Starbucks’ Integrated Marketing Campaign for its Blonde Roast
Starbucks made a huge marketing push for its blonde roast coffee early this year. Dubbed the “lighter, mellower side of Starbucks”, the blonde roast was released late 2011. Using a wide array of social media tactics, including Facebook and Twitter, Starbucks used a smart integrated marketing campaign to push its millions of fans to purchase the blonde roast brew.
The marketing centered around a free giveaway of a cup of Starbucks’ light blonde roast, done in stores mid January. Social media outlets and the Starbucks website are tied into the promotion to help spread word of the giveaway and the coffee.
Facebook was the largest portion of the Starbucks’ integrated marketing campaign for its blonde roast. Starbucks created posts on its Facebook page promoting the blonde roast and announcing the giveaway. With over 33 million fans of Starbucks on Facebook, word of the promotion spread quickly.
Starbucks’ Blonde Roast app was given a key location on its Facebook page.
The promotion was included in a Facebook app on the Starbucks Facebook page. Here, users could learn about the roast, claim their free cup of blonde roast coffee, and send related e-cards to friends and family. The link to the Facebook app was displayed prominently underneath Starbucks’ cover photo.
Starbuck’s Facebook app provided coupons and e-cards.
Starbucks also ran Facebook ads to drive users to its blonde roast Facebook app and increase product awareness among fans who had not seen Starbucks’ posts in their newsfeeds.
Starbucks used Facebook ads to promote its app.
Starbucks also used Twitter as a part of their light blonde roast marketing strategy. The brand tweeted about its roast and the free cup of coffee promotion. It even specifically targeted tweets to certain cities to create the tweets more personalized. In effect, Starbucks made the tweets more relatable to its followers and likely increased the product awareness and actions taken.
Starbucks targeted its tweets.
Website
Finally, for those of us who still visit brand websites (I know I rarely do), Starbucks reserved its homepage for its blonde roast. Displayed predominantly on the page was videos and content related to its blonde roast.
Results
The result of Starbucks’ integrated marketing campaign for its blonde roast proved strong. The internet and social media were full of discussion around the lighter brew. Coupon lovers and moms were especially interested in the promotion due to the free giveaway. A quick look at Google showed most search results were from couponing sites, suggesting these are where most of the discussion and visitors were. Twitter was also full of tweets about the roast, from people posting photographs of themselves enjoying the light blonde roast to sharing word of the free coffee giveaway.
Twitter was full of tweets about the Blonde Roast.
The results are proof to brands that integrated marketing campaigns are extremely important and help improve performance and transactions.
-Bryan Nagy
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