Part 5/6: Reconstruct the Starbucks Brand Pyramid: The Starbucks Customer Excellence Series

Part 5/6: Reconstruct the Brand Pyramid

Every company has a brand pyramid, whether explicitly documented in a formal framework or implied through its actions, messaging, and customer interactions. Even without formal articulation, a company's values, promises, and positioning are communicated to customers through its marketing, advertising, and behavior, creating a de facto brand pyramid that shapes how it is perceived. 

Defined as a strategic framework used to codify how a company wants to be viewed and perceived by its target audiences and stakeholders, most often through marketing, advertising, and brand storytelling. The hierarchy of a brand pyramid typically progresses from foundational elements like functional attributes and product benefits at the base, to brand personality, brand values, and the ultimate brand promise at the top. Serving as a guiding framework, the pyramid is ultimately helpful in setting a shared aspirational identity of how a brand wants to show up in the world.

However, traditional brand pyramids rarely address the experiential attributes that define how the company will interact with customers and what they can expect in those real-world interactions. Particularly meaningful in today’s omnichannel environment, this omission often leads to a dissonance between the brand promise—what the company says it stands for—and the customer’s actual experience. When customers encounter inconsistent or subpar interactions, the gap between expectation and reality can erode trust and undermine the brand’s credibility.

Did Starbucks forget something?

In the context of the brand pyramid, Starbucks’ new focus on the convenience of scale and speed, driven primarily by its wildly successful, super-convenient mobile app, has created a coffee factory reality that (likely unintentionally) may be competing (or potentially conflicting) with the coffeehouse perception that it originally intended. Moreover, this strategic shift seems to have occurred without Starbucks letting customers and the world know that it was going to happen! Did the company simply forget? or did it not fully appreciate the implications of this sea change? This state of affairs runs the risk of sowing confusion and diluting the hard-earned brand equity that the company has generated from the community and comfort-oriented "third place" origin experience that once set the company apart.

To realign and renew its brand proposition and address the potential dissonance between its perception and reality of its brand, Starbucks has the opportunity to reconstruct its brand pyramid to explicitly 1) harmonize its dueling coffeehouse and coffee factory propositions; 2)  codify the “ideal” Starbucks Experience in non-negotiable principles, attributes, and promises; and 3) articulate its standards for service delivery. Through this realignment, Starbucks can deliver a clear and reimagined brand narrative that resonates internally and externally:

The foundation layer of the brand pyramid involves establishing explicit service standards that support the brand vision. These standards should outline the behavior and expectations for every touchpoint, whether it’s ensuring accurate, friendly service during a mobile order hand-off or creating a warm, welcoming environment for in-store guests. Functional and cultural training programs must emphasize the importance of balancing community and comfort with the convenience of scale and speed, empowering baristas to deliver meaningful interactions even under time constraints. With this foundation, Starbucks can elevate its service consistency, equip employees for success, and build stronger emotional connections with its customers.

At the heart of this reconstructed brand pyramid lies a clear articulation of the "ideal" Starbucks customer experience across all modalities, from mobile orders to in-store visits. This central layer defines the ideal experiential outcomes Starbucks aims to deliver at every interaction. For example, mobile order pick-ups should not only be efficient but also retain the brand’s "human touch", with baristas offering personalized greetings or gestures, even in fast-moving environments. In-store, the experience should reemphasize comfort and foster a sense of community through inviting spaces and consistent quality. With an emphasis on prioritizing its core community, comfort, and convenience experiential factors within an ideal experience, Starbucks can ensure that all customers, regardless of their preferred interaction mode, feel valued and connected to the brand.

At the top of the pyramid are the more traditional defining and differentiating elements that set Starbucks apart from competitors. To retain its unique identity, Starbucks must double down on its original "third place" promise while innovating for modern convenience. In practice, this could involve reimagining store layouts to create hybrid spaces that accommodate both pick-up efficiency and comfort-focused seating areas. These capstone elements help differentiate Starbucks interactions and become an organic element of the overall brand narrative, optimized to deliver not just coffee, but meaningful experiences that resonate emotionally.

Being intentional about reconstructing its brand pyramid, fortifying it with clear service standards, ideal experience attributes, and brand-defining principles, positions Starbucks to resolve the conflict between its convenience-driven innovations and its comfort-oriented legacy. This redefinition offers a cohesive identity that resonates with both new and legacy customers, aligning the company’s operations with customer expectations and organizational capabilities internally and guiding the company’s messaging and advertising internally with brand promises externally. Marketing campaigns can highlight how Starbucks seamlessly integrates convenience with its comforting heritage, reinforcing its commitment to both speed and soul. Internally, these principles should shape employee training and operational processes, ensuring that every team member understands and embodies the renewed brand promise. This alignment will strengthen trust, loyalty, and emotional connection, ensuring Starbucks remains a beacon of community, comfort, and convenience in an evolving marketplace.

Read the other parts of The Starbucks Customer Excellence Series:

Part 1:  From A Customer: An Open Letter to Starbucks

Part 2:  Societal Savior or Customer Experience Death Star

Part 3:  Recapturing the Starbucks Mystique

Part 4:  Redefine the Starbucks Culture Platform

Part 5:  Reconstruct the Starbucks Brand Pyramid

Part 6:  Redesign the Experience Delivery System

To learn more, order “The Customer Excellence Enterprise: A Playbook for Creating Customers for Life” at all major booksellers.