Crisis prevention 101 - Starbucks Korea
- Emma Duke
- 16 hours ago
- 1 min read
I teach a course for the PRCA on crisis management in a global context and this story is going right into that bank of case studies!
Starbucks Korea (run by Shinsegae Group) was soaring...since May 18th however, payments to the company have decreased by 25%, they've lost their CEO and they had to close all stores for an afternoon of history lessons for all staff (at an estimated cost of $1.4m in lost sales).
Why?
They launched a marketing campaign called 'Tank Day' for their new “Tank” coffee tumbler range on 18 May...also the commemoration date of Gwangju massacre in South Korea. A devastating and violent response to a protest, that has shaped the country ever since.
The reaction was immediate: customers filmed themselves smashing the tank cups, removed all the money from their pre-payment cards, protests were held outside their stores.
How?
It turns out that the marketing team chose the slogan after asking AI and the managers who approved the campaign never opened the email attachments showing the marketing material 😬
It's usually about now that I say something insightful about anticipating a crisis, responding to one and best practise.
In this case: do your history lessons, check your AI campaign ideas and open your email attachments. Done.
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