“It happens millions of times each week – a customer receives a drink from a Starbucks barista – but each interaction is unique.
It’s just a moment in time – just one hand reaching over the counter to present a cup to another outstretched hand.”
About Starbucks

Notice how Starbucks don’t start straight away by telling us how good their coffee is and why their beans are better. They start by telling a story about connection and belonging as they did back when the company began to expand in the 1990’s. The facts are left for later. When they arrived on the scene Starbucks changed how we thought and felt about drinking coffee forever. They showed us how they were different in every way from their competitors. They gave us an experience that made us feel different too.

Starbucks created an expectation with pricing, interior design, mellow music, fresh pastries and a great name. The change was subtle. They didn’t spell it out for us they just allowed us to become complicit in their marketing and enabled us to tell ourselves a true story that we could believe. And the result is that we were seduced. We weren’t just buying coffee anymore we were buying how the process made us feel (more on Starbucks’ positioning from Dan Ariely).

How you frame what you do matters. Telling people why you are different is just the start.
Showing them how you are different is the goal.

Image by Robert the Noid.