Friday FaceOff: Starbucks Engages Customers VIA Social Media

0 Comment(s) | Posted Nov 13, 2009 by Caroline Williams

Caroline Williams

I've been impressed with Starbucks and their social media campaign to promote VIA (instant coffee packets), which started in September.  

Lessons from the Starbucks VIA social media marketing campaign:

Videos are Hilarious! 

Starbucks utilized YouTube to post webisodes of Erin and Brad’s adventures as they traveled across the country introducing people to Starbucks VIA.  The production quality of the video is very good, but does not lose the “on the ground” feel.  The real key to the success of these videos is the that they focus on real people that would be using their products.  I also really appreciate the fresh image that Starbucks is trying to create.

I have to also say that I found a strong connection to this, because one of my lifelong dreams is to make a cross-country road trip.

My favorite is episode 3 in Montana when Erin and Brad attend a speed walking contest where they hand out VIA to the race participants. 

Invite the consumer in

While video is the most entertaining aspect of Starbucks social media campaign, the real lesson to be learned from their campaign is that it centers around inviting the customer into the campaign.  

In the video they are talking to real people that would use their products.  They invite customers to share their stories of how they used VIA by submitting video, pictures, and blog posts about how they have used the product.   

On their website they utilize a twitter feed that posts tweets with the hashtag #VIA.  By encouraging  customers to submit their own content, Starbucks is optimizing its presence, creating a motivated community that becomes evangelical for the product, and returns to the Starbucks site. 

All encompassing

Starbucks utilized all of the major social media avenues in its campaign.  VIA was promoted via Facebook, Twitter, its dedicated web presence, blogging, photo, video… By utilizing all platforms Starbucks was able to reach out to different types of communities, while also engaging their customers in whichever social medium they preferred online.  

There were no barriers to participation in this campaign.  If you didn't have a camera to take photos, you could write about your experience. If you didn't want to write, you could make a video. 

Starbucks was willing to relinquish control of their content production to foster customer participation. They just created the hub for the word of mouth campaign to be housed.

Filed under: Blog-related, Friday Face-Off, Old World Changing, Online Communities, Twitter-related