Starbucks’s Power Social Media Marketing Tool

Written by Igor Beuker on November 25th, 2008 | 4 comments

Recognizing the limits of traditional advertising, established brands are diving headlong into the power of social media marketing to become better brands. Even the almighty Starbucks is revitalizing it’s brand by listening program myStarbucks Idea. Share, vote, discuss and see….

Companies ranging from PC maker Dell with it’s Dell IdeaStorm to storage equipment maker NetApp are increasingly turning to outside blogs, viral videos and websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg – and their tens of millions of users – to listen to consumers.

These social networking sites harness the age-old power of the word-of-mouth recommendation and can be potent brand equity and marketing tools. If nothing else, they demand a higher level of consumer engagement than conventional ads. Somebody at Starbucks must have read The Wisdom of Crowds. Or has seen the light…

But most of all, they demand brand marketers and their traditional agencies to “unthink”, to be open to change. If Obama has not set the example for smart usage of social media marketing, what will need to be your wake-up call?

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4 Comments

• Roland Cailles says:

  November 26, 2008 at 11:21

  Igor – I like. This is social media at its best. I’ll be sure to forward this onto the class.

  If you’re ever in Chicago, let me know. You have to speak at my school. Drinks are on me.

  Reply
• Laurens says:

  November 26, 2008 at 19:08

  We want low fat milk in every Starbucks!!!!

  Great article, great initiative of Starbucks!

  Reply
• Igor Beuker says:

  November 27, 2008 at 23:54

  @Roland

  Thanks for the invite mate. That will be in the new year! Would be happy to, am in London, NYC and SF pretty frequently.. so why not detour to Chigago!

  Cheers

  Reply
• Domino’s: The Pizza Turnaround - says:

  January 11, 2010 at 18:31

  [...] of the new pizza, according to an estimate by Forbes magazine. So maybe Dell Ideastorm and MyStarbucksIdea weren’t that bad of ideas after [...]

  Reply