How Starbucks Used Twitter to Manage its Discrimination Crisis
The Situation
Starbucks came under fire in April 2018 when the manager of one of its Philadelphia locations called police about two black men who were allegedly trespassing in the store (“Timeline of a crisis: Starbucks’ racial bias training” 2018). Caught on video, the incident drew national attention and sparked public protests, which amounted to a public relations crisis for the company (“Timeline of a crisis: Starbucks’ racial bias training’ 2018). The store manager resigned, Starbucks apologized, and the mayor’s office and police department opened investigations (Timeline of a crisis: Starbucks’ racial bias training, 2018). A few days later video of another incident of racial bias at a Starbucks in California surfaced, exacerbating the already damaging situation (“Timeline of a crisis: Starbucks’ racial bias training” 2018).
The Response
The incident took place on April 12, 2018. Two days later Starbucks posted a related Tweet which was retweeted 7,083 times and was liked 20,304 times (@Starbucks). Later that night Starbucks sent another Tweet that expressed regret and included a link to a statement from CEO Kevin Johnson; the company also announced it would close 8,000 locations on May 29 to hold diversity training for 175,000 employees (Timeline of a crisis: Starbucks’ racial bias training, 2018). The account also retweeted links to media interviews on major TV news programs including Good Morning America (@GMA). From April 17 to April 26 the Starbucks account did not generate its own content and only retweeted a few posts from others. It waited until April 26 to share news about something other than the incident in Philadelphia, which was a quarterly earnings conference call. During the call the company used Twitter to send quotes from Kevin Johnson denouncing the incident in Philadelphia (@Starbucksnews). By May they were back to promoting store products and beverages. In late May they sent a Tweet to share the agenda for the upcoming diversity training (@Starbucks). That was the end of the response on Twitter, nothing related to the incident was seen after May 2018.
Analysis
Starbucks has two U.S. Twitter accounts, @Starbucksnews with 112,000 followers and @Starbucks with 11.6 million followers. Both shared the same content as part of the crisis response which was effective to communicate efficiently and to maintain a consistent message. Starbucks took several days to respond to the initial incident. Given the real-time nature of social media, they could have responded sooner. It’s important to respond to a crisis right away and to use multiple channels to reach key audiences. Once they started to use social media as part of the response strategy, they could have done so more effectively by sending messages more frequently and not leaving days at a time between posts. Starbucks also could have used a hashtag to identify all the messages that were part of their response and as a way to communicate a strong message take a firm stand. And finally, the company did not respond to posts, which was another opportunity to directly address customers and demonstrate their level of commitment. However, the company’s decision to close all stores in the United States and the $16.7 million training investment spoke volumes in terms of how seriously they were taking the incident (Timeline of a crisis: Starbucks’ racial bias training, 2018). Social media, including Twitter, was an integral component of the crisis response, but it could have been used more effectively to engage audiences and change the conversation. Starbucks also could have continued to use Twitter beyond May 2018 to showcase the lessons the company has learned and what they are doing to make amends and ensure something like that does not happen again.
