March 2010

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Today was the annual meeting of Starbucks shareholders. From my stance, here’s what happened:  Early on, I walked in and met up with numerous people from digital strategy who were showing off MyStarbucksIdea.com.  I finally got to meet Colin Frolich on the brewed coffee team, who previously I’d managed to miss at an event here or there. In some ways, the part of the meeting that felt like seeing my ‘Starbucks family’ was meeting up with the SSC partners that I already know. I’m not going to call out everyone’s names because that would be indecorous, but I know a few partners associated with PR, and some digital strategy people, and a few coffee people, all of whom are wonderful. Obviously I have real soft spot for digital strategy because that is the place where Melody’s world most overlaps with Starbucks (outside of the sheer love of coffee).

The meeting started, and it was pretty short this year, (or at least it felt like it). Sheryl Crow performed a couple of songs.  Though it did feel a bit like watching 1990s era VH1, I still enjoyed it very much.

During the various executive presentations, the audience heard from Cliff Burrows, Annie Young-Scrivner, Michelle Gass, Howard Schultz, Troy Alstead and John Culver.  Unfortunately, Troy Alstead’s portion of the meeting, as always, is a snore. It’s not his fault that he gets the snore portion of the meeting. I suppose the financials of the corporation are sexy if you’re a large scale investor, or into that, but for me, unfortunately, he puts me to sleep. Again, not his fault, it’s just the material that he gets to deliver.

I was unable to listen to much of anything out of Annie Young-Scrivner‘s mouth because of her distracting attire. A bright purple outfit, and she appeared to be wearing no nylons, and shocking strappy huge high heel shoes that are not appropriate for much of anything other than perhaps a hot date with a rich man.  I was not the only one to be stunned by the shoes, as I sat near to @Smoovebcoffee who noticed them as well. The heels of the shoes double as weapon in case of emergency.

Michelle Gass rocked as always and wore a stylish red dress and appropriate conservative pair of low-heeled shoes.  She talked about Seattle’s Best Coffee’s growing world of possibilities with franchising coming soon, and increased partnership with other corporations such as Burger King and Subway.  It’s exciting to see Starbucks leverage this brand for increased financial growth, and bringing another coffee option to millions of customers. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a Michelle Gass fan.  She’s very smart and talented, and a long-term partner.  In all honesty, I think there is great opportunity with Seattle’s Best Coffee to deliver and expand high quality coffee to many more consumers without dilution of the Starbucks brand. If the Starbucks brand were placed in partnership with too many business like Subway and Burger King, the fast food stigma would permanently attach to the brand. Instead, with Seattle’s Best, the corporation has the opportunity for increased growth without consequential brand dilution.  Just my two cents.

[[Edit: I have another episode of StarbucksMelody.com featuring Michelle Gass. It is  Should Starbucks' Michelle Gass go on CBS' UnderCover Boss?]]

The question and answer period of the meeting was quite the disappointment.  Starbucks fielded three separate gun questions.  One person asked a question about Via in jars, which somehow seemed oddly familiar to being the identical question from the same person in 2009.

I genuinely was nervous. It’s way harder to talk to a large group of powerful business leaders than a small jury of random six Seattleites during a misdemeanor trial.  I had almost hoped that Howard would say something funny again (he’s quite good at that) but instead he was simply 100% professional.  I know that he is aware of this blog, but I really doubt that he is aware of the extent of my involvement with Starbucks. That’s okay though.  My question was a two-part question on Starbucks loyalty programs: “What lessons were learned from the rapid changing and evolving programs from 2008 to 2010? And what improvements will we see in the future for MyStarbucksRewards?“  Annie Scrivner-Young fielded the question who simply did NOT answer me and responded with a canned reply that customers want free drinks and did not want to pay $25 for a Gold card.  Actually her answer was hugely disappointing because it sounded like she didn’t listen to my question at all, and didn’t care.  There was NO attempt to even answer the second part of the question with what improvement might we see in the future with MyStarbucksRewards.  Nor at any time did she even attempt to talk about lessons learned from quickly-changing loyalty programs.  A more transparent answer might have admitted that it’s been confusing for baristas to go through a rapid metamorphosis of rewards programs.  (I still meet many baristas who really don’t understand them, and are unaware that you can receive ANY tall beverage free with a pound of whole bean coffee if paying with ANY registered card, loaded with money on it, at the green level of rewards or higher).

Former Starbucks partner Cindy nailed it when she described Annie’s answer as “canned“. The result was that I sat down feeling a bit low and thinking it hadn’t been worth it to embarrass myself in front of an audience of Starbucks leadership and shareholders.  That indeed was my least favorite part of the meeting.

After the meeting was over there was another round of socializing that left me in a whirlwind, and now headachey having not eaten for hours.  I ran across a friendly face from Starbucks PR department and made small talk with her for a while, somewhat awaiting an opportunity to pounce upon Howard Schultz for his autograph.  During this time, I met a bunch of new faces and I hope that at some later date I will still be able to place a name with a face.  Vivek Varma was introduced to me.  I confess I had no idea what to say to him, and it was clear that he was in a hurry, so it was truly a five to ten second, non-exciting introduction.  As I was waiting to catch up with Howard (far easier said than done), @CoreyDu came by and said “hello” to me.  He walked up and started talking to me in that tone of voice like as if I should already know him, and for a moment, I had no idea who he was.  Once he told me he was on twitter, I realized that we’re mutually following each other.  Suddenly it was like meeting an old friend. He was a very cool guy. Very real and kind, and easy to talk to. By the way, I do not say that about all the SSC folks who use twitter.  I can name many on twitter who seemingly are uninterested in engaging anyone who is ‘just a customer’.

Finally my chance came to meet up with Howard Schultz. Several weeks earlier, I had had some twitter conversation with @SBirr who is truly a huge Starbucks fan in Germany. I had asked him to send me a few items from Germany, and in exchange I told him that I would at least try to get Howard’s autograph on a card for him, because I knew he badly wanted this.  He had asked me if I was capable of getting this, and I explained to him that I would have to wait until the annual meeting and see if I could.  This was the moment I had waited hours for. I asked Howard if he would autograph something for me.  He seemed pleasantly professional about it, and said “yes” but “just one thing”.  I said, “No – TWO things” and whipped out of my purse a sharpie and two Starbucks gift cards for his autograph, one for me, and one for @SBirr.  Howard gave in and said, “okay”.  I thanked him profusely.  Following Howard’s signatures on my cards, he was whisked away into a meeting, and I left.

And that is all there is to tell of my trip to the annual Starbucks meeting.