Starbucks has launched a campaign to put money in the hands of small businesses as a way to fix the unemployment problem, but it only seems to be okay if its not PR. The CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz went on Today to talk about the new plan and for some reason Matt Lauer was giving him a really hard time. The interview, which only lasted about 4 minutes, spent the first two minutes describing the program its benefits and why Starbucks has decided to start the program, and the rest of the time Schultz spent defending himself by stating "this is nothing about marketing." Lauer really goes at the CEO in the video saying analysts say it looks like a PR campaign and so on, and Schultz calls those comments "arrows."
I don't see why the projects PR status would somehow make it not good work in the community. Lauer really puts on his hard-hitting-journalist hat for somehting that seems like a non-issue to me. The program is PR plain and simple, flat out it just is, yet Schultz is forced to say it isn't because that somehow makes it less valuable to the community. I think? I don't get it.
Starbucks is an American company they started in Seatlle they have locations mostly in America so when they do somehting to improve the status of America, it is a way of relating to their public. Somewhere along the way PR came to mean things that are only done to get a profit and that therefore it is evil. But not-for-profit agencies have PR teams as well, and there only job is to inform the people of the work that the organization is doing as a way to do more of their chosen work. So why when Starbucks creates a campaign to do good is it viewed as an "evil PR ploy to make money and therefore bad"? (these quotes are ironic not an actual quote)
The Starbucks campaign is a PR campaign in the sense that they are relating to the public and I think Starbucks will make more money off of this. I know I'm going to go in and donate and wear my braclet and buy a coffee, and I'm going to keep buing coffee from Starbucks because I get the feeling their not evil. I hope that this project does works and I want them to make money, because they seem to get that America is one of their publics and they are trying to help all of us. As long as they keep trying to do something good I'm going to keep buying from them even if they did it to look good and help their business.
