Eight Awesome Social Campaigns From Starbucks

This logo is in use till date and is one of the most visual and recognisable elements of the company. Since its founding days in the early 1990s, Starbucks has strived to build its brand identity by offering customers a relaxing and enjoyable experience. From the very beginning, the experiential aspect of the brand has been consistently and effectively implemented in all its stores across the world. In addition, Starbucks has also built its brand on things that tend to be out of the box, by consistently defying conventional wisdom. Given the massive interconnectedness of the business world and emerging models of competition and growth, how can organisations maintain their core underlying brand identity? In addition to competitive market factors, worldwide external shocks like the global recession have also severely impacted businesses at both local and global level. The key question that emerges is that whether there is now a continual need for brands to adapt or face the threat of extinction if they practice consistency.

It’s one thing to be a pioneer in exploring new tactics and demonstrating a progressive approach; it’s another to abandon what works in a race to be hippest nerd on the block. The full-page newspaper ads go to some length to describe how Starbucks selects only the best 3 percent of beans and roasts them until they pop twice, and gives its part-time workers health insurance. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show revealed Starbucks as the new sponsor for their show’s VIP Skybox. Starbucks leveraged their sponsorship of the show by getting mentioned during the airtime as well as afterward.

Say It With Starbucks

The company plans to run a four-part series on YouTube called “RuPaul-iday” starting on Black Friday that will feature Old Navy products and demonstrations of holiday-inspired activities. An interesting piece of research conducted in 2013 using neuroscience research techniques in Germany suggested that customers would be willing to pay more for a Starbucks coffee, if the brand decides to charge it. Because neuroscience research looks at changes in brain activity when exposed to brands and price points, the results were considered more believable than traditional market research.

• Leading brands create their corporate strategies with an inherent strategic element encompassing innovation.
• In 2017, it partnered with Tencent to launch the ‘Say it with Starbucks’ campaign.
• In reality, what marketers need to learn and explore is how these new shiny objects fit into a toolbox of hammers and nails that you already have in place and working.
• The campaign centers around a 6-minute documentary-style video that was filmed at 59 Starbucks stores in 28 countries over the course of 24 hours.

On average they sent 155 tweets per day with 99% of their tweets being replies, which gives an indication of what they value the platform for. This is one of today’s greatest challenges in the realm of marketing and public relations. Many see social media as the next-gen marketing panacea, while ignoring the tried-and-true methodology that even these social media giants are using themselves to gain exposure for their brands. The danger is that temptation to migrate to the shiny object and away from the dancer who brung ya. In reality, what marketers need to learn and explore is how these new shiny objects fit into a toolbox of hammers and nails that you already have in place and working. The business also uses Microsoft Azure-powered solution and blockchain technologies for seamless operation.

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But CPG brands need to get their value propositions right and connect front- and back-end technology. The benefits for Starbucks are to foster and further loyalty, with the group helping to create a sense of community and belonging for members. With no direct branding or advertising – just the stipulation that members keep it strictly Starbucks-related when talking about drinks – it maintains authenticity and creates naturally high levels of engagement. Not so much a campaign as a year-round marketing activity, Leaf Rakers Society is a Starbucks Facebook group for lovers of the famous pumpkin spice latte and “all things Fall”. In 2017, Starbucks returned with season two of ‘Upstanders’ – a series of 11 short films about US citizens showing outstanding acts of courage, generosity, or kindness within their own communities. Using genuine storytelling, the aim was to counteract the influx of negative and downbeat news elsewhere on social media.

Both brands admit they have learned the hard way that not involving in-house teams with pitch processes can create a “negative environment” internally. Now with more than 37,000 members, the private group helps Starbucks to generate ‘meaningful interactions’ on Facebook, which is now a prioritised metric for brands above likes and followers. A nice example of co-creation; Starbucks picked 13 winners whose designs were launched in-stores for the festive period. Additionally, Starbucks launched the ‘Upstanders Challenge’ – a user generated competition that generated over 1,000 entries. Starbucks went on to award more than half a million dollars in grants to non-profit organisations making a difference in small communities.

To honor World AIDS Day, December 1, 2018, the brand took the pledge to donate 20 cents for every handcrafted latte purchased in participating US and Canada Starbucks stores. The company partnered with the RED foundation and joined the global fight to help AIDS.

A similar vibe is seen in this post as their Peppermint Mocha highlights a sparkly message for the Christmas season. And, not to forget, the self-explanatory picture, doesn’t require you to go through the caption at all.

In August 2017, Starbucks was the target of a hoax in which the coffee chain would supposedly give out free coffee to undocumented migrants in the US. The company immediately took to Twitter, replying to multiple users and denying any such campaign. Starbucks has been a perennial target because it has never shied away from talking about issues and topics that could be seen as divisive to some. #BoycottStarbucks has been a hashtag that has floated around on social media channels for some time now. Starbucks’ Twitter genius cannot be established without talking about their official Twitter accounts for Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latté, with 112K followers and Frappuccino with 202K followers. They exist solely to share the news about their respective products and is only active during their seasonal debut every year. The brand makes sure that almost all of their customers are heard and responds to messages, whether it’s negative or positive.

Targeting Their Audience

The artsy, stylish, but minimalistic approach of their posts is reflective of their brand personality. They manage to put forward a consistent imagery and tone that has helped them build a coherent brand identity. Starbucks’ core social strategy can be encapsulated in their CEO Kevin Johnson’s words, “Loyalty remains the cornerstone of our digital flywheel”. The coffee brand devotes its efforts to communicate with their customers and has undoubtedly become a fan favorite. The brand responded to 95% of the conversations generated by the 158 Posts they published, receiving 100% positive sentiment from their audience. They appear to participate more when fan conversations on their wall have more positive vibes than usual.

To be successful in its international growth and expansion strategy, Starbucks needs to have a strong innovation mindset and the ability to locally customise its product offer and positioning of its stores. The brand has taken rapid strides towards implementing an organisational wide innovation strategy by investing in new technology, redesigning store layouts and investing in new concept stores. One good example is its expansion into China – how did it manage to launch so successfully in a culture of primarily tea drinkers?

His content has been downloaded 50,000+ times and viewed by over 90% of the Fortune 500. Magazine, Adweek, Business Insider, Seeking Alpha, Tech Crunch, Y Combinator, and Lifehacker. With over 10 startups under his belt, Ian’s been described as a serial entrepreneur— a badge he wears with pride. Ian’s a published author and musician and when he’s not obsessively testing the next marketing idea, he can be found hanging out with family and friends north of Boston. Starbucks is no doubt the world’s one of the most loved brands, winning many awards including – “Best Business”, “Most Admired Company”, “100 Best Corporate Citizens” and so on. While its quality of coffee is always unquestionable, but the price, according to the domestic stores is very high.

Starbucks On Why conversational Commerce Is The Future

“Our integrated gift card, loyalty, social and mobile platform is barnone the largest and most successful in the world,” he said. These are examples of consistency, attention to detail and a strong customer orientation in practice. Get a daily selection of our top stories based on your reading preferences. The point is to highlight the human interactions at Starbucks stores around the world.

Brand strategies that are envisioned with innovation as one of the core elements affords the brand a long lasting competitive advantage that would even withstand system level shocks such as recession. A brand campaign has the purpose of developing a brand with the aid of communication. In 2014, Starbucks launched its first global brand campaign titled “Meet me at Starbucks”. The campaign chronicles a day in the life of Starbucks through a mini-documentary format. The campaign was shot in 59 different stores located in 28 different countries, using 39 local filmmakers, 10 local photographers and one director coordinating all the people involved. It opened its first international store in Tokyo in 1996, entered UK in 1998 and opened its first Latin American store in Mexico City in 2002.

The coffee brand believes providing a consumer experience that “evokes human emotion and connection” will determine which brick and mortar retailers thrive in the future. From Tesco to Starbucks to Leon, the Marketing Week team chooses the second set of eight campaigns that make up our best marketing of 2020. ‘Stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change’ – reflected in seasons 1 and 2 of Starbucks’ first original series – “Upstanders”.

Such a scenario will become even more plausible when the brand experiences an external shock. In such cases, the brand has to reach out to the customers to reinforce that aspect of the brand that earned the loyalty of the customers in the first place. While the consequences of the exposed scandal are still evolving, the brand is still undeniably a strong competitor in the Chinese market. The main reasons for its popularity are freebies, 1-for-1 promotions, 50%-off discounts, and delivery service offering convenience to customers.

Real-life stories tend to connect with consumers in a profound way that creates a positivity surrounding the brand. Emotional connection has been known to be a key driver of brand awareness and loyalty. To understand Starbucks’ marketing strategy, we must first look at Starbucks’ branding ideology. Over the last five decades, the Starbucks logo has gone through only four redesigns to create the iconic symbol that graces your exotic coffee cups today.

Heckler was particularly captivated by the idea of the siren luring customers back into the stores driven by their love of coffee. Heckler also opted for a kelly green palette and abandoned the original brown palette—some say this was to symbolize a ‘fresh start’ after Schultz became the majority owner of Starbucks. The brand continued the personalisation theme the following year, releasing white cups that customers were encouraged to colour-in with pencils in-store, and naturally creating user-generated content at the same time. The company has strongly believed in developing and building the brand through word-of-mouth channels and by being visible in a consumer’s life. This brand building principle is clearly reflected in the company’s brand promotion and communication strategies.

However, compared to the other brands like Apple and Nike, Starbucks spends significantly less on its marketing/promotions. Though, looking at the geographically diverse customer base, redesigning the logo is no way easy. By operating in 60+ different countries, it is challenging for them to appeal to their existing audience base – so logo remains the primary factor of connection and recognition. List your agency among the leaders of the industry, promote your work, create original content, find new team members and keep up with digital marketing events. Starbucks today unveiled a new social media campaign to get the message out about the sustainability commitments it made last year, with the aim of cutting its carbon, water and waste footprints in half by 2030. The coffee chain hopes the launch of new cold coffee options will widen appeal and offer young people “a new way in” to the brand.

Bombay Sapphire, Johnnie Walker and Grey Goose are some of the marketers using the tactic to explore innovation in ways that are specific to their products. Sign up to get in-depth marketing strategies, tactics, and case studies delivered right to your inbox. Starbucks, after Apple Pay, is currently the second most popular mobile payment service in the U.S., confirmed eMarketer. With nearly 25.2 million users in 2019, the Starbucks app represents 39.4 percent of proximity mobile payment users. Starbucks believes that its 25,000 stores across the globe has led consumers to “forget” about its “high-quality” coffee.

Starbucks also initiates many programs to reduce its environmental footprint through energy and water conservation, recycling and green construction. The coffee chain responded to the backlash by announcing that as part of the refugee hiring plan, they would initially focus on hiring those who have served with U.S. troops as interpreters and support personnel abroad. One of their most engaging videos is a one minute video featuring various veterans as a part of their wider campaign of hiring veterans and military spouses. The video garnered 2.6 million views and also contributed to political conversations regarding the subject. For a recent example of this approach, consider Starbucks, who is embarking on what they are billing as the company’s biggest marketing effort to date. As consumers navigate the stop-start nature of pandemic recovery, some brands have proved adept at addressing their anxieties and tech needs by offering a dose of optimism, in-person events or NFTs. The loyalty program for Starbucks Rewards expanded to 18.9 million active members in the U.S. during Q1 2020, up 16% year-over-year.