of psychological processes that happen together inside of someone’s brain and as they interact with the world around them – their environment, culture, and so on. The ad’s job is to trigger the right psychological dimensions to set this process in motion.
Lately, I (Julie) have been thinking about what this means for Starbucks. When I was in highschool in the late 90’s, early 2000’s Starbucks was booming. I have these really distinct memories of my Dad taking me to Starbucks on the way to school in the morning, and then sitting in class with my Latte. On those days I felt like a million bucks - not only did I have a nice warm drink, but it was a little flex. I felt special, like people were paying attention to me and were impressed, and it gave me a little pep in my step for the rest of the day.
Today when I go to Starbucks it's mostly when I’m traveling. I know exactly what I’ll get and I can order it ahead of time in the app. It's frictionless and reliable - and that’s about it. I never go out of my way to go to Starbucks, and I don’t really feel anything when I get it.
And Starbucks is struggling - they are facing declining sales, frustrating customers with higher prices, and losing ground as an innovator in a fragmented and highly competitive craft coffee market.
Could these trends have anything to do with Starbucks failing to fit their marketing to their audience’s psychology? To answer this question, we challenged the Hive platform.
We started with an audience (Module 1) because as we’ve described, in order to drive behavior, we have to know the specific psychological mechanisms that are involved. In this case, we wanted to understand what drives purchase behavior in the highest affinity Starbucks customers who more recently have become lackluster about the brand.
We saw about 22 predictive psychological dimensions that Starbucks could be matching to. High level: first we saw some expected patterns. This audience is more likely to be urban or suburban, higher income, and more professionally passionate. But two psychological dimensions in particular stood out to us, and really rang true to the old school Starbucks “flex”: Consumption self-signaling and Public self-consciousness.
Consumption self-signaling is when we use our purchases to communicate to other people who we are. This is essentially the psychological definition of a flex - a way to say ‘look at me world, I’m special, unique, and privileged’. When it comes to Starbucks, this means that this audience has a higher propensity to use Starbucks as a way to communicate to others who they are - as a flex.
Public self-consciousness is related, but adds a slight nuance. This is the tendency to focus on how you believe you appear to others, and the evaluations you believe others are making of you. We all think about this, but the people with a stronger affinity to Starbucks are constantly monitoring and managing other people’s perceptions of them.
Starbucks is part of how this audience expresses who they are (the flex) and the high-affinity buyers are predictably focused on this outward expression, and it drives their repeat purchase decision making.
This psychological process tracks with my own personal experience (as a teenager) - but it's not something that I see in a lot of ads today. So I went looking to see if Starbucks taps into this anymore (intentionally or not).
I found 2 ads that were interesting - both are compelling, tell a narrative, and stuck in my mind. But only one seemed to tap into these dimensions of consumption self-signalling and public self-consciousness:
Ad 1 - Study Buddy. In this ad, we see 2 friends. One surprises the other with a caramel macchiato right at the start of an exam.
Ad 2 - It Starts with You. In this ad we see a young trendy professional woman navigating her day with her Starbucks in toe, ending with the caption “It Starts with You”.
To test my hypothesis, I challenged the platform again and used Module 3 to see how aligned these ads are to the profile of the Starbucks die hard.
In terms of overall ratings, the ads scored similarly. They were both equally memorable (4.89 and 4.90 out of 7) and they both created strong positive emotions 5.1 and 4.8). So in terms of overall ad quality, they both do well.
Where they differ is in their fit to the unique psychology of the audience - the audience of high affinity buyers who Starbucks needs to bring back.
Ad 1 - Study Buddy fit 43% of audience dimensions
Ad 2 - It Starts with You fit 67% of audience dimensions
Ad 1 is still a good ad - it just doesn’t fit the audience as well psychologically. And importantly, it's missing the 2 key dimensions that define the Starbucks audience, and create the ‘flex’: Consumption self-signaling and Public self-consciousness.
Ad 2 was aligned on both of these dimensions.
So how did they do it? It’s subtle. But now that you know what to look for, you can see it.
Ad 1 is tapping psychological dimensions - just not the right ones.
This ad taps into the feelings you get from doing something nice and unexpected for someone you care about. And those feelings are awesome & emotional. But they don’t drive purchase behavior at Starbucks.
Ad 2 does a much better job of tapping into the “flex” dimensions.
In her initial confident stance, put-together appearance, and casual but controlled interaction with the barista, you can see that this woman is carefully maintaining the impression she makes on others. In the same shot you see her prominently holding her phone with poise. And then, she checks out her appearance on the back of an espresso machine or similar reflective object. This small detail is totally unrelated to the coffee or to the arch of the narrative, but it clearly signals to the viewers that this woman is concerned with how she appears to others, and that she puts effort and attention towards it = public self-consciousness.
The coffee cup is placed next to the computer as part of the remote work ambiance. The person on the call doesn’t see the coffee directly in this shot, but sees that she is at a Starbucks – and ties the purchase (coffee) directly to both a professional expression, and a social expression (in the bottom shot). It’s not about the coffee fueling these experiences, it’s about the coffee being an expression during these experiences – which is the self-signaling piece.
To bring back the Starbucks die-hards, the brand can more consistently tap into these (and a dozen other) dimensions across ads - and remind many of us how great it feels to have a Starbucks Latte by our side.
It is so much fun to use the Hive platform alongside our customers to not just bring new psychological dimensions into their creative, but also to match them to what is unique and predictive of action in their unique target markets.
