Amazon just delivered my very own half-caf, full fat, no foam hardcover version John Moore’s “Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Ground of Stabucks Corporate culture” to my door. You may already be a fan of John’s insights and style from the BrandAutopsy blog, but the book adds another dimension to what the marketing world at large can learn from both him and Starbucks.

One particularly meaty lesson from the book is “Keep your Marketing Authentic”. To stay authentic, each marketing program at Starbucks follows these 6 unwritten rules:

1. Be genuine and authentic

2. Evoke feelings, never prescribe feelings

3. Always say who you are, never who you are not

4. Stay connected to front-line employees

5. Deliver on all promises made

6. Respect people’s intelligence

While some of these are just good rules of thumb for everyday life, the additional principles of evoking feelings and staying in touch with the front line employees who create each individual customer experience helps prevent Starbucks from pushing programs into the field that wont resonate in store.
John drives home the fact that the marketing a company does has to be true to and reflective of the company’s values and vision. In my experience at Dell, there were a lot of very progressive thinkers in the marketing side of the business who had their hands tied by the narrow scope of responsibility given to them by senior leadership who viewed as direct response lead generation and not customer experience creation. The marketing department can’t do it alone - baking marketing into the business has to be supported by the entire coporate culture.
In addition to worthwhile content, TK also boasts a unique format. It is broken into bite size lessons and leading questions that make it a quick read. It will go on the very short list of business books I read straight through. All to often, I feel like I get the point in the first 100 pages and that the remainder of the book is stuffing meant to fill out the page count originally promised to the editor. TK is rich in usable lessons and built for the short-attention span MTV generation. Speaking of bite size chunks, check out John’s authentically wacky Ronco-style infomercial over on YouTube. Like that $4 cup of coffee sitting next to your laptop, it’s good for a lift on a Friday.

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