How global brand Starbucks makes a local connection in Seattle

Starbucks, the coffee house chain, uses local events and partnerships to enhance its brand status in Seattle, where it is headquartered.

Every global company has its own backyard – a local community that nurtures the enterprise even as it comforts and supports its people.

In greater Seattle are some 12,000 Starbucks employees – or “partners”, in the company lexicon – and the coffee retailer has a deliberate program that rewards the city it calls home.

For Erin Combs, Starbucks’ senior manager/community partnerships, the challenge is “to take all of the good work and the incredible relationship that people globally have with the Starbucks brand and make that locally relevant.

“Our hometown-initiative goal is to build brand love and to tell...

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