Freshly named Mobile Marketer’s ‘2010 Mobile Marketer Of The Year‘ – Starbucks continues to make the right moves, on the right platforms, with the right people – their customers. I’ve written about Starbucks multiple times on this site in the last couple of years, giving them loads of credit for the way that they effectively market their brand while keeping in mind that their main role is how to best service their customers.
The thing that impresses me most about Starbucks is their willingness to ‘try’ things. They have developed a culture of innovation surrounding how they market to, and embrace their customers. A key quote from the Mobile Marketer article inspired the title of this post:
“Starbucks taps mobile for the medium’s strengths: location, timeliness and immediacy, convenience and measurability,”
5 words – 4 important to the customer, 1 very important to Starbucks (measurability).
They are clearly customer centric, with the aim to 1) Make it easy on their customer to do business with them 2) Make the experience relevant and, most importantly 3) Build an intense level of loyalty with their patrons.
What better way to accomplish those things listed above than to create a set of tools that are with you all the time, on the computing device you use most often? Your phone. This device provides an opportunity for Starbucks to interact with their patrons multiple times a day, providing them an enhanced experience with a product they clearly love, and (this is important to a marketer) get real time data about those people and how they interact with your brand in a non-intrusive and invisible fashion. People are willingly interacting with Starbucks because they are getting perceived value from their experience on their mobile device. Well done, Starbucks – you’ve set the bar.
David Veneski Mobile Marketing Mobile, Starbucks
CNN Money reports today that in at least one Seattle location, Starbucks is undergoing an identity change and swapping out it’s globally recognized brand name in favor of a more local ‘flavor’ – naming each store to reflect it’s neighborhood location. In addition to this name change, Starbucks is planning on also transforming the experience the customer has within the store itself. Beyond their trademark coffee and tea offerings they are planning on adding beer and wine to the beverage list and ‘opening stores with a more sophisticated tone that hearkens back to its early coffeehouse days‘.
It’s an interesting move. Starbucks has faced declining sales in the last year as the economy has pulled back and the customer is closely watching their pocketbook in the face of financial uncertainties. Premium coffee habits have given way to more pressing needs in the minds of consumers. Will changing a globally recognized brand name and revamping the customer experience inside the store help this?
From my perspective, they should have tapped into their thriving community to see what they thought of the idea. They clearly have a valued and active area for people to share their thoughts and wishes – why not ask for something back from that same community when Starbucks is testing a new concept? That would have been the smart move. This will be an interesting one to watch. Now instead of grabbing a ‘Starbucks’, I guess at least some coffee addicts in Seattle will be grabbing a 15th Ave Coffee. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Then again, you can’t get a beer at a Starbucks so they’ve got that going for them!
David Veneski Branding Starbucks
My top 10 reads for the week. This is a SMALL sampling of what I come across in my weekly media consumption addiction. If you’d like to be on my email list, please email me and I will add you.
Facebook Readying Its Mobile-Social Move – Adotas
Heavy Twitter Users Bring Social Activity to New Heights – eMarketer
How Starbucks Plans to Capitalize on Free Wi-Fi – Mashable
The Science of Sharing: Platforms inject data into the art of going viral – AdWeek
How Nike’s CEO Shook Up the Shoe Industry (off topic, but GREAT read) – FastCompany
Is Facebook Foursquare’s Enemy? It’s Complicated – Mashable
Facebook’s Foursquare competitor is imminent – CNET
Social Media Strategy Lessons From Pepsi – Business Insider
D.I.Y. Tool for Apps Needs Work – NYTimes
The Best and Worst Campaign Deals on Foursquare’s Turf – ClickZ
David Veneski Digital Marketing, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Weekly News
My top 10 reads for the week. This is a SMALL sampling of what I come across in my weekly media consumption addiction. If you’d like to be on my email list, please email me and I will add you.
Say goodbye to the era of new stand-alone social networks – Guardian UK
Why Facebook Questions Could Be Zuckerberg’s Dream Come True – ReadWriteWeb
Google, undisputed heavyweight champion of mobile search – Pingdom
More Than 60% of Phones Web Capable by 2015 – ReadWriteWeb
Vice, a Media Company, Shows Big Brands How to Reach the Hip Crowd – NYTimes
Digital Media Director 2.0: Jack-of-all-Trades, Master of Many – FastCompany
A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Blogging – Mashable
Check-In On Foursquare Without Taking Your Phone Out Of Your Pocket – TechCrunch
BlackBerry’s New Torch Makes a Leap From Drab – WSJ
Apple and the war for the mobile market – arstechnica
How Starbucks Reached 10M Fans: 6 Tips From A Social Media Superstar – Critical Mass
David Veneski Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Weekly News
My top 10 reads for the week. This is a SMALL sampling of what I come across in my weekly media consumption addiction. If you’d like to be on my email list, please email me and I will add you.
Ad Age 2010 Women to Watch: Deborah Conrad – AdAge
Behind Foursquare and Gowalla: The great check-in battle – Wired
The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains – Wired
Starbucks clobbers all consumer brands on social media – Venture Beat
A Guide To The Cultural Battle That Is Reshaping The Media Business – paidContent
City of New York Blankets Times Square with Giant QR Codes – Mashable
More Adults than Teens Consume Mobile Video – ReadWriteWeb
Mashable Media Summit 2010 Recap and Complete Videos – Mashable
How to Manage Your News Consumption in the Real-Time Web Era – NYTimes
The iPad: Changing How We Build Business Relationships – Inc.
David Veneski Marketing, Social Media Weekly News
Today a trusted media partner sent me a note about a Google search he had done on Starbucks during his business trip to Seattle. The subject line of the email: “Starbucks” search results & you! wow… Curious, I opened the email to find a screen shot of what his search result delivered. Interestingly enough – there is a new feature in Google’s search results that I had not seen before. That feature (in Beta, of course) delivers results for your search from people in your social circle. I know for a fact that this partner reads my blog from time to time and has it delivered as an RSS Feed to his iGoogle account. Google recognizes that, and delivers a search result based on that connection. Nice job Google – closing the loop on keyword search and your personal social graph. I’m impressed.
David Veneski Google Google, Search, Social Circle
Recently Pepsi, a long time Superbowl advertiser (Cyndi Crawford anyone?) announced a switch in their advertising strategy. Rather than spend an estimated $20M in ads for America’s largest sporting event, they would be driving a social media campaign called the Pepsi Refresh Project. AdAge sums up the core tenant of the project:
“Consumers, businesses and nonprofits could then submit their ideas for how to have a positive effect on their community. Pepsi has said it plans to pledge at least $20 million in grants to the effort.”
In short, this campaign is a crowdsourcing effort – not unlike Dell’s IdeaStorm, Best Buy’s IdeaX, and My Starbucks Idea – that channels funds that would have been applied to SuperBowl advertising, into a user identified community giving program.
The difference? Execution. Pepsi’s effort was fraught with privacy and security issues that tarnished the first step of what could be a very good campaign. There is upside however. I think that many people will respect what Pepsi is attempting to do. Rather than spending millions of dollars on less than a minute’s worth of shameless self promotion during the world’s largest sporting event – they are putting those powerful dollars towards programs that will have a positive impact within the community – a generous foray into Cause Marketing. Kudos to them for that.
David Veneski Cause Marketing, Community Crowdsource, Pepsi
Every week, I send a growing list of internal and external customers a list of 10 compelling reads for the week. This is a SMALL sampling of what I come across in my media consumption addiction, but that would be an overwhelming amount of content to share through this means. Each Friday, I’ll post my summary out to a larger audience than my mailing list through this blog. If you’d like to be on my mailing list, please email me and I will add you. Here’s the list for this week:
Tech Boom: Intel’s Earnings Up an Astounding 875% — Mashable article
10 Tips for Becoming a Smarter, Social Business Person — GigaOm article
Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over — ReadWriteWeb article
The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration — Mashable article
The Starbucks Formula for Social Media Success — The Next Web article
In-store facial recognition ads from Intel and Microsoft — Econsultancy article
The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s — NYTimes article
Is 2010 Your Year for a Mobile App? — ClickZ article
Nexus One and Android 2.1: Apple Better Watch Out — ReadWriteWeb article
Why Apple Bought Quattro Wireless And Is Getting Into Advertising — Silicon Alley Insider article
David Veneski Marketing, Social Media Weekly News
As I’ve written before, Starbuck’s is a company that is an active evangelist of the Social Web. Now, they have taken that a bit further and have expanded that to the Mobile Web with the release of two new iPhone apps: myStarbucks and Starbucks Card Mobile. Targeted at coffee drinkers on the go that are hyper-connected with their iPhone or iPod Touch, these apps offer the convenience of loading a Starbucks card through your mobile device and “a groundbreaking mobile payment component that will allow customers in 16 stores to pay using their iPhone or iPod touch mobile device“.
The myStarbucks app “will allow users to build and share their favorite beverages, find store locations anywhere in the world, look up detailed nutritional information for Starbucks food and beverage items, build and store favorite Starbucks® espresso drinks, and learn more about Starbucks rich selection of whole bean coffees.” (via Starbucks Newsroom). Well done Starbucks – identify an opportunity to add convenience to your customer experience and deliver innovation on the mobile front.
David Veneski Mobile Marketing iPhone, Starbucks
Our commitment at Intel is to build cross platform social campaigns – using all mediums available to us, including print, broadcast, and out of home vehicles. We’ve started already with the launch of our new campaign ‘Sponsors of Tomorrow‘ by bridging our out of home placements with our web presence (we took over the Times Square Nasdaq and Reuters boards with the a request to text in your view of ‘Tomorrow’ that is then displayed on our website). In addition, we have a very active social stream through Twitter, YouTube, and our Consumer Blog. Starbucks has done something similar in their new campaign – leveraging offline media to bolster online communities.
It’s well known that Starbucks does not embrace traditional advertising. For this effort, they’ve strayed from that tenant by placing large format posters in 6 major cities across the U.S – taking their campaign off line and to the streets. However, true to their commitment to social media and their community (see yesterday’s post), they’ve also integrated social sites and tools like Twitter (183k followers), Facebook (1.5M fans), YouTube, and Flickr – counting on their active community to extend the campaign message through earned media.
From today’s NY Times: Chris Bruzzo, vice president for brand, content and online at Starbucks said Starbucks’ social media presence gave it an advantage over competitors with gigantic ad budgets because its fans wanted to talk about it online. “It’s the difference between launching with many millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”
Well done Starbucks – you’ve recognized the correlation between paid and earned media. I’ll watch your new campaign with interest….
David Veneski Advertising, Social Media #tomorrow, Sponsors of Tomorrow, Starbucks