05.24.2002
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Subscribe »Starbucks, Blue Note And The Birth Of Cool - Part Two
As I've suggested in last week's issue, Starbucks' cross-merchandising efforts and product tie-ins represent in this instance a conscious, carefully negotiated effort to fashion an authentic coffee experience. By tapping into culturally located markers of cool - community, coffee, jazz - the experience appears ever so more real, a natural expression of the way things have always been. Just as Maynard G. Krebs snapped his fingers, sipped coffee and pounded on his bongo drums in the late 1950s, the consumer of today can relish in an equally cool lifestyle experience, replete with extra strong coffee and the jazz stylings of the Ray Brown Trio. All that's missing in the modern version is the goatee and sideburns...
These last observations never fail to raise a rumbling in certain quarters. For given my discussion above with regard to "cool," is it not obvious that Starbucks efforts to fashion the authentic, cool coffee experience - replete with product tie-ins and cross merchandising efforts, are viewed by many consumers as something less than "poised nonchalance?" As one friend remarked:
- Give me a break, if Starbucks wanted to foster the perfect 'cool' coffee experience, maybe they should leave random piles of used books, records and CD's laying around for customers to browse through. Thankfully, most people are smart enough to see right through their hollow marketing efforts.
Maybe she's right. According to this line of thinking, the truly "cool" will recognize, perhaps instantly, this "poised nonchalance" as carefully orchestrated and see right through the charade. Eventually, the rest of us ordinary folks will follow suit (i.e., come to our senses) and the Starbucks experience, viewed in this new light, will collapse upon itself, the product of mockery and scorn.
Then again, maybe things aren't quite that simple. Maybe people aren't as slavish and clueless as the "cool" among us would lead us to believe. For example, if we choose to view this "poised nonchalance" not as an objective property of the natural world but instead a relative state against which other postures appear more or less natural, an entirely different picture emerges.
This view is still consistent with cool as described above, only rather than assuming cool to be a God-given property of the natural world, we all acknowledge - perhaps even tacitly - that cool is something of an arbitrarily arrived at status. Cool, here, is found not in one's genes but in one's pose (relative to the rest of the world). Those of us who remember cool politics as played out in the classrooms of our youth recognize this point all too well. Yes, there are cool people, and we all understand precisely why they are cool, but deep down we know better than to think that the differences between them and us are inherent properties of biology or society. If my own experiences at my ten-year high school reunion are any indication, that last observation may well account for a significant portion of reunion attendance (i.e., time has a way of settling the score).
Turning back to our original examples, we all recognize that Jack Kerouac and Dorothy Parker are cool. And yet while we may all relish in the naturalness with which they exude their coolness or sophistication, most of us also realize, however tacitly, that we're playing along with the game. After all, we're not that stupid.
I think these observations might best explain how leading retailers such as Starbucks and Restoration Hardware are succeeding in their efforts to foster a sense of "coolness" and "authenticity" into their retail experiences. Deep down, we all know that listening to the Ray Brown Trio jam-out at the neighborhood Starbucks isn't going to place us near the epicenter of authentic bohemian culture. Nor, for that matter will it significantly increase our hip cachet. (And while we're on the subject, yes, it's probably true that this performance was part of an elaborate marketing and merchandising agreement between Starbucks and Blue Note.) But you know what, going to such an event is fun. Ditto for wandering down to a local coffee shop and finding ourselves reminiscing of the first time we heard the alluring, snake-like tone of Coltrane's sax as it pushes through "Round Midnight."
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