In January, when Starbucks announced a plan to hire 10,000 refugees over five years, it may have hoped to gild its reputation for doing good. But, if so, it was in for a rude surprise. By mid-February, its brand perception score had fallen by two-thirds, according to one ranking.
Apparently many consumers were influenced by a #BoycottStarbucks outbreak on Twitter (a patriotic “movement” according to Breitbart) and by a meme suggesting the coffee giant was privileging foreign workers over veterans (even though Starbucks has a separate program for veterans).
Starbucks’s experience shows how brands are not immune to political and cultural polarization. These days, companies often feel compelled to pursue social impact and to take value-based positions on issues of the day. But sometimes those actions can get them into trouble.
“We’re seeing these brands break along partisan lines just as the rest of the culture is,” says Sebastian Buck, CEO of Enso, a L.A.-based brand marketing agency that commissioned the research. “Brands operate in a social context and people make choices about brands every day within the context about what’s happening.”
The online survey of 3,000 people measures “how people perceive a brand’s purpose, how closely it aligns with their own values and motivations.” It’s not, in other words, a measure of actual do-gooding, but rather of how people perceive the mission and purpose of organizations (some nonprofits are included).
Though it may be tempting to be all things to all people, companies may have to increasingly choose which side of the fence to be on. “We think brands have to stand up for their values and the things they care about,” says Andrew Wisniewski, a junior strategist at Enso. “There’s less opportunity to straddle that line and sit in the middle. Instead, they’re going to have to come down on one side or the other.”