Captive Audience
If you're trying to grab someone's attention, you need to give them a reason to listen. How do you do that?
You might try beginning with a story, a mystery, a puzzle.
Say you're trying to present something really dry, like "how to think about investing." A tried-and-true strategy would be telling a story about how bad things are. There's always some crisis lurking around the corner. Plenty of financial journalism takes this route.
Or you might opt for a quirky over-reliance on metaphor and analogy and hope that a few ideas will stick with readers. Some financial writing does really well with this framework. For others it's more aspirational.
There are no stakes to a lot of financial writing—the piece you're reading is for educational and entertainment purposes only, not investment advice, as we point out here and here and down at the bottom of this page. When there are no stakes, this cheeky sort of writing is fine. There's lots of deep and serious analysis that goes on behind the scenes to get to the ideas, but that's not the point. It's meant to be engaging and informative.
Weak brew
If, instead of writing low-stakes investment commentary, you run the world's third largest restaurant chain and you’re already in a low-simmering crisis and you have a very captive audience of financial professionals and investors all thirsty to hear you explain how, exactly, you're going to turnaround the flagging business, cheeky humor *may* not be the right tone to deliver that message.
But here's Starbuck's back in November introducing their "Triple Shot with Two Pumps Reinvention Plan."
Lamplighter has a soft spot for cheeky titles, but the plan, so far, has turned out to be decaffeinated.
Shares of SBUX fell 15% from the announcement through April. Shares dropped another 20% when the company gave the latest update on its progress—er—regress.
Stores are struggling to sell as many Iced toasted vanilla oat milk shaken espressos. They sold 6% fewer drinks, muffins and breakfast ice creams than last year. In China, where nearly 20% of SBUX stores brew, sales dropped 11%. All this while expenses rise.
The company's performance stunk enough that two-time former CEO and Chairman, Howard Shultz, felt compelled to weigh in on social, even though he doesn't have a role at the company any more. His advice: focus on the customer and the coffee.
Its not like the TSWTPR Plan didn't include those points. It did. It just buried them under a cute headline and among some dense corporate-speak to "reinvigorate the partner culture" and "unlock efficiency." But, where Shultz's delivery hit a tone of humble and serious, management went with fun and quirky.
Room for cream
There's a lot of value in the Starbucks brand. The green mermaid's empire isn't risking collapse. One lesson from the snafu comes down to signaling. If you have a serious message, like, say "we know things aren't great, we're going to turn it around," you *might* consider delivering that in a serious way that serious investors take seriously. Lamplighter has pointed out another way—a better way—to signal to shareholders that you believe in the prospects of your company: just buying the stock.
Gauging management is one of the trickier tasks in evaluating investments. Sometimes companies scream for new management. Most of the time, the signals are quieter. SBUX whiffed the delivery of its plan. It, so far, has whiffed the execution of the plan too. Given that, the company still has work to do to win back customers and investors, including Lamplighter.
Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. It's meant to illustrate ways LCM thinks about investing. Things that LCM decides are good investments for LCM and its clients are based on many criteria, not all of which are covered here. Some or all of LCM's ideas may not be suitable for other investors. LCM does not recommend investing either long or short any position mentioned. LCM may own positions in some of the companies mentioned. Some of its ideas will lose money — investing entails risk. See full disclaimer here.