Traveled to San Angelo, Texas and stopped at a (the) Starbucks. Was bored and noticed there was writing on the side of the cup. I'd always ignored it before.
"True story: Recently I eavesdropped on a conversation between two twenty-something employees at a local Starbucks. I listened as they barista mused about his taste in music. Then the cashier asked him if he had ever heard the song Strawberry Fields Forever. After a pause, the barista answered, 'No, I can't say I ever heard that one before.' That's when I knew there really was such a thing as a generation gap."
- Mary Chapin Carpenter, Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter. Her songs can be heard on Starbucks Hear Music station, XM Satellite Radio Channel 75.
D***, I just read an ad for XM Satellite Radio, Starbucks AND Mary Chapin Carpenter! They were so sneaky ... I fell for it.
This week my founding partner, Roy H. Williams, wrote:
"Most ads never arrive at the Emerald City of Working Memory because they were dragged under by the poppy field of Broca's Area. Remember that field of poppies in The Wizard of Oz? After a long journey, Dorothy and her friends finally catch a glimpse of their destination. The Emerald City is in view. They need only to cross a field of flowers and then they'll enter the city and meet the mighty Wizard. But the poppies cause them to fall asleep halfway across the field.
The Emerald City is Working Memory, conscious awareness. If we do not reach it, we cannot speak to the wizard.
The Wizard is the prefrontal cortex of your customer's brain, that center of decision-making, planning and judgment.
Dorothy and her entourage are your message.
The Poppy Field is Broca's Area of the brain, ignoring – subduing – erasing every sensory stimuli that was predictable.
The Snow that re-invigorates your message is any element of the elegant unexpected... the chilling delight of surprise… particle conflict… elemental dissonance... incongruence… It's the last thing Broca would ever suspect...
And the last thing most advertisers would ever consider."
Starbucks considered it. It was snowing. But somehow I felt manipulated, cheated ... not delighted. The same way I feel when I go to a movie that starts "at 6pm" and sit through 20-25 minutes of advertising before the movie begins. So, why don't you just tell me the movie starts at 6:30pm?
What gives you the feeling of eating yellow snow?
After going to the site mentioned on the cup, www.starbucks.com/wayiseeit, I learned the program is designed to stimulate conversation, to surprise ... and contributing authors represent a wide range of interests and ideas. Most are not ads for XM Satellite Radio. (I guess that was just the Venti cup for February 2006).
