Great Interactive from Barnes & Noble

I was reading my stream of Twitter updates and was excited about a tweet from @themarketingguy. He pointed his followers to the Barnes & Noble app on the iPhone. If you download it, it comes with a coupon for a free tall hot or iced coffee at a Barnes & Noble Starbucks stores. The tweet was simple "The Barnes & Noble iPhone app comes with a free cup of coffee." I immediatley downloaded the app to my iPhone and retweeted @themarketingguy's tweet. Barnes & Noble gets more face time with me, @themarketingguy gets validity to his tweet through an RT (that retweet speak in twitter) and I get a free cup of coffee and an app that I'm likely to use regardless. The lesson to be learned? Sometimes it's a tiny little thing (like a cup of coffee) that helps you to interact with your audience, gain word of mouth and make a great impression. Just think, already this went from app to twitter to blog. Where will it go next? Good press for a buck plus change.

image credit: webgrl on Flickr

Starbucks Dollar Coffee

McDonalds is trying to emulate the Starbucks experience with its new latte and cappuccino offerings and barista delivered experience and now Starbucks is on the road to emulating the McDonalds dollar menu. Starbucks is testing out $1 short cups of coffee at some Seattle locations, it's not known if the $1 cups will hit any other locations but the blogosphere is alight with commentary.

Starbucks sells great tasting coffee and offers its patrons a reasonably comfortable seating area to relax with friends (provided you can get a seat), get some work done (provided you want to pay for internet connection) or just have some down time. The service (at least at the locations I frequent) is no better than its competitors and the food is terrible. But again the coffee is great.

Dollar coffees are not going to be the force that takes Starbucks' growth to the next level, but it may help stave off some deflectors who are currently thinking their daily cup of Starbucks coffee is not recession proof. Price reductions are never a great strategy, but it's important to differentiate - this is not a price reduction. Essentially it's a line extension. Now instead of three sizes, Starbucks offers four, one size just happens to cost a mere dollar.

Starbucks' Experimenting with Television Advertising

While I'm not surprised coffee sales are down (what sales aren't down right now) I was surprised to hear that Starbucks is launching their first ever television advertising campaign today in an effort to combat their slowdown in sales. Reportedly sales starting slipping after their price increase in July (no surprise there, there's only so much you can gauge people for coffee before they take their business elsewhere).  In addition to the television campaign, Starbucks will also work on improving the in-cafe experience and will introduce more innovative beverages to the menu. 

You can watch one of the television spots on Starbucks' website, but if you're like me you'll be disappointed. It's a cutesy reindeer and man sharing a cup o coffee on a ski lift, snowflakes falling, soothing music in the background and the call to action of "pass the cheer." Viewers wont even know it's an ad for Starbucks unless they stick through the whole ad. 

While television advertising is still a great way to reach a lot of people (provided they're not zapping the commercials with Tivo or the like) it's probably not the best way for Starbucks to reach the masses. I would encourage Starbucks to concentrate their marking dollars on experiential methods like free samples of the holiday drinks for the masses of tired shoppers schlepping through malls everywhere trying to find that perfect gift. It would be cheaper, Starbucks would have a captive audience, and it would be able to showcase its best asset, the "Starbucks experience." 

Though it should be noted that the Starbucks campaign is the talk of the blogosphere right now, so even if the ads are a flop, they're still getting the attention they were looking for.