Plus: ‘Call Her Daddy’ host starts ad agency; Bari Weiss to take over CBS News.
On Sept. 25, Starbucks informed employees it would close a number of store locations and lay off about 900 non-retail employees, plus additional baristas at closing locations.
This announcement was months in the making, with plans to identify low-performing stores dating back to April, according to an exclusive piece in the Wall Street Journal.
The piece lays out a specific timeline for how Starbucks began communicating these sweeping changes to workers at all levels of the organization:
- April 29: CEO Brian Niccol announces, as part of disappointing earnings, that stores would be reviewed for underperformance. This signaled, even quietly, that change was on the horizon.
- 25, early morning: An email from Niccol to all retail and non-retail employees announced the store closures and layoffs. “These steps are to reinforce what we see is working and prioritize our resources against them,” Niccol wrote.
- 25, mid-morning: Managers of closing stores were informed. Managers of stores that would remain open were also informed and briefed on how the closures would impact them, from how to use reallocated inventory to laid-off baristas seeking jobs. Signage quickly went up at closing locations to inform customers, including a QR code to help them find other locations.
- 27: Employees at stores marked for closures learned if they would be able to transfer or if their jobs would be eliminated. “Starbucks said it hopes to hire back baristas as it resumes opening new stores this fiscal year, and said it is giving laid-off baristas an industry-leading severance package,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
- 29: Niccol appeared in a video message to employees, emphasizing how painful these cuts were but offering the encouraging news that he hoped the closures and layoffs were behind them now. He stressed that reallocating assets would allow remaining locations to thrive.
- 30: Niccol and the head of operations held an in-person forum at Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters, laying out the plan moving forward. “Niccol said sales this week were strong, and the company was set to introduce new food and beverages, and a better app,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Why it matters: This piece gives us a rare look at the entire timeline of employee comms during a tumultuous period from a major company.
From the early signaling of change to the cadence and sequence of emails about store closures, layoffs and reinforcing communications after cuts were done, we can see how Starbucks sought to move quickly and decidedly, at every step of the way, emphasizing that the changes, painful as they may be, would lead to positive change in the near future.
The company quickly informed impacted stores and employees of changes, minimizing the time spent in uncertain anxiety. They also rapidly followed up the bad news with executive touchpoints emphasizing the benefits.
Starbucks knew these communications would leak: In TikToks from baristas, in memos forwarded to reporters and recaps of internal calls, the internal team knew these would all become external. By focusing on swift delivery of bad news and a quick pivot to the positive, they could control the narrative with the broadest swath of stakeholders.
Editor’s Top Reads
- Alex Cooper, host of the famed “Call Her Daddy” podcast and dubbed “The Gen Z Whisperer,” is opening an advertising agency to help companies reach that attractive audience — often, though not exclusively, with her as a spokesperson. The Unwell Creative Agency will not only funnel advertisers to the podcast network’s products, but also create content and marketing campaigns. “Gen Z has grown up scrolling their feeds, but the reality is, they’re just being bombarded by sometimes tone-deaf brands,” Cooper said. “We have picture-perfect influencers selling endless products, and the honest truth is, I think most of that generation has tuned them out.” Cooper will often, but not always, star in the content and marketing the company creates. The explicit insertion of a podcaster into a major advertising company makes it clear just how different many podcast hosts are from traditional media. They blur the lines between entertainment, news and advertising. Expect this to continue — and for evolving opportunities to give savvy brands a chance to meet these audiences on a new playing field.
- In another sign that the media will never be the same, Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press and frequent critic of mainstream media, has been named editor-in-chief of CBS News. Paramount has also acquired The Free Press for $150 million, the New York Times reported. Weiss left her role as an opinion writer at the Times for the news startup due to her claims that she was bullied by colleagues. Since then, she has amassed more than 1.5 million subscribers and published takedowns of traditional media, including accusing NPR of a pervasive liberal bias. The move seems to be a shift to the right for a news organization that has recently been accused of bowing to Trump administration demands after it paid out a major lawsuit to the president. After decades of the perception that mainstream media leans left, this could signal a major change in what kinds of stories CBS covers and how it covers them. We’ll see to what extent Weiss manages to change such a significant news organization.
- A column from The Verge helps us keep the focus on how most people use social media. “Instagram wants me to make content — I just want to post a photo,” writes self-described elder Millennial Allison Johnson. She recounts just how complex the once-simple app has become, with users encouraged at every turn to make videos, add stickers, music, post to Reels, post to Stories. “Instagram wants us all to imagine ourselves as the content creators of our own little lives, prompting our followers to like, comment, and subscribe,” she writes. While this is, of course, only an opinion, it’s a reminder to pause and think of how the average user actually implements social media. Most people are not content creators; they are content consumers, perhaps posting a few simple items to a few dozen friends and family. Remember to think of the average consumer when you post — who probably aren’t Extremely Online.
Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.
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