Many visitors to the Starbucks coffee chain know that its employees sometimes ask for the names of customers and write them on coffee cups. Sometimes they make funny mistakes in their names. There is a rumor that this is being done deliberately: supposedly in this way the company increases the number of mentions of the brand on social networks. Let's find out if this is really so.
This rumor has been circulating on the Internet for many years. The most popular publications distributing it are done in English. However, in Russian it can be found quite often. This is evidenced by popular publications in the media (1, 2, 3) and on social networks: in Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, TikTok). But is he true?
The manipulation is explained as follows: hundreds of people daily publish photos of their coffee cups with distorted names to make friends and subscribers laugh, and Starbucks marketers supposedly only need this, their brand awareness and sales are growing.
Where did this idea come from?
Some publications refer to interview 2014, in which an unnamed Starbucks barista actually claims (referring to his unnamed manager) that Starbucks employees use misspelled names as a marketing tool. However, it does not say to what extent this practice is supported by the company itself.
Other authors of publications (for example, Lenta.ru) refer to an experiment allegedly carried out in 2016 by members of the creative project Super Deluxe from Los Angeles, which has now ceased to exist. A video about this experiment and its results was published on YouTube and later deleted, but a description of its contents remained: a woman named Molly went to five different Starbucks coffee shops and bought coffee at each, receiving five different spellings of her name (including Vanilli and even Mommy). Based on this, the authors of Super Deluxe (and after them the media and bloggers in different countries) suggested that the company may make mistakes in names on purpose.
But we must understand that, firstly, Super Deluxe was known as a satirical and parody project, and the video could well have been staged, and secondly, even if the experiment was considered reliable, even in this case it would not prove that the distortion was intentional, much less that it was the result of the company’s marketing strategy.
What does Starbucks itself say?
On the Internet in several places there is a mention of one comment made by a company representative. For example, it is given in guest column by marketer and publicist Chris Matyszczyk on Inc.com on December 13, 2016. Matyshchik claims that he contacted Starbucks for clarification and received the answer: “We have never asked or ordered our partners to distort the names of our customers for one reason or another.”
On December 14, 2016, the same comment was quoted in article on the website glamour.com (without a link to Matyshchik).
The same statement appears word for word in article on Thrillist, published December 29, 2016 (no credit to Matyshchik or Glamor). However, the commentary is more extensive, and also includes other words from a company representative: "Writing names on glasses is a fun tradition that arose as a result of communication between employees and customers. Our [baristas] try our best to write customers' names correctly, but sometimes it can be difficult."
It appears that the press release was sent in December 2016 to multiple outlets that requested comment from Starbucks (most likely after the release of the Super Deluxe video).
This Starbucks comment resurfaced later. For example, in article 2023 at Mashed.com.
What do company employees say?
Some Internet users claiming to be employees (or former employees) of Starbucks also claimthat they never received instructions to distort names. And among the causes of errors they name more common ones:
- Coffee shops can be noisy and names are not always easy to hear
- many names have multiple spellings
- sometimes a mistake can be made due to haste
- some visitors have an accent that is not entirely clear
- and also Starbucks employees do not always speak the language of the country where they work well
We must also keep in mind that Starbucks is one of the world's largest employers. The coffee shops of this brand employ hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And the former employees count in the millions (given the staff turnover typical for catering and the long history of the company). This means that if such an instruction ever existed, sooner or later it would have leaked online, and many former employees of these coffee shops would have confirmed its existence. But we don't find anything like this on the Internet.
So, while the phenomenon exists and may even add to the brand's popularity, the claim that this is all a clever, conscious marketing strategy by Starbucks is most likely false.
Cover photo: Unsplash.com
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