All too often companies pitch the benefits of fair trade coffee simply by adding the appropriate logo and copying and pasting some short text about small coffee farmers getting a living wage.
But when they do that, they’re wasting an opportunity.
Instead, tell a story.
Peet’s Coffee does a better job than most. Here is part of their sales text for their Fair Trade Blend.
"Six hundred families, none farming more than a few acres, operate a mill we know well in Tarrazú, one of the best places in Costa Rica to grow coffee, and certainly the steepest. When this cooperative, which was producing to our standards more than a decade ago, became a Fair Trade affiliate, we made this clear-toned, lemony coffee the heart of the blend whose soul is assistance for small growers."
This text is specific. It talks about 600 families. It talks about a coffee mill “we know”. And the area where the coffee is grown is “certainly the steepest”.
With specifics like this the reader can build a picture in his or her mind. The story of this coffee becomes real, rather than general and fuzzy.
Here’s an excerpt from the Thanksgiving Coffee page on their fair trade Song Bird Guatemalan coffee.
"The coffee is shade grown on steep volcanic slopes of the Northwestern Highlands of Guatemala by Maya Quiche coffee farmers. It is a gift from craft-inspired farmers whose ancestors have lived in these lush mountain forests for millennia.
The GUAYA'B Association is a cooperative of 292 small coffee farmers in the mountainous Guatemalan state of Huehuetenango."
Again, there are plenty of specifics in there. There is a story there.
Better still, in both examples, would be some photos. And better even than that would be some video clips of the farmers at work. (Any coffee marketers out there heard of YouTube yet?)
Most products, even most coffees, are generic in nature. They don’t lend themselves well to a real story.
But fair trade coffee is different. There is always a story, and it’s a good one.
And the better you tell the story, the more you will engage people emotionally. And the more fair trade coffee you will sell.
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