A closer look at how Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol introduced himself
Communications pros will find the new CEO’s message worth the read.
Tom Corfman, a senior consultant with Ragan Consulting Group, typically orders an iced venti caramel macchiato.
“A win is a win,” rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels said last month after winning his first NFL game, joining a long line of sports figures who’ve used the cliché.
That’s how we feel about an open letter published by the new chairman and CEO of Starbucks on Sept. 10, 2024. A win is a win.
Almost anything the coffeehouse chain does draws attention. The letter, on Brian Niccol’s second day on the job, was widely covered by the news media. Most public relations pros don’t have the advantages of such a well-known brand and must work harder.
We have five takeaways for professional communicators working on any message from a senior leader, including an open letter from a chief executive officer.
Niccol’s hiring was especially newsy. In a sudden move, the company’s board of directors forced out Laxman Narasimhan and announced Niccol’s hiring on Aug. 13, 2024. Since 2018, Niccol had been chief executive of Chipotle Mexican Grill, where he engineered a widely praised turnaround.
Fortune called Niccol’s compensation a “bonkers” pay package. As part of the package, he isn’t even required to move near Starbucks’ Seattle’s headquarters from his home in Newport Beach, California, 1,000 miles away.
He’s the company’s fourth CEO in three years. Narasimhan, also hired as CEO to straighten out a struggling company, lasted just 16 months. That helped to create intense interest in Niccol’s first words as CEO. Here are our five takeaways after closely reading his letter:
1. Start with a joke. OK, that’s a joke. A CEO letter should start with an anecdote that shows a connection to the brand. Unfortunately, Niccol’s beginning has little of that: “As I step into my first week as CEO, I do so not only as a leader, but as a long-time customer. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent time in our stores, speaking with partners and customers, and talking with teams across operations, store design, marketing and product development.”
What’s his favorite order? We weren’t told. In an interview originally published in May, he told Fortune, “I usually make an Americano in the morning.”
That’s great that he makes his own coffee. Let’s hope he at least was getting Starbucks Espresso Roast from the grocery.
Does he have a favorite Starbucks? There’s one in the outdoor mall about a three-minute drive from the Chipotle headquarters. Does he stop there on his way to work? We don’t know.
Time is especially precious to CEOs, so we’d be a bit surprised if Niccol visited Starbucks. The lack of any details raises a question about how much of a customer Niccol has been.
He can still be a great CEO, but he shouldn’t start his letter by saying he’s a “long-time customer.”
2. Push background to the end. The third paragraph offers an overview of how the company makes coffee, from its farms in Costa Rica and roasting facilities to the equipment in the restaurants. The paragraph takes you from a roasting facility in Kunshan, China to the showcase Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Milan.
Located in a prime spot in the letter, the paragraph takes up 174 words, or one-fifth of the 852-word letter.
The letter illustrates a frequent flaw in corporate communications, from emails to colleagues to announcements of new strategic plans: beginnings with a lot of background and the big point more in the middle or the end.
It should be the other way around.
3. Lead with the news. The strongest part of Niccol’s letter comes nearly halfway through, when he outlines his four-point plan to turn around the company. It’s tight, just 180 words, and forceful.
But it comes too late. His second paragraph offers his conclusions from his brief time visiting the stores. What should have come next is what he’s going to do about it.
4. Embrace the bad facts. That sentence is often repeated by trial lawyers as a reminder that when addressing a jury don’t ignore the weaknesses in their case. Niccol acknowledges the company’s customer service woes.
In the second paragraph, he writes, “…there’s a shared sense that we have drifted from our core.”
In the fifth paragraph, he amplifies that point:
Many of our customers still experience this magic every day, but in some places — especially in the U.S. — we aren’t always delivering. It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic.
Is there another problem that Niccol tacitly acknowledges? Why is that lengthy third paragraph there? Starbucks has an expert communications team which surely thought hard about Niccol’s letter. Management consultant Justin Bariso read the letter and offered a theory.
“Many believe Starbucks no longer has good coffee,” he wrote for Inc.
Niccol hints at this in the second sentence. If this is a problem, the letter would better serve customers by clearly adding it to the list.
I’m not persuaded by Bariso’s theory. Starbucks’ woes are caused by the quality of the customer experience, not the quality of the coffee.
“Starbucks has been commoditizing itself,” a customer service consultant and a management professor wrote in the Harvard Business Review in June. “Its problems illustrate how companies that had succeeded by offering customers exceptional experiences can succumb to the temptation to pursue goals like efficiency and volume and, in the process, commoditize themselves.”
5. Who’s your audience? Niccol’s letter was addressed to the company’s “partners, customers and stakeholders.”
He would have been better off focusing on customers, providing enough information about improving service to give employees hope. Instead, there’s a little bit for everybody in his letter, but that means there are bits that some people aren’t interested in.
For example, U.S. customers probably aren’t interested in Niccol’s promise to figure out the Chinese market, where the company is slipping, a key topic for shareholders. Customers may be interested in his recognition that the lines are too long and the stores too hectic. But baristas know that already, have heard that before and want to know what Niccol’s going to do about it.
The day after the letter, Niccol held a companywide town hall meeting with employees, a better way to address workers.
Everybody wants more information from Niccol, and soon.
‘Tell our story’
Our questions and quibbles aside, the open letter was a media relations home run. But Starbucks’ comms team shouldn’t take for granted the advantages they have. Most PR people don’t work for a company with 2023 net revenue of nearly $36 billion. Their company doesn’t have one of the best-known brands in the world, with nearly 20,000 coffee shops worldwide, about half in the U.S.
And Niccol will be expecting more from his communications team. The fourth point in his four-point plan?
“It’s time for us to tell our story again — reminding people of our unmatched coffee expertise, our role in communities and the special experience that only Starbucks can provide,” he wrote. “We won’t let others define who we are.”
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You have to be joking. The statement was, at best, nebulous and did not inspire confidence he had a handle on the business (understandable his first day). But that sense of a man caught in the headlights was exacerbated by his statement this week: “Back to Starbucks”?!?!? What is THAT??? It’s certainly not a strategy.
Better to have smply withdrawn guidance and left it at that. The video seemed a desperate cry