TJ Walker defends Starbucks' abandoned "Race Together" campaign, saying CEO Howard Schultz genuinely cared about race relations even though customers hated it. He calls the failed effort honorable and argues it could help corporate culture long-term.
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Starbucks announces that it is ending its Race Together campaign, where it encouraged its employees to talk about racial issues with customers. So a few weeks back, it was announced that Starbucks was going to encourage the people behind the bar at Starbucks coffee establishments to talk about race with customers and to, in fact, write the phrase race together on cups of coffee. Now, this generated a lot of discussion, and I must say, most of it negative towards Starbuck. They were mocked, ridiculed, vilified, satirized, and I frankly didn't hear a lot of people giving them praise. And truth be told, this is not going to go down in history as one of the greatest PR coups ever. However, before I joined the mad rush to condemn and mock Starbucks, I do think there are a few things worth pointing out here in a positive light. This did not seem to be some gimmick cooked up by the PR department. And hey, PR departments are my friends. I'm not knocking them. But this didn't seem to be someone who just said, hmm, how can we get more media attention for Starbucks by latching on to something in the news. It did seem to be a genuine concern from the CEO himself, Howard Schultz, to want to help the country talk about race and to create better race relations. Because if you've been following the news, you know there have been a number of tensions regarding police and racial minorities in this country. And Starbucks appear to be, I think, genuine, not doing something that just is a crass move to sell a few more billion cups of coffee in a specific quarter. I don't think this campaign is going to go down. And by the way, it ended yesterday, I don't think this campaign is going to again go down in history as something that is to be emulated and a huge success. And the moment when Starbucks really kicked rapid growth again, I don't think it's a huge disaster. If you're a big company and you're trying to do something to help the communities you serve, and with Starbucks, that's not just the whole US it's the whole world. And you fail. At least you failed trying to do something to help people. And sure, people can snipe and say it was too cute or it was silly or it was stupid, but at least we have a situation where here's a company, they're trying something big, they're trying something bold, they're trying something wildly ambitious. They're trying to use their team, their efforts, their positioning to help the community in a way that isn't just the bottom line. And frankly, that's the sort of thing that long term really does help a company. It helps their internal corporate culture, but it also hurts, excuse me, also helps their reputation around the country and around the world. So it's not the biggest success in the world. It's probably not going to be cited in PR textbooks, but I do think it indicates that Starbucks does a number of things just right.
