Hasta La Creative!

Starbucks’ recently completed ad campaign for its Blonde Roast coffee will win no creative awards. It wasn’t particularly surprising or funny, so nobody will highlight it at an industry event. Agencies won’t use it as a prompt to get their clients to copy it. This is too bad, because it sold a helluva lot of coffee and, I predict, did wonders for the company’s brand integrity and value.

Though its Blonde blends have been around for over a year, the esoterics of branding rules had kept it from calling the stuff “light,” which would have made it the obvious alternative to Starbucks’ “medium” and “dark” offerings. It turns out that something north of 40% of American coffee drinkers don’t like Starbucks’ bold flavors (yours truly included). But the original marketing hadn’t made the lighter choice obvious to them. I don’t remember how the company promoted it, which is probably a good indication of its efficacy.

So Starbucks took a different approach for the second go-around. District managers were asked to canvass employees (called “partners”) to gather and tell real-life stories of friends and family who’d converted to Starbucks after having tried a lighter flavor. They found a lot of them. Better yet, the stories were filled with lots of real-world details and a biggie realization that I can’t imagine the creative brief solicited: Almost anyone who liked the Blonde blends disliked Starbucks’ other flavors. It’s not that they weren’t aware of the offering. They just didn’t like the stuff they thought Starbucks sold.

Continue reading at AdAge.com