Brand Avenue

Starbucks Writ Large

Intrigued by the recent public fretting of Starbucks' corporate leadership (such as this enlightening 2007 email from CEO Howard Schultz) about the company's declining stock value and stagnant sales, I happened across this fascinating two-blog series of posts from two former company marketers, John Moore and Paul Williams, about what can be done to pump up the company's buzz.

Moore and Williams address Schultz's concerns regarding the loss of "romance and theatre" and sensory richness that long characterized the Starbucks experience for customers. Seeing as Starbucks has long promoted itself as a "third place" or community living room, it behooves an urbanist to pay attention. From Schultz:

For example, when we went to automatic espresso machines, we solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency. At the same time, we overlooked the fact that we would remove much of the romance and theatre that was in play with the use of the La Marzocco machines. This specific decision became even more damaging when the height of the machines, which are now in thousands of stores, blocked the visual sight line the customer previously had to watch the drink being made, and for the intimate experience with the barista....The loss of aroma -- perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had in our stores; the loss of our people scooping fresh coffee from the bins and grinding it fresh in front of the customer, and once again stripping the store of tradition and our heritage? Then we moved to store design. Clearly we have had to streamline store design to gain efficiencies of scale and to make sure we had the ROI on sales to investment ratios that would satisfy the financial side of our business. However, one of the results has been stores that no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store. Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee....While the current state of affairs for the most part is self induced, that has lead to competitors of all kinds, small and large coffee companies, fast food operators, and mom and pops, to position themselves in a way that creates awareness, trial and loyalty of people who previously have been Starbucks customers.

Schultz's problem is complicated: how does one introduce a sense of uniqueness into 13,000 stores while ensuring a uniform product? How can Starbucks cafes be both individualized enough to encourage customer loyalty and ownership, while upholding ubiquitous company-wide brand standards? Local and global?

Below: Starbucks in Melbourne; Tokyo; and Berlin (via).

Moore and Williams dissect the issues facing Starbucks into five interconnected elements: loss of "theatre;" loss of "coffee aroma;" loss of "store soul;" lack of merchandise focus; and loss of identity. In a time of big-box retail, clone towns and the like, it makes for excellent reading on the values of sameness and difference. The two produce an impressive amount of ideas for changes to everything from the brewing of espresso, to different product foci for different stores, to allowing "homemade" promotional materials, to new ways the company's local outlet can get involved in the goings-on of its immediate neighborhood--all in the service of customizing the experience of each store, while preserving the qualities that define the company's brand.

From Brand Autopsy, Moore's side of the series:

Starbucks is opening a minimum of six stores a day somewhere around the world. The company has mastered the build-out process of opening new stores fast and inexpensively....The Starbucks “Kit of Parts” approach is akin to children playing with paper dolls. You remember paper dolls, right? Armed with an outline of a person and pages full of plug ‘n play paper clothing cut-outs, a child could create numerous looks for a person or for a family of people. Starbucks took this same mindset to its store expansion process by designing a palette of plug ‘n play pieces which can fit any store size....These plug ‘n play design pieces include point of sale counters, condiment bars, wall art, merchandise wall bays, Frappuccino-prep stations, Espresso Machine stations, etc....But this "Kit of Parts" mentality is really an issue of control for Starbucks....Starbucks needs to continue giving more individual control to each and every Starbucks. Allow them to make more decisions at the store level....A homemade sign promoting a jazz trio performance will not detract from the strength of the Starbucks brand. The time has come for [Schultz] to invest in giving his stores more creative control. To counter the loss of store soul and to inject warm neighborhood feelings, [Schultz] needs to unleash the power of creativity at the store-level. He needs the soul of Starbucks to shine through decisions made at the level closest to the customer—the store. After all, that’s what Mom & Pop shops do.

Why is this important? For the architectural ramifications of Starbucks' re-branding and the future of the "third place," of course; but also for Moore's and Williams' careful consideration of how the customer experience is orchestrated, and how stores are differentiated. These are design issues analogous to architects (such as Anna Klingmann), planners (such as Jan Gehl) and real estate developers seeking to deliver buildings, neighborhoods, and even cities that provide the kind of variation, amenities, and "quality of life"--that complex combination of ubiquity and uniqueness--that people desire.

While writing the previous post, I ran across a point made by Andy Guy of the Michigan Land Use Institute, made during a 2006 walk through Grand Rapids, Michigan with a writer from Dwell, that seems appropriate here. What's good for Starbucks could be good for cities, ultimately:

We walk through downtown, with Monroe Avenue full of people, a warehouse district full of remodeled factories and lofts, and up on the hill a huge new medical complex under construction signaling Grand Rapids’ intent to attract health-industry jobs. “The way that we develop is essential to how we compete in the global marketplace,” Guy says. “If we just look like anyplace else, who’s going to want to live here?”

A high premium is placed on unique urban identity, then; and it seems more difference is always better. Witness starchitecture and the drive for recognizable icons; witness the global contest between cities for the best and the brightest, articulated through the lens of lifestyle and cultural accoutrements, compellingly articulated in Richard Florida's ongoing work.

As a counterpoint, consider Rem Koolhaas' plan for Waterfront City in Dubai, his vision of the "generic city" brought to life. It is a statement of global monoculture--saturated with global brands, I'm sure--to be wrought in 3D:

His argument was that in its profound sameness, the generic city was a more accurate reflection of contemporary urban reality than nostalgic visions of New York or Paris....Designed for one of the biggest developers in the United Arab Emirates, Nakheel, Mr. Koolhaas’s master plan for the proposed 1.5-billion-square-foot Waterfront City in Dubai would simulate the density of Manhattan on an artificial island just off the Persian Gulf.

A mix of nondescript towers and occasional bold architectural statements, it would establish Dubai as a center of urban experimentation as well as one of the world’s fastest growing metropolises....The core of the development would be the island, which would be divided into 25 identical blocks. Neat rows of towers — some tall and slender, others short and squat, depending on the zoning — line the blocks, as if a fragment of Manhattan had been removed with a scalpel and reinserted in the Middle East.

One wonders about the pratfalls of creating something so purposely generic, especially in light of reading about corporate giants attempting to reinvent themselves, and particularly when "generic" urban conditions already exist in so many places. Additionally specific environmental considerations, such as Dubai's forbidding climate, would seem to impact the concept. Nevertheless, if built Waterfront City would prove an immense work-in-progress in organization, repetition and differentiation at a grand scale. Ironically what would set it apart from other urban districts worldwide is its intentionally nondescript character.

A City on the Move

Narrated by then-Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh, a 1965 video touting the virtues of Detroit (both parts, below) is fascinating, not only for how dated and problematic it is.

Yes, it misses large parts of a story everyone knows; one about a city in steep decline, wracked by economic loss and racial strife. It predates the riots that tore the city apart two years later, and makes little mention of how the city's dependence on its automobile industry has and will continue to shape it, for better and worse. I am greatly simplifying here--you have to turn to the pages of Middlesex or Them to get a more qualitative, experiential sense of Detroit's modern rise and fall; and to sites like Detroitblog to understand the city's unreal physical fabric. You have to look to things like the Michigan Land Use Institute, Cool Cities, and Model D to get some hope for the area's future.

But, regardless of all that--regardless of the utterly ridiculous scene with the urban planners and their creepy yearning for greater "urban efficiency"--the film is an interesting historical relic, and provides a good jumping-off point to a discussion of urbanism, marketing, and urban planning. (Note that this was a video produced to lure the 1968 Summer Olympics to the city.)

Cavanaugh's dull monologue about the 1960s being Detroit's "finest hour" touches on cultural amenities more than you'd expect, covering fine dining, architecture, music, parks, libraries, and theatre, thereby obliquely implying the construction of a sophisticated lifestyle. In this way, minus the obviously deficient production values and uninspired delivery, the video is not so different from many videos, animations and renderings that cities, neighborhoods and development projects rely on nowadays to promote themselves and to transmit a sense of place. (Related: here, here, and here)

Naturally, one of the flip sides of comparing marketing materials of yore to those of the present is that some of today's will look naively ominous and even silly in hindsight just like the 1965 film does. Another pertinent lesson comes from Elizabeth Currid's recent, and excellent, book The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City: that the things usually left unmentioned in the conventional story of place (in this case, jazz, the Motown sound and electronic music immediately come to mind) are just as central to a city's sense of itself and its economic vitality as the large corporations and traditional cultural institutions. A strong, interwoven set of narratives is centrally important to capture and express, for any planner, designer, or developer trying to market an idea. Cavanaugh's triumphant, simplistic presentation of the city's amenities strikes the viewer as ignorant and outdated, but that's because it is.

Returning to the excellent Model D--who, in my estimation, inherently understand Currid's argument--check out their trove of videos, all of which explore Detroit, its people, businesses, places, and other uniquenesses in fresh ways.

A Means of Independence

Both Archidose and the Whereblog tagged this site in a meme about books, specifically regarding the contents of specific sentences following the fifth one on page 123 of the nearest book. For me, this is Ha Jin's most recent novel, A Free Life, a spare but powerful story of Chinese immigrants in the US of the 1990s that I purchased on a whim at a great little bookstore a couple of months ago.

Turning to page 123 of A Free Life produces dialogue translated from Chinese between the book's principal figure, the erstwhile academic Nan; Bao, the editor of a small, New York-based, Chinese-language literary journal; and Liu, an elderly scholar. I'm bending the rules a bit to include more than the allotted three sentences:

"Can you drive?"
"I just got my license."
"You're very brave," Nan put in. "I wouldn't dare to drive in New York!"
"I have to be able to drive, or else I'd feel as if I'm missing a limb. Also, as long as I live here, I'll have to make a living on my own. A driver's license is a means of independence. Once I can drive really well, I'll deliver food for a restaurant."
"You shouldn't do that. You have poor eyesight, don't you?" said Bao.
The old man laughed heartily. "Maybe I can deliver computer parts in the daytime. Anyway, driving a car on the highway gives me a feeling of freedom. What fun! What exhiliration! Do you want to see my car?"

Though I think saying that this passage reveals anything especially significant pertaining to this blog (or me, for that matter) is a bit of a stretch, I do appreciate that it highlights a craving for mobility, which certainly ties to issues of place and space. It's something I think is rather central to living in a city, and perhaps especially strong in a North American one. I also like how it coincides with the book's title, which in turn describes the protagonist's main goal: "a free life" is one that is almost by definition a mobile one, economically, socially, and physically.

Now, to pass the favor on and tag five more sites...

Space and Culture

Bricoleurbanism

Neighborhoods.org

Life Without Buildings

Off Brand

Year Three

As February gives way to March, Brand Avenue begins its third year online! A few highlights and/or personal favorites from the last year:

- Elizabeth Diller and Richard Scofidio's use of storyboards to plan and explain the Phantom House, the energy-efficient home of the near future. The narrative integrates the vagaries of a normal day with the home's technologies and design cues, revealing the "how" and the "why" of the project in doing so. This reinforces the primacy of design for everyday living.

Follow along as "J" and "M" go about their day:

As M's car comes within five miles of the house, the Home on the Go unit triggers the DomestiSleep and RapidCool systems to awaken the house and begin to cool it down. M walks inside, throws off his jacket, and prepares a martini. Realizing he has forgotten to pick up the chilies and the turmeric, M leaves J a message and rushes out, overriding the DomestiSleep system.

Long story short: fiction writers and architects ought to team up more often (like this! wow!). All would benefit.

- Those who would brand hotel chains (through the selection of everything from sheets to showerheads) are faced with a fascinating challenge, as explored in August:

Since 2005, some 31 (hotel) brands have been announced, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, more than at anytime since 1988-89, when 27 were introduced. And with this increased competition, identifying market segments and customer preferences has become essential to creating customer loyalty -- which is where the showerhead, among other details, becomes crucial....Competition...has taken the art and science of hotel branding to a new level. Enormous resources are being poured into researching and designing hotel rooms, lobbies, amenities and services -- all intended to inspire brand loyalty by creating what hoteliers hope will be a distinctive experience for guests.

The hotel's design touches work in concert to respond to broader trends in shelter, thus framing a unique experience that a traditional hotel cannot. Guests can live among the trappings of loft living, if only for a night or two. (Below, the guest "lofts" of the Nylo chain. More here.)

- I reviewed a few good books this past fall, and there will definitely be more in the coming months. For the time being though, I'm looking forward to digging into this and this soon.

- What does a city really feel like? Explore through the highly personal lenses of timelapse photography. How does music impact the image of place? What does your town sound like? (Below, Vancouver, rather beautifully.)

I would expect as many of us know firsthand the sensation of walking around town with headphones in, we realize we have some ideas about how these things can go together. Am I right?

- Several posts in this last year gravitated toward the frontier between retail strategy and urbanism, from one concerning the outdoor apparel store Nau to a few exploring the configuration of main streets and public spaces, in terms of traffic, retail offerings, and form. We looked at the design of a new plaza in San Francisco, with event programming and retail outlets chosen to compliment each other; and a new boulevard in suburban Madrid, with ingenious "air trees" growing in its middle.

For fun, here's a few more things to consider, that I just haven't gotten the chance to mention:

- Speaking of boulevards, Boston's Big Dig, the complex, decade-long transformation of a 3.5-mile swath through the downtown of one of America's most storied cities, is now officially finished. Where an interstate highway once stood is now the Rose Kennedy Greenway. So now what? (Photos via Flickr.)

- The brilliant City of Sound posted a fascinating piece recently about technology in the street of the near future, what's visible and what isn't. Perhaps the Phantom House will be built nearby:

Imagine film of a normal street right now, a relatively busy crossroads at 9AM taken from a vantage point high above the street, looking down at an angle as if from a CCTV camera. We can see several buildings, a dozen cars, and quite a few people, pavements dotted with street furniture. Freeze the frame, and scrub the film backwards and forwards a little, observing the physical activity on the street. But what can’t we see?...

We can’t see how the street is immersed in a twitching, pulsing cloud of data. This is over and above the well-established electromagnetic radiation, crackles of static, radio waves conveying radio and television broadcasts in digital and analogue forms, police voice traffic.  This is a new kind of data, collective and individual, aggregated and discrete, open and closed, constantly logging impossibly detailed patterns of behaviour. The behaviour of the street.

Read on.

- And finally, at the intersection of landscape architecture, humor, cultural identity, iconography, and massive infrastructural undertaking, there is the semi-serious proposal for a new island off the coast of Holland, just one of so many enormous building schemes being dreamt up worldwide nowadays. It's hard to believe that a 50 km-long, tulip-shaped landform is what's necessary to solve a nation's problems, but that's exactly the premise.

Again, many thanks for reading! Feel free to get in touch.