
The big news this past week in Web 2.0 world: Starbucks dipped its toe into the pool where community and customers converge.
They launched a new Web site, MyStarbucksIdea. It’s essentially a Dell IdeaStorm clone designed to get feedback from customers. Give us your ideas on how to improve Starbucks, they say. Sounds fairly straightfoward, but there is monumental disagreement as to whether this idea is good, bad, or somewhere in between.
Is it merely a virtual suggestion box with voting? That’s the take of many people on Jim Romenesko’s StarbuckGossip.com, a site that’s always been critical of the company. “MyStarbucksIdea.com was clearly inspired by my site, which was created nearly four years ago to move barista/customer conversations to the Web,” Romenesko tells the Seattle Times. “My site will continue to thrive because it’s an authentic reflection of how customers and employees feel about the company. MyStarbucksIdea.com, on the other hand, is clearly a corporate propaganda site.”
He’s right about one thing. It’s missing the big detail that marks a true community: authenticity.
The way I see it, the site looks like a collection of possible improvements their marketing department already knew their customers wanted. Give us free Wi-Fi. Stop selling those warmed-over breakfast sandwiches and start serving something healthy like fruit. Give me a free cup of coffee on my birthday. I bet they’ve heard nearly all of these ideas before. I can’t help but imagine their marketing department sitting in a massive room scribbling out a giant flow-chart bracket on a whiteboard — their own version of March Madness.
But, it may be unduly harsh to call it propaganda. Yes, it’s censored and filtered, and yes, it’s wearing a grass-roots disguise, but it is doing one thing right: involving customers in conversations about Starbucks’ products. Whether you love or hate Starbucks, I think they deserve some credit for this relatively bold step. They need to lose their impulse to control the conversation if they want to be seen as legitimately caring about what their customers have to say, but it is a step in the right direction.
I’m betting that Starbuck’s new foray into customer feedback is an idea that nearly every media-savvy Forbes 500 executive will be pondering this week. If this idea gets co-opted and adopted by others, here’s hoping they get the other half right — the true community involvement — and not just ladle in an extra helping of marketing.
Starbucks is on Get Satisfaction.]



