Branding as a Community

Chairman, CEO and President of Starbucks Howard Schultz provides an insightful global brand keynote. Discussing the core principles of the iconic coffee brand, Schultz illustrates why some brands witness 50 million customers each week and why other brands simply disappear.

Schultz begins his global brand keynote by explaining how he wanted to create a different type of company when he started out with Starbucks, and how he wanted that distinctiveness to be seen in its core philosophies and principles. The goal was to find a balance between the fragile issues of making a profit and being a socially conscious member of the community. Not only did Starbucks hope to create a national brand around coffee, it also wanted to create a company at which past generations weren't able work.

According to Schultz, the only way to surpass the expectations of customers, is by surpassing the expectations of the team and its employees. Starbucks' unique and distinctive factor in its success story is that it managed to become this third place, between work and home. Building a community around a brand can make or break its likelihood to success internationally.