When I think about the marketing I observe for coffee, it makes me wonder what its all about.
Does coffee need to be marketed? Is there a benefit? As long as you have a friend, relative, co-worker or other acquaintance that drinks coffee, you would be exposed to the opportunity to try it and enjoy it. Through this exposure you would have an opportunity to become attracted to the stimulant effect of the caffein contained in the drink, and I assume come to enjoy the taste. If the taste were not good, you would probably only try coffee once or twice, and not again. A bad flavour would probably put you off of the modest stimulant effect of the drink.
Marketing is usually designed to influence a person to purchase something they did not previously want or need. It can also be used to introduce somebody to something they were not already aware of. We have already figured out that you want coffee that stimulates you and tastes good, so you do not need to be influenced to want or need or discover coffee. Therefore, I must assume that the purpose of marketing of coffee is something else...
Fresh?
The major Canadian coffee chain repeats with broken record precision, "always fresh". This is based on their practice of marking the time on their pots of drip brewed coffee with a white pencil, and limiting the time that that pot can be served to 20 minutes.
In reality their coffee is not fresh...
The consensus among coffee experts is that roasted coffee goes stales in minutes, some say seconds, and the only way to ensure freshness is to grind immediately before preparation. This chain roasts and grinds massive quantities of coffee, and then packages it into little foil packets. The coffee is then boxed and shipped across Canada and the USA. They probably do this because it costs more to make a fresh cup. By grinding and roasting in a single location, they reduce costs by roasting, grinding and packaging on an industrial scale, rather than at many plants with many workers across the country. Another fact is that providing staff with foil packets of stale coffee and drip machines to brew is simple, and they have to invest less in the training of their staff. That makes the staff more easy to replace.
In this case it seems that the purpose of marketing coffee is to to influence us to buy their stale coffee so that they can maximize their profit and avoid the risk of a skill dependancy in their employees.
Does Burnt Coffee Taste Good?
For a moment take a careful, objective approach and stretch your imagination far enough to assume that there are some people who find that burnt coffee (French roast, or generally roasts darker than Viennese) is the only coffee that tastes good. Perhaps they have a certain "profile" of taste buds on their tongue that creates for them the impression of pleasure when they imbibe a burnt brew... Ok, enough of that.
The truth about dark roasts is that they are achieved at the expense of the complex and varied origin flavours of the bean. It is truly ironic that the company responsible for brining "speciality coffee" to the masses, is single-handedly responsible for selling coffee that hides the most delicious and compelling flavour potentials in the bean. Imagine what the coffee world would be like with out the nutty sweetness of a high-grown Costa Rican, or the earthy body of an Indonesian coffee. And the Africans! Do not get me started on the amazing complexity and subtle nuances of a dry processed Ethiopian bean, this blog is too short for that! It is a truly regrettable and shameful fact that the green-logo company has made a global empire on selling coffee prepared from burnt beans. Why do they do it? The best explanation I have found is that it provides a simple way of achieving consistency by permitting them to use just about any beans that they can find in their blend. One burnt bean tastes much like another.
In this case it seems that the purpose of coffee marketing is to convince us to buy burnt coffee that is cheaper to roast on an industrial scale.
The bottom line it seems is that the aim of coffee marketing is not to get you to buy coffee, you are already motivated to do that for the stimulant effect and the taste. The real purpose of the marketing of these two companies is to get you to buy stale or burnt coffee. Coffee that has either a thin and disgusting taste, or a flavour that completely masks the really delicious possibilities of the bean.
Knowledge is power, so go out there and support your local micro-roasters and local coffee shops. Demand a higher quality cup for your hard-earned-dime, and tell the coffee Bosses where to shove their stale, burnt bean!
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