For the sake of transparency, I do not own one penny’s worth of Starbucks stock. I am also the type of guy who visits most any kind of coffee shop if I have the urge, or I’ll drink most any cup of hotel or convention center coffee and be just fine with it. But this is a bit ridiculous – Starbucks “Red Cups” in the Age of Outrage – my question is really who cares?
I know that every day, millions of people file into Starbucks shops for coffee concoctions. In fact, stock analysts estimate the international chain gets about 8 million visits a day. That’s a lot of coffee, and it’s a lot of cups.
Each year, Starbucks changes over its paper cups from plain white to more of a holiday theme. In years past there has been a red cup design with snowflakes or snowflakes with wreaths or snowflakes with reindeer and Christmas ornaments.
This year, the organization decided on a plain red cup with the green Starbucks logo. You would not believe the social media “outrage.” Starbucks has been blasted by many in the evangelical community as being anti-Christian and against Christmas. In fact, one preacher took to YouTube to blast the company and the video garnered 12.8 million views and 157,000 “likes” on Facebook. Between November 5th and November 9th, there were more than 40,000 Tweets reflecting outrage against the red cups. Predictably, politicians and columnists have jumped on the anti-red cup publicity bandwagon.
On the other hand, an online poll (November 10, 2015) was conducted by CNBC. Of the nearly 25,000 votes that were cast, 60 percent did not care one whit about the cups, 28 percent liked them and another one or two percent were not sure. In other words, and despite all of the hoopla, less than 10 percent of the Starbucks audience had any problem with the cups.
Starbucks knows what we all should know. The red cups won’t affect the company’s stock price or coffee consumption. More importantly, they know the target audience has virtually nothing to do with the “outraged” people on Facebook and Twitter who hardly drink Starbucks coffee at all.
Starbucks is a corporation not a religion
Donald Trump, whether you like him or can’t stand him, has on this date (November 10, 2015) called for a boycott of Starbucks. Trump is outraged that Starbucks decided on the cups. He is playing and pandering to the same people who undoubtedly bashed his casinos; the same 157,000 who posted to Facebook.
Whether Donald likes it or not, Starbucks is a for-profit company that has every right in the world to change its cups without having to apologize to anyone.
This is a nothing issue that will dissipate in a few weeks. What will not dissipate any time soon is how many of us are being manipulated by “outrage.”
Powerful words
If you enter the word “outrage” into any search engine, you will be amazed by the numbers of social issues attached to the word. Outrage is a brutally harsh word. In fact, once we get past outrage, there are few other words as strong.
In addition to the Starbucks cup, outrage has also been recently associated with Halloween costumes, a toy syringe in a kid’s doctor kit, an Obama Sing-Along book, intrusive health questions a nurse asked a patient, immigration, Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner and football players.
When many journalists, politicians and executives use the word “outrage” with abandon it is meant to manipulate and stop conversation rather than to solve real problems in society, business and politics. There is a limit to how much outrage any of us can take.
At some point we need to arrive at a common ground and have calm and rational discussions about the real problems that are facing all of us from unethical fraud in the workplace to healthcare abuse to how we continue to treat our veterans. There is plenty to be outraged about these days; I am just not willing to waste the emotion on red coffee cups.
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