FreshNetworks Blog

Today has been a day of a few announcements from Starbucks. They are expanding their menu and are trying to appeal to different audiences. Today the announcements have been about a new healthy range of breakfast products; a few weeks ago it was a new ‘nurishing’ smoothie with added protein and fibre - Vivanno.

It is clearly a time of much new product development and change at Starbucks, and I was interested to see how they might be integrating their MyStarbucksIdea online community into this process. The community has been running since March 2008 and has proven popular with over 130,000 separate ideas submitted to date. The real strength of this kind of community for Starbucks would come if they could show that it was taking a real role in the innovation process, that it was a good example of co-creation of the type we discussed a few weeks ago in the co-creation series.

So how has MyStarbucksIdea been involved in the development of some of these ideas. If quantitiy of discussions is any indication, then respectably. Over 500 separate comments on Vivanno are on the community. These range from simple announcements of the product in local stores, through suggestions of new flavours, to more fundamental suggestions about the product.

The simplest ideas are sometimes the best. User ’smadh’ posts a direct comment but one that is a great addition to new product development: add black cherries to the chocolate banana vivanno. There is discussions and disagreement, ‘cosmokitty’ wants small size drinks (sometimes a Grande is just too much), whilst ’san_jose_alex’ wants the opposite (The Vivanno is delicious and successful. Now it is time to offer it in a larger size!). And in among the over 500 comments there are some that go into more detail. ‘Redwest’ makes a suggestion about the healthy-eating credentials of the drink:

I tried the Chocolate Banana today and was pleasant surprised! Tasted pretty good! My suggestion is trying to keep that exact flavor and cutting down the sugar some… I think that would help this “healthy” drink be even better!

And ‘mizmak35′ was less keen on the drink but makes some suggestions abotu how to make it more appealing:

The Vivanno is neither a Smoothie nor a Frappachino. It was very THIN (like a chocolate milk with a banana thrown in) I would NOT get this again as I am a Frappe addict.
Try making a “real” smoothie consistency and try a chocolate/raspberry combo. Maybe you need to get a soft yogurt machine to compete with the smoothie shops

This level of comment and insight from consumers is of incredible use to a brand and it is good to also see exchanges between members of the community about these comments. Starbucks is able to use these comments and suggestions to feed back into their product development cycle and take changes to market much quicker than they might have been able to before.

Communities like MyStarbucksIdea are a great way to find out how customers respond to new products and to amend them and make changes based on the ideas you are given and the discussions you witness. This is why so many organisations build online research communities, creating a specific space for customers to respond and share ideas and for brands to get real customer insight.

Of course it isn’t clear yet how much the ideas discussed about the Vivanno will be implemented by Starbucks in store. But it will be interesting to watch how all these discussions about the new ‘healthier’ product launches translate into changes to the actual product. Given the level of engagement and involvement that Starbucks have built, it would be a shame if these ideas weren’t used.

Some more reading

• Eight Considerations to Help Branded Communities Succeed
• Co-creation 5: Community Product Design
• Help Define Community Building online
• Co-creation 3: Service redesign
• Dell, Starbucks, and the marketplace of ideas
• Benefits of Web 2.0 Applications
• McDonald’s To Take On Starbucks
• Smooth Move? Drinks’ Calorie Values Off
• Co-creation 4: New product Co-creation
• Starbucks: Good Move Or Poor Brand Management?

A report from Synovate, a market research firm, suggests that more than half of adults across the world don’t know what a social network is. The study was based on surveys with 13,000 people between 18 and 65 in 17 countries* and investigated online behaviour and attitudes.

Of all the findings, one that I have seen reported a few times is the figure that 42% of respondents said they knew what social networks are. This leaves 58% who either responded ‘No’ (they don’t know what social networks are) or ‘Don’t know’ (they’re not sure). Without access to the actual wording of the question it is difficult to know for sure, but we can say that more than half of adults in the survey were not confident in their knowledge of what a social network is. They might not know at all or they might just not be sure.

There is some variance by nation, with 89% of Dutch respondents and 70% of Americans knowing what a social network is, much higher than the overall average. This means that in some regions the numbers must have been much lower. I would be interested to compare these country-by-country numbers with both internet access rates and actual membership of a social network. I would be interested in seeing if we could identify a correlation between access, awareness and membership and expect that in areas with high access have high awareness and vice-versa.

Overall membership in the Synovate survey stood at 26% of all adults (so about six out of every ten adults who know what social networks are). Again there is a variance between countries with high membership rates (the Netherlands again at 49% and the United Arab Emirates at 46%) and those with lower rates. Such variance is not to be surprised and, to some extent, is structural in the nature of the networks themselves. They grow and become more popular based on the network effect, so in some countries we would expect to see more people joining because more of their friends have. It is probably just that the UAE and Netherlands are more socially connected or areas where networking is more important than you find elsewhere.

So what do we learn from this survey. The figures are useful to have. It does not surprise me that a relatively large proportion of people don’t know what social networking is. In the UK only about 70% of people have access to the internet, and it would be unrealistic to expect those with no access to the internet to have paid much attention to what online social networks are. The analysis of access, awareness and membership would certainly help to make our understanding of these figures more clear and informed.

But with more than one in every four adults in the 17 markets studied a member of a social network, one thing is clear - they are a real and powerful resource for marketers and brands and the need for brands to engage people online will continue to grow.

* Countries in the study: Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, UAE, USA