Media Issue Challenge in Starbucks' Public Relations

Case Study Reflection
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Case Study Reflection
The case
In the year 2015, Starbucks initiated the #Racetogether campaign to initiate the talk on culture and ethnicity. The campaign was succeeding the principal of the #BlackLivesmatter crusade that responded to the panel's pronouncement not to place Darren Wilson in custody for killing an 18-year-old black kid because he was a white police officer. The company's CEO steered the campaigns, and the operation started with the company pushing its personnel to engrave #Racetogether on purchasers' cups to initiate dialogs on culture and ethnicity. The organization wanted people to use their place as an area of conversation, with the view that it would encourage community and civic engagement beyond home and work life. The organization hoped to use all of its 22000 branches as a facilitator for further conversations on the matter. However, the public was highly critical of the campaigns of Starbucks, and it resulted in the company abandoning the campaigns in the same year.
Reasons for Failure
The CEO drove the campaigns without the full consent of other company members, like employees. This fact is evident when two years later, the senior vice president of communication remarked that he was forced to support the campaigns and felt that there were other secret agendas for the campaign that he was unaware of. Moreover, many movements were always done by non-profit organizations; Starbucks was the first commercial company to initiate such campaigns. Therefore, consumers felt that the company intended to use the campaign for publicity and increase the sale of products (Dorjee & Ting‐Toomey, 2020). In addition, the company was not ready for deep conversations on the matter. At the beginning of internal conversations, the executives feared that ther...