Starbucks hauled 1,000 lighting instruments, 445 chain motors, 120 speakers, 21 projection screens, and 5,000 live coffee plants to the conference center in Houston and spent three weeks installing a $35 million “Leadership Lab.”
What Starbucks doesn’t spend on commercials, it makes up for with this three-day spectacle. The goal is to mobilize its employees to become brand evangelists.
About 9,600 managers cycled through the temporary interactive experience–raking coffee beans, watching roasting demonstrations, learning company history, and most importantly, soaking in the Starbucks brand as they went.