How Did We All Get Addicted To Coffee?

It’s a wonderful time to be in the coffee business. People are drinking coffee in record amounts and they are willing to pay more than ever before for their liquid crack.

So how did we get here? How did we all become addicted to caffeine?

I could tell you a story about how coffee was discovered in Ethiopia during the 11th century and how it slowly spread around the globe at first as a magical substance, and later, as a commodity that kept factory workers awake. But that story has been told before and it isn’t even true.

The truth is that coffee has become the second most traded commodity in the world (the first is crude oil) because we believe it makes us better. You will hear avid caffeine addicts say things like “I’m not myself until I have my first cup of coffee” or “I drank a pot of coffee last night and got that paper done on time”. It’s as if we believe that coffee gives us super powers, an ability to do things that are normally impossible.

Now you may be thinking “alright Chris, where are you going with all of this?”. In an effort to connect my two passions in life, coffee and marketing, I wanted to use our beliefs about coffee to make a point about marketing.

We buy what we believe.

If you believe that Versace makes more fashionable t-shirts than Fruit Of The Loom you will be willing to pay the outrageous price multiple that Versace charges for their “fashion”. So the question is, how can you make your customers believe in the benefits of whatever it is you’re selling?

We buy from companies that believe their own story.

Mercedes Benz believes they are making the best luxury vehicle, they invest in technology to make the cabin more quiet, the drive more smooth, the leather softer and the seats more comfortable. They make the story “this is the best luxury vehicle in the world and you should pay 5 times more than a Honda for it”, believable. This is why Mercedes succeeds.

When companies tell stories that they don’t believe we can sense it.

Toys R Us went out of business because they could no longer believe their own story. They went from being a place where you could buy almost any toy imaginable, to being an overpriced store full of toys that no one wanted. We could no longer believe that Toys R Us was the world wide authority of kids, families, and fun. So we stopped shopping there.

Do you believe your own story?