A year ago I dissected the 53 customer-submitted ideas Starbucks took credit for implementing and found Starbucks should only take credit for implementing 6 ideas.

For example, Starbucks credits a customer idea for the Splash Sticks they offer customers to help ensure coffee doesn’t spill out of the plastic lid. Reality is this idea was being done in Japan months before its introduction into the North American market. It’s not a customer-generated idea because this idea was already in the Starbucks product pipeline.

(You can read my full breakdown of those 53 ideas in this post – Tough Love for Starbucks.)

Today, Starbucks claims to have listened to and launched 185 ideas from customers. Much like the original list of 53 ideas, Starbucks is taking far too much credit for implementing customer-driven ideas.

Here are a few ideas where Starbucks falsely credits customers as the source and wrongly takes credit for making the customer idea happen:

Idea #170 | Starbucks K-Cups®
Let’s be real. It took Starbucks a few years to get on the K-Cup bandwagon because it didn’t want to help a competitor make money. Green Mountain Coffee roasts/sells coffee and owns the Keurig K-Cup brewer. It’s estimated Keurig has 80% market share in the single-serve coffee brewer category.

Green Mountain Coffee receives a royalty fee for each K-Cup pod produced and receives money by having coffee roasters purchase a K-Cup packaging machine. Starbucks has been reluctant to produce K-Cups because if they did, it would directly benefit a competitor.

The single-serve coffee market has become too large and the financial opportunity is too huge for Starbucks to ignore. K-Cups have always been on Starbucks radar. It didn’t take a customer suggestion on MyStarbucksIdea to make Starbucks aware of the K-Cup opportunity.

Starbucks could have responded to this customer idea by upping the 10-cent discount to 15-cents to better account for inflation. Nope. Instead, Starbucks responded to this idea by offering a one-day promotion where a customer could get a free brewed coffee in their personal mug.

Not sure a one-day free coffee promotion is what the customer had in mind for their idea of having a more compelling reason to use their personal mug.

My point was and still is… it’s cheating to match programs/products you already have in the pipeline with the ideas submitted by customers. It’s also cheating to declare you’ve implemented customer ideas when clearly, you haven’t. Starbucks is too smart a company to cheat. (So don’t.)

As a former Starbucks marketer, it irks me to think Starbucks partners are walking around HQ congratulating themselves for being so customer-focused when, in reality, they would have done nearly all of these ideas without the MyStarbucksIdea website.

DANIEL: How has the world of marketing changed since you began? Especially in terms of the social media revolution?

ME: Strategically, marketing hasn’t changed. Marketing will always be about getting the right product and right message to the right customer at the right time in the right way. If a business does that, sales will happen.

I believe really good marketing is, was, and will continue to be about getting the right message to the right person at the right time in the right way(s) to deliver the right results.

Episode #3 | Talkable is Bankable

In this episode, you’ll learn marketers can absolutely bank on the fact if a brand is in the conversation then it will be under purchase consideration.

BACKGROUND INFO:
The Talkable Brand video series will help you to strategically think about ways to make your brand, your business worthy of word of mouth. Every Tuesday on the Brand Autopsy blog a new episode will premiere giving you knowledge and a nudge. Knowledge being interesting information. The nudge being compelling motivation to make the information happen. The result, I hope, is helping you make brands more talkable.

EPISODE ARCHIVE:
Jan. 10 | Achievable
Jan. 17 | Believable

Episode #2 | Talkable is Believable

In this episode, you’ll learn believability is the bedrock of a truly talkable brand.

BACKGROUND INFO:
The Talkable Brand video series will help you to strategically think about ways to make your brand, your business worthy of word of mouth. Every Tuesday on the Brand Autopsy blog a new episode will premiere giving you knowledge and a nudge. Knowledge being interesting information. The nudge being compelling motivation to make the information happen. The result, I hope, is helping you make brands more talkable.

EPISODE ARCHIVE:
Jan. 10 | Achievable

As CEO, David is accountable for ensuring YUM! continues being successful. He, in his own words, is responsible for building the “people capacity in the organization.” That’s why David makes it a top priority to teach his TAKING PEOPLE WITH YOU leadership program to YUM! employees. David doesn’t just teach the program once-a-year. He teaches it up to 8 times every year and each program takes three days to teach.

How can a busy CEO afford to spend up to 24 days every year away from high-level executive meetings teaching his TAKING PEOPLE WITH YOU program?

According to a phone conversation I had with David, he can’t afford not to teach the class. The continued success of YUM! is dependent upon employees around the world delivering upon their ideas to grow the business.

YUM! employees attending the course are asked to bring their biggest and best ideas to grow the business. David not only gets to hear all the ideas, he is also able to help shape the ideas and help the employees become better leaders so that their ideas can happen.

The business case for why a high-level CEO can take time to teach such a course on leadership is simple: Better leaders lead to a better business. If just some of these YUM! employees can improve their leadership skills to make their business growth ideas happen, the overall impact on YUM! sales would be huge.

The leadership program David teaches to YUM! employees is now available to all of us in the just-published book, TAKING PEOPLE WITH YOU: The Only Way to Make BIG Things Happen (Portfolio).

In the book, David gives us practical and actionable advice on being a better leader.

For example, David compares good ads & bad ads with good and bad leadership.

Good ads, according to David, “… are emotional and memorable. They are relatable … they drive the audience to action. You want to see a good ad again and again.”

Bad ads are the opposite, “Bad ads are forgettable. They feel irrelevant or out of touch. They don’t make clear what they are selling. Sometimes they’re so annoying … you want to do the opposite of what they want you to do. You never want to see a bad ad again.”

David closes his comparison by asking, “As a leader, do you want to be a good ad or a bad ad?”

(See. I told you David gives you practical and actionable advice on being a good leader.)

You can learn much more about David and his TAKING PEOPLE WITH YOU program online.

[NOTE: I often receive free copies of biz books from publishers and publicists. I was sent a free copy of TAKING PEOPLE WITH YOU to riffle, read, blog about, or use as kindling. I was also given the opportunity to speak with the author. The embedded amazon links are NOT affiliate links. That ain't how I roll.]

It’s not like I haven’t been talking about WOMM. I have.

The Brand Autopsy blog has over 100 posts dissecting all angles of WOMM. I’m a long-time member and supporter of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. And, one of the more requested presentations I give is on “Creating a Talkable Brand.”

It’s just you can expect to see a lot more posts about word of mouth marketing on this blog throughout 2012.

Introducing… The Talkable Brand video series.

The Talkable Brand video series will help you to strategically think about ways to make your brand, your business worthy of word of mouth.

Every Tuesday on the Brand Autopsy blog a new episode will premiere giving you knowledge and a nudge. Knowledge being interesting information. The nudge being compelling motivation to make the information happen. The result, I hope, is helping you make brands more talkable.

Episode #1 | Talkable is Achievable

We’ve been lots of places together on the Brand Autopsy blog in 2011 and lots of places since the first post on December 15, 2003. It’s time for us to look back.

Revisiting vintage posts is year-end tradition having started with my favorite posts from… 2004 … 2005 … 2006 … 2007 … 2008 … 2009 … 2010. And now, 2011…

We began 2011 with my contrarian take on “Content Marketing” by explaining what Really Good Marketing is, was, and will always be.

Bruce Mau, a designer, thinker, articulator, and massive change provocateur, has a lot of ideas on a lot of things. His Incomplete Manifesto for Growth is a list, an incomplete one at that, of 43 ideas to get you beyond thinking differently but doing differently.

As 2011 turns to 2012, the message of doing differently is one we should all heed. The first incomplete ideal is featured below. Heed and enjoy.