The former vice president of Global Digital Marketing at Starbucks Alexandra Wheeler will be joining the excellent lineup of this year’s Days of Communication festival. Her long experience includes the areas of brand development, integrated campaigns, digital strategy and social media. Since 2006, when she joined this world famous brand, she contributed significantly to the establishment of Starbucks as the number one social media brand.
In Rovinj, she will talk about how Starbucks uses the digital channels in a strategic way in combination with the offline experience of their stores in order to build brand awareness, love and devotion. Alexandra gave us a sneak preview of her lecture, along with some advice on the drawbacks of a company that does not function in a holistic way.
You are often credited for leading Starbucks into a more digitally oriented communication with their customers? How did the process start and what social media channels did it include?
It began with launching MyStarbucksIdea.com, an idea crowd-sourcing community, back in 2008 as part of the Company’s turn-around initiatives. With this, we listened to our customers in a new way and engaged in the online conversation around our brand. Later that year, we launched a presence on Twitter and Facebook, engaging with fans/customers in these channels. As new social channels emerged over the years, we would determine strategic fit and build a presence where it made sense, such as on the visual storytelling powerhouse Instagram. Ongoing evaluation of these communication channels and deciding where to invest resources is a critical part of the process.
How big was your team? How much of it was in-house and how much did it include collaboration with agencies?
The Global Digital Marketing (GDM) team grew from zero to about 85 full time partners (employees) and 45 contractors at its peak. Last fall, Starbucks Marketing underwent a reorganization which integrated the GDM team with other marketing teams. There’s been a healthy balance between work handled by the internal teams only and work that’s been done in collaboration with agency partners.
You said in one interview that digital has to be marketing, PR and customer service agnostic. What are the most common mistakes organizations make in this context?
Large, complex organizations can easily get tunnel vision and operate their brand in silos – marketing by individual businesses units or channels and not in thoughtful, holistic way for the brand and customer experience. It’s important to have a global, fully integrated view of the customer and prioritize what’s most meaningful for them.
Is one of them not including the relevant marketing professionals in the development of the overall company strategy?
At Starbucks, Global Marketing leaders participate in shaping the overall company strategy. But yes, when senior marketing leaders aren’t helping shape the company strategy, siloed communication priorities could easily compete with one another for customer attention.
What are the digital trends you believe to be most vital for shaping our industry?
Leveraging data-driven insights to unlock more personalized communications and in turn, better business results.
Successful convergence between brands and the world of Artificial Intelligence, bots and automation.
Continued maturation of immersive video experiences (AR/VR/360, Live) and storytelling across formats and devices (mobile first).
And (beyond digital): the values and ethical practices of companies.
What will you talk about at the festival Days of Communication?
How Starbucks has strategically used digital channels in powerful combination with the store experience to build brand love and loyalists.
