Local customers more amped on company's signature product than on McCartney collaboration
Last updated June 5, 2007 8:51 p.m. PT
By MÓNICA GUZMÁN
P-I REPORTER
Jim Wainwright would've bought Paul McCartney's "Memory Almost Full" at Starbucks on Tuesday. If only he could have heard it.
The Denver resident and lifelong Beatles fan stood among the tourists in the original Starbucks store at Pike Place Market, waiting for his non-fat venti cappuccino and straining his ears. McCartney seemed to glance at him from a card by the register, where copies of the ex-Beatle's new album sat beneath stacks of his special-edition Starbucks gift card.
McCartney's album was playing, somewhere under the rustle of tourists posing for photos. It was playing at every Starbucks, actually -- to an estimated 6 million people in more than 10,000 stores in 29 countries. On a continuous loop. All day long.
The unprecedented promotion between the giants of coffee and rock accompanied the release of McCartney's 21st solo album -- the first under Starbucks' new Hear Music label. The company has been about more than coffee for a while now, stocking CDs with its lattes and even dabbling in film distribution.
The new label and the new promotion is just another step: an experiment in cross-industry marketing and, some experts have said, a pretty neat idea.
But if the sounds of change -- if not all-out McCartney overload -- could be heard Tuesday in Seattle's Starbucks stores, few people were really listening.
"I don't come here for the music. I come for the coffee and to relax," said Melanie Hernandez, 32, who spends about $50 and a couple of hours a week at the Starbucks in University Village.
The University of Washington grad student paid more attention to the English papers she was grading than to the music, which was barely audible above the busy spot's chatty hum. It wasn't much louder than Starbucks' typical selection of mellow tunes, and that's just the way she likes it.
"I'll leave if the music is too loud," she said.
As for the album's systemwide promotion, she said, "It feels a little bit like it's being shoved down my throat."
Rebekah Basquette, 52, who remembers wearing an "I love Paul" pin in her younger days, didn't mind so much. She and her 12-year-old daughter, Lexy -- who shares John Lennon's birthday, Oct. 9 -- love Starbucks almost as much as they love the Fab Four.
"It brings Starbucks up a level and it brings (McCartney) up a level," Basquette said in the Starbucks at Pike Place Market. "There's such purity from him. He wouldn't be discolored or anything because it's (Starbucks)."
But Kelsey Gray, 20, who spent the afternoon at the U Village location, saw a corporate stain she didn't like. As far as record labels go, few could be as conspicuous as Starbucks, she said. If she bought McCartney's new album, she wouldn't get it here.
"I'd feel like I'm not buying Paul McCartney's music -- I'm buying Starbucks' music."
Jeannie Tram, 23, liked the promotion. But the two-year Starbucks employee, who was off duty at the U Village location, listened to Sean Kingston on her headphones as she did her schoolwork. Yes, she said, some of Starbucks' music can get repetitive on the other side of the counter. But she guessed the McCartney loop was a "welcome change" for employees.
Another U Village employee said the store had sold several albums Tuesday afternoon, and guessed the never-ending soundtrack probably helped. No official sales figures were available Tuesday.
McCartney remains Hear Music's only artist, though Starbucks plans to sign two more this year and eight next year. Will each release be accompanied by another global music event? It's too soon to tell, a Starbucks spokesperson said.
As for the low volume at the Pike Place Market location, employees there had turned the music down while a choir of buskers sang "Amazing Grace" in the drizzle outside. Fifteen minutes after their act, they hadn't turned it back up, and Wainwright left with his venti cappuccino -- but without Paul McCartney.
