Saving Starbucks - 3 Ideas

In the summer of ‘07, with the launch of the iPhone, it was announced that said phone would have access to a whole slew of tech goodies at Starbucks locations. Everyone got caught up in the awesomeness that is iPhone and started talking about how this is a great move for Apple etc. Very few however, mentioned why this digital partnership has been incredibly important for Starbucks - something that seems altogether more important now as the coffee chain’s luck seems to be changing for the worse.

So, I’m looking more at the flip side of this equation; what is a coffee empire to do to lure back java culture hipsters? The way I see it, the very first thing is to focus on creating a better, more unique customer experience. Now, considering that the target for the tech culture elite (ie: iPhone users) and a well made cappuccino is exactly the same - young, fashionable, tech-savvy innovators, I would say that the route to take in would be to focus on digital in creating that experience.

To that end, partnering with Apple was a great first step, but free wi-fi web access seems like just the tip of a great idea. What’s more the coffee shop down the road probably already has it. Yes, I know there’s other things in the hopper like buying your coffee over your iPhone but I’m not too sure how many people will choose to point and click their way to a custom coffee.

So, as I passed the third Starbucks on my run this morning I began to think up a few digital based initiatives the company could do to build their customer experience and compete against any other startup with an espresso machine.

The Writers: Tap into the cult of writers that descend on Starbucks lattes like Kerouac to Benzedrine. Set up book readings by authors at certain locations, videotape them, upload them and drop them into the longtail. Even if some writers couldn’t make it to the event, they can still re-live the experience online over your branded site.

The Readers: Forget browsing the web or buying music, give me access to the entire Wall Street Journal online or let me read selected books from Amazon.com on my laptop. That’s something above and beyond what any other coffee shop can offer. Coming in on a Saturday and reading through a weekend edition of the New York Times would be a great added value to my cappuccino experience.

The Givers: One of the major sellers for Starbucks in the past year was holiday gift cards. I would real time data mine the data on these cards as much as possible - giving immediate feedback to the people working behind the register. Figure out specific details of each card user and give them equally specific benefits based on their consumer type.

For example, if someone has a high frequency of use on the card, chances are they’re a highly loyal customer. Have the barista behind the counter reward them, say, an exclusive invite to one of the above events.

Another example could be someone who regularly buys 3 or 4 cups of coffee per purchase. Chances are they’re buying for a group of co-workers or friends and it might be a good time to promote a group discount. Better yet, have the barrista give them some kind of group priority cards and then data mine those same cards to further personalize and improve the experience for the entire group!

4 Great Reverse Viral Commercials

There’s an infinite amount of parodies based on TV spots circulating on the web, and if you don’t believe me type in “Geico caveman” or “Apple” in YouTube’s search bar. I wanted to look at it from the other side though. I wanted to find examples of online viral making a full (reverse) loop and becoming a produced and directed spot. Basically, I wanted to run a litmus test of sorts to see if ad agencies were paying attention to, taking away from, and selling actual web culture.

This is a big step for a "traditional" agency if you think about it, because for starters it flips the creative equation. It’s not about 6 creatives in a room brainstorming a golden egg of an idea, it’s kind of like finding one that already exists and running with it. The trick is that creatives are very fond of their own golden eggs and finding just the right egg for a client may be tough.

That said, I think this spot is one of the most logical to mesh with young web culture and one of the best executed for the target. The client, AOL, launched this campaign based on not just one but 3 online personalities – Miss. Teen South Carolina, stop harassing Britney guy, and stop tazing me guy.




Within the all’s fair attitude of American politics it’s interesting to see candidates look to viral concepts in reaching out to the younger vote. This one plays on the uber popular online spoofing of Chuck Norris.




This spot is one of my favorites. It’s a Emperador chocolate bar commercial based on a video clip that was widely popular in Latin America of ‘Edgar falling’. It basically embodies what I was getting with this search.




Finally, I wanted to post this. While not a TV spot per-se, the new video, based on the now infamous Tom Cruise Scientology video currently making the rounds, was created to promote the site Funny or Die, a ‘tube’ like startup that has some heavy hitting comedic connections, including Will Farrel. You really should watch at least most of the original first to get the humor.



Naturally, some issues do arise out of taking this approach to advertising. The finished spot has to be incredibly well timed and quickly executed as viral videos or memes very rarely even reach their 15 minutes of fame.

The other issue and the one that I think may scare most clients, usually internet luddites in their late 40’s, is the fear that only a select young target into web culture will ‘get it’. But that’s actually why I wanted to put together this list, the above spots required not just the buy in from the agency creative/accounts team but also trust on the part of the client that even if they themselves didn’t ‘get it’, their target would.

Cannibalizing Your Young

I was having lunch with some business types the other day and we got to talking about the new Apple Air. Not so much the wireless capabilities or sharp design, they were business types after all, but more about the business strategy behind it.

The way I saw it the Air, placed just above the iBook in terms of speed and price will eat a lot into the sales of the latter. That is, the iBook will probably suffer a huge hit in sales from entry level users upgrading to the newer and sleeker Air, assuming that the new age wireless functionality doesn't scare them away. Planned obsolescence aside, to me this didn’t seem like such a smart move for Mac.

Enter the business types I was having lunch with. They introduced me to a concept (I should have known about before); product cannibalism. This generally implies that after it’s market life span, you eat up the sales of your product by launching a new and improved product - kind of like eating your old. In Apple’s case however we’re talking about radical cannibalism - they're eating their own successful product while it's still successful - kind of like eating your young.

So what is there to gain by eating your young? Well in Apple’s case, you eat them to stop someone else from eating them first. Given 3 to 6 more months (or less) Sony or Dell could have very easily come out with a laptop that’s cheaper, thinner, more powerful, and possibly sexier than any iBook (although I doubt that last point with Dell). Apple just beat them to the punch.

It was an interesting lunch.

Giant Monsters and Japanese Slushees

Cloverfield has just come out onto the big screen and while I’m waiting for the disaster/Godzilla/Blair Witch redux to make it south of the border I’ve been reading some (very) preliminary reviews. One of the things I’ve seen being asked in forums was how much did the online viral campaign, namely the Slusho.jp site, tie into the final movie. The short answer, not very much apparently - someone wearing a Slusho shirt dies (sorry if I spoiled that for anyone).

Now maybe it’s me, but that’s a bit of a disappointment.

There’s definitely a fine line between creating a successful teaser viral and something that just tries to sell a movie - most often the public will let you know when you’ve crossed it, and it will reflect in site visits or worse you’ll get blowback from the blogsphere.

But more to the point here a teaser viral should, in my opinion, have some kind of payoff. Even if that payoff is a seemingly trivial one to the general public, those who are truly into your brand or movie will feel justified (and perhaps superior) in the extra bit of knowledge they have and the investment of time they gave to following along with the viral action.

One Cellphone Per Child?

With the start of the new year the blogshpere seems to be awash with predictions, resolutions, and the next big thing lists for the year to come. I wanted to look at one, well two really, the predictions for the growth of cellphones this year and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.

This (finally) will be the year of the cell phone and enhanced handheld-based communications! Well, perhaps that’s a little much to believe, but if you look around you will see many a blogpost exclaiming just that. Not to mention popular podcasts such as TWiT quoting stats about developing nations adopting cellphone communications to the extent of 1 billion people jumping online through their cellphones in ’07 in India (Episode 120).

Similarly the OLPC project, an initiative to produce $100 computers for developing countries, has begun to really hit mainstream news coverage and create some buzz. Unfortunately, most of that buzz is coming from the background politics and rivalries between the OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte and a host of other computer producers most notably Intel.

Personally, while not wanting to fault OLPC for taking a chance on a truly remarkable idea, I do want to mention my point of view on the issue. Specifically, if this is truly the year of the cellphone some developing countries, such as India, might be better served through simply dropping prices on enhanced cellphones and making them accessible to more users. Couple those phones with already existing (mostly) free software such as Google's Android, Adobe’s array of ePaper tools, and lightweight cell-optimized sites and they could avoid the issues Negroponte is having on the software side with Microsoft. Assistance in school projects, reading, and even researching through web browsing doesn't necessarily have to come in the form of a 10" laptop.

Again, don't get me wrong, I think the OLPC initiative is a great one - it's lit a fire under PC manufacturers to produce computers for the other nine-tenths of the world, but couldn't a similar fire be lit under cellphone manufacturers to achieve the same result?

The Lost Viral Campaign

J.J. Abrams and crew have just launched the viral sites for the return of the Lost television series, beginning with flyoceanicair.com. Of course, true to the franchise, the sites end up creating more questions than answers. Overall though, while I'm enjoying interacting with the content, I'm a little dishartened that it's not nearly as complex as the the viral marketing/ARG that is being used to launch Cloverfield.

However, I have to hand it to Lost's team, they seem to be leading one of the only hit shows on television that completely embraces the idea of moving narrative content beyond the television. I'm not talking about simple character guides or video snippets of plot synopsis. I'm talking about full fledged character back story and development that happens entirely online. It all goes a great distance in growing the expectation of the show's return and creates additional touchpoints with the show's diehard fan base. I would love to see more shows, even if only in this genre, follow their example.

Diggnation and the Digital Spot

I was watching the Diggnation podcast last week and came across this post roll spot for Intel's "It Gets Easier" campaign. It's a pretty clever spot, originally launched in summer '07 and the two things that struck me when I saw it on Diggnation were:

One. That the content of the Christopher Guest directed ad meshed so well with the humor and tech silliness that is Diggnation (which is currently hitting the tipping point in terms of mass popularity).
Two. That the placement of the spot on a podcast was an exponentially better media buy decision than hosting it on the standalone site.

Why the second point? Well, from my point of view, visiting a corporate site to simply view a spot is an unfulfilled experience - the value of the content isn't high enough to justify time invested in looking for and getting to the site (regardless of who directed the spot). Additionally, and this is my designer sensibilities coming through, the concept of this particular site seems a bit flat, as in the site was intended to simply house the spot and not build on the concept presented within it.

Don't get me wrong, personally, I love Intel's spot, it's funny, clever, and creative - I'm also a big fan of Guest. I'm thinking however that it could function better as a spot on different popular podcasts, possibly a bumper for UGC videos, or even as an enhanced banner ad directing traffic to a more engaging/information based site.

Discounts Over Design

I remember a lesson taught to me in my undergrad - 90% of the graphic design out there is junk. Case in point, I bring you ice.com - which manages to score a whopping $47 million dollars in funding, make a reported $83 million in '07 web sales and still have a mind numbingly basic design. Come on guys, invest a little of that capital in the look and feel of your site - make it more unique, memorable, and make it not look like a clone of a clone of Sears.com or Amazon!