My Starbucks Story videos

Starbucks is asking its partners (employees) to make short videos about their day-to-day life at Starbucks. Love it. The company will share these videos online at www.MyStarbucksStory.com. Again, love it.

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Early in 2008 Starbucks did a two-minute documentary on Young Han, a Starbucks barista, talking about his “Got Milk” photo shoot and his appreciation for the Starbucks Coffee Company. The video was posted on YouTube for everyone to see. (However, the video is no longer available.)

In a post from Feb. 2008 I mentioned how this video "works great as a recruitment video. Not slick. Not scripted. Just genuine moments and reflections..."  I also mentioned how Starbucks should STRONGLY CONSIDER encouraging its young and talented workforce to post videos of why they feel a connection to Starbucks similar to the brilliant Deloitte & Touche Film Fest idea.

More ideas from Starbucks empowering its talented workforce to showcase personality will go a long way in not just helping recruiting new employees but also in recruiting some lost customers to believe in the company again.

Comments

[James]

I understand from a marketing manager perspective this is a brilliant idea, but it has a major flaw. Partners who create this original, genuine content will not legally own the videos they have created and will not be able to distribute their content to their own Youtube page (or Facebook page etc). This automatically discounts the raw authenticity and the connection customers can have with partners is lost.

Starbucks should be able to edit the videos that are submitted, but Starbucks should also reserve ALL rights of this personal content back to the partners. Starbucks culture in its core isn't slick marketing, rather its word of mouth marketing which could be present in raw (potentially viral) genuine videos. The best way to spread these genuine moments isn't to restrict them.

[john moore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Valid point. I'm sure SBUX legal was adamant in designing to be restrictive. Ain't perfect. But still a solid idea.

[David Cameron]

I understand Starbucks' desire to have some measure of control here. I think it would be better if the company allowed partners to share their videos AFTER a review/approval.

I'm not sure this restriction really takes away from the authenticity of the videos... but if they can't be made available to a broader audience, then that's a problem and a big opportunity missed.