Advertising Management

Case III- Starbucks Makes TV Less Intrusive

Starbucks coffee is now sold in grocery stores but how many people realize it? To get that message out, the well known coffee house chain needed to reach its customers nationwide with that message.
Television commercials would be the obvious way to reach those people, but Starbucks’ management knew that their customers are not big fans of television commercials and resent the interruption of their favorite program. That’s why starbucks has been such an infrequent advertiser on TV. Its on-air promotional activities have been limited primarily to radio and its only previous use of TV had been support announcements on public TV.
That was the problem facing Starcom’s MediaVest group. The agency used a creative solution: It recommended a partnership with the Bravo cable network. Bravo would run four Independent Film Channel (IFC) movies on Friday nights for a month and Starbucks would buy all the commercial time surrounding the movie airings.
The MediaVest team knew that Bravo’s “IFC Friday” night films would be a good way to reach the stakeholder audience because research had described that customer base as people who are up on the latest trends, like to attend live performances of the arts, are apt to see a movie during the weekend it opens, and generally are interested in cutting edge things. Mediavest calls this customer “the attuned explorer.”
Even though Starbucks bought all the commercial time, the MediaVest team recommended letting the movies run uninterrupted. Starbucks’ advertising message was delivered in supporting Bravo promotions of the movies during each week leading up to the Friday night telecast. About 40 seconds of each 60-second preview spot showed scenes from the movie and 20 seconds promoted Starbucks s the movie sponsor.
Other promotional activities were also used in support of the campaign. One month before the movies aired, a $1 off coupon for a bag of Starbucks Coffee was sent to 3 million targeted consumers around the country, along with a viewer guide introducing the Starbucks-sponsored independent movie festival.
Starbucks billboards also appeared during the movie month coinciding with the independent film industry’s annual telecast, which aired on both Bravo and IC.
The innovative Bravo partnership wound up not only increasing sales of Starbucks Coffee by 15 percent for the month the campaign ran, but also increased viewership on Bravo by 33 percent. These results led the campaign to be named a Media Plan of the year by Adweek magazine.

Questions:
What was the problem Starbucks wanted to overcome in order to effectively advertise that its coffee brand was available in supermarkets?
How did the partnership work? Is there anything you could recommend that would extend the reach of this campaign?