You & Starbucks

Last year I read a book called The Fall of Advertising and The Rise of PR, which discussed various brands and products and whether they were built on advertising or PR. The book praised Starbucks as becoming a world-wide phenomenon without ever spending a cent on ad campaigns. 

However, last year Starbucks profits began to drop, as people were no longer in search of a gourmet coffee, but rather, a moderately priced decent coffee. Before Starbucks came along, everywhere you went was a cheap cup of cheap, awful coffee. When Starbucks came to be, people were enamored  by it's novelty of a delicious cup of coffee, or even cappucino, frappacino, or latte, despite it's steep price compared to its bottom-of-the-line coffee competitors. 

Starbucks had to find a way to come back into the hands of Americans. They began a major PR campaign that is seemingly very successful. 

Starbucks first "changed" its trademark green and white logo to it's original brown and white logo on its hot drink cups. This was to make Starbucks seem more organic in going back to its Seattle roots. 

This wasn't terribly notable, but their following actions were. 

Starbucks has always attempted to connect itself with the local community in which it is engaged. However, I really noticed this. I worked for a not-for-profit organization this summer and Starbucks really helped us out in our instrument drive for local music programs in middle schools. They allowed us to establish our donation centers there as well as host concerts in their shops, and offered free coffee to anyone who donated to our cause. This was the first time  I noticed Starbucks engaging in a humanistic way. 

A couple days before election day (November 4th), they released a new PR campaign. With this commercial, Starbucks promised to give a free tall coffee to anyone who voted. In such a groundbreaking election, it was good PR of Starbucks to not only urge people to vote, but to get people who perhaps had never had Starbucks to vote in order to receive coffee. I was immediately drawn to this commercial. A no-frills, no endorsements commercial, it caught my attention with its graphic design and sombre soundtrack. This may have been the first time they used their new slogan, "You & Starbucks- It's bigger than coffee." 

Starbucks continued this campaign through the holiday season with their collaboration with Project (red). They promoted their holiday beverages, nothing that when one of them was purchased, they would give 5 cents to fight AIDS in Africa. They extended this campaign beyond commercials and on to their website where you could pledge to drink x number of beverages, thereby contributing x number of cents to Project(RED). 

They extended their do-good PR campaign in line with Barack Obama's message of service to our respective communities, and just recently started airing this ad- Pledge 5 hours of community service and Starbucks will give you a free coffee. The soundtrack of the commercial called "Brighter day" was written for the commercial and is preformed by MC Yogi. They once again  used their new tagline "You & Starbucks- it's bigger than coffee." 

I have no idea if these promotions are helping Starbucks in these economy that is in disarray, but I hope it does. They are implementing change in the community- the original vision of the company. Props to Starbucks for this great PR campaign. Let's hope it continues to be bigger than coffee for a long time to come.