Mack … right on in mentioning the difficulty companies have when jumping into the social media waters. Since Starbucks has no meaningful experience in social media and has always shunned participating in online conversations, I would have chosen a more focused approached to MyStarbucksIdeas.com.

Instead of opening the customer suggestion box floodgate, which is exactly what MyStarbucksIdea is, I would have started by taking a much smaller step and simply layered on a blog-like component to their existing website. On this proposed company blog, Starbucks could ask customers FOCUSED questions about their ideas on improving various aspects of the Starbucks business.

For example, a potential Starbucks blog post could read something like…

** "As you’ve heard, we are discontinuing our oven-heated breakfast sandwiches. This doesn’t mean we are exiting the breakfast business. It does mean we are looking for morning food ideas that customers will enjoy more. I’m sure you have ideas on what food we should offer in the morning. Please share. We are listening.” **

The company could reply to customer suggestions to these focused questions in the comments section. Starbucks could do a weekly round-up of the most popular ideas and post updates on which ideas are moving forward.

This focused approach to (a) participating in social media and (b) gathering customer suggestions would be easier for a company with no meaningful social media experience to manage. It would also make it easier for Starbucks customers to follow-along. The current MyStarbucksIdea website is already unwieldy — lots of wayward ideas have been suggested and many of the ideas suggested are repeated numerous times in various categories. This website will only get more unwieldy and more difficult to manage.

John I think there's an important point about the website becoming unwieldy. I think if Starbucks can actually show the visitors leaving ideas that they are willing to ACT on those ideas, then it will be much easier for those visitors to coalesce into a community. And that community will likely do a fair amount of self-policing, and making sure the ideas are organized so that they can be better acted upon.

What I fear is that if Starbucks doesn't quickly implement some of these ideas, that the visitors will quickly turn on the company, fearing that Starbucks is simply paying lip service to customer involvement.

IOW you're asking a very big company with little/no social media experience, to use these tools to move quickly. It's a very tall hurdle that Starbucks will have to clear.

I agree with johnmoore.

I also think one of the things Dell has going for it is the difference in product.
Starbucks: order, purchase, consume--all in as little as a few minutes.
Dell: price, build, setup, personalize, use--for years before a replacement is needed.

There's an entire community of people using computers (not necessarily Dells) that make Dell computers better, i.e. Firefox and Ubuntu programmers. Starbucks' product isn't that complex.

At Starbucks' site it seems almost everyone wants a freebie. At Dell's site it seems everyone wants less forced 3rd party software and more open source options.

"At Starbucks' site it seems almost everyone wants a freebie. At Dell's site it seems everyone wants less forced 3rd party software and more open source options."

I think this is another sign of the Starbucks site not having a community in place yet. I think if Starbucks can show that they will act on the feedback they receive, then you'll see the members of the site start to take the company seriously, and I think you'll see the suggestions move more toward improving processes that benefit everyone, instead of 'what's in it for me?'

If we as marketers want social media marketing to have the same credibility as any other marketing strategy, we have to hold marketers up to correctly executing and in this case that means feedback and joining the conversation. As so many of the DF community understands - SMM is not the same as interactive marketing and not understanding the rules of the new game is no excuse. In fact, as we've seen many times it can be counter productive resulting in fire storms that erode brand trust.

Who in his/her right mind would offer Starbucks any business ideas that would profit the company and not be compensated for it ? This approach to involve the public is simply a "pick-the-public's-brain" ruse that's meant to look like "public interaction" but in reality is a similar trick done to it's employees by its non-sharing of tips. See the similarities ? I used to have a very high regard for Mr. Schulz being what he claims he is - that what he cares for most are his "small people" employees. So, it's not a question of whether Starbucks will ACT on any idea/ideas proposed but whether Starbucks would hold themselves morally obligated to pay for these prized suggestions.
Around the beginning of March'08, I emailed the business or media site of Starbucks asking for a direct email link to Howard Schulz as I wanted to share a business idea without his gatekeepers eyeballing my suggestions. Well, lo and behold - they came up with this mystarbucksidea.com a couple of weeks later.Purely Coincidence, you think ? I'm bringing my ideas to Coffee Bean. Thanks.

In this lifetime I too, like so many, have passed through the Starbucks employment doors. Unfortunately, in this recent time of bad press for the company, this tardy entry into the social media realm seems to be a curiously poor effort at redemption. During my stint with Starbucks, fresh ideas and suggestions were not well received. "Starbucks knows best" is an internal corporate mentality that I believe will be VERY difficult to break.

I suppose their is a slight possibility that Howard Schulz has come to the understanding that the marketing tables have turned in this last decade and that the public makes the brand as opposed to Starbucks makes the brand. He has a long road to travel to prove his sincerity of purpose. If the public is going to bother with the suggestions, Starbucks will need to put their money where their mouth is; interact and implement. If they don't follow through they will be in for another regimen of bad press.

Googled "Starbucks blog" and the third item on the page is "Employee Fired by Starbucks Over Blog". No kidding. Yes the article is 4 years old but we all know this stuff lives forever online.
On another note, Starbucks has spent so much time and effort into developing real communities - i.e., each of their stores (well maybe not the ones in airports), that they should be integrating the blog and other "virtual community" efforts into their plans there. Just asking if customers have suggestions is rather lame - each suggestion being a drop in the ocean to "Corporate Starbucks", as opposed to your local Starbucks asking you who your favorite local musicians are and perhaps inviting some to play...just a suggestion