The new Starbucks marketing campaign encourages everybody to volunteer 5 hours within the span of a year to earn a delicious, warm cup of joe. From Jan. 21-25, if you drop by your local Starbucks, you can pick up a pledge card and your coffee. Partnering with Hands On Network,
Here's the ad they're doing.
I think it's a powerful heart loyal, retention, and stimulate demand campaign they're doing. Starbucks' model provides a more participatory and responsibility campaign that opens its customers to the communities around them. It educates people on the importance of a community and giving back. Starbucks takes a leadership role by first giving to the Starbucks community, hoping for a ripple effect. Personally, it encourages goal setting - 5 hours can be done with 25min/month, and individually develops a person's character.
Marketing Kudos to Starbucks for its smart timing as the campaign is just around the presidential inauguration and MLK weekend. Also, riding the waves of Oprah's endorsement, I'm in has gotten a lot of media exposure lately. This campaign ultimately adds value to the customer and the community.
With this new positioning statement, Starbucks stands with societal value as a harbinger of light. Starbucks is embarking on a brand building endeavor with Project Red and now has a non-traditional campaign in their portfolio. However, this distracts from their original business model of the Starbucks in-house experience and quality product (as Dunkin and Beaner's claim to have a better brew). Strategically they're focusing more on quality and retaining their loyal customer base, and drawing in new customers as well, but I ask the question, would this raise sales? There's no real incentive to drink buy starbucks when you're volunteering because this campaign is more external. What will Starbucks do with the heavy amounts of store closings this year? How will they compete with better tasting and invigorating brand reputation giant Dunkin Donuts?
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