Madeline Moy (Speaker) Senior Social Media Campaign Manager, Starbucks Coffee Company
Joe Gooding (Speaker) Social Media Campaign Manager, Starbucks
Archana Ramachandran (Speaker) Group Marketing Manager, Campaign Management, Starbucks Coffee Company
Megan Futej (Speaker) Community Manager, Starbucks
Standing out in a sea of memes on the internet is no simple task for a brand in 2019. The Starbucks social team will share their stories from moments as big as Game of Thrones and as small as the niche Twitter meme of the day. Speakers will share their perspective on creating opportunistic social content that’s relevant to both a brand and the ever-changing cultural zeitgeist.
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Here’s the Tea on Real-Time Reactive Content: The Fine Line Between Opportunistic & Thirsty | Seattle Interactive 2019
1. H E R E ’ S T H E T E A O N R E A L - T I M E
R E A C T I V E C O N T E N T : T H E F I N E L I N E
B E T W E E N O P P O R T U N I S T I C &
T H I R S T Y
2. 2
Archana Ramachandran
group marketing manager, campaign management, she/her
Joe Gooding
campaign manager, he/his
Megan Futej
campaign manager, she/her
Madeline Moy
senior campaign manager, she/her
Meet the Team
7. Game of Thrones— The Starbucks Episode
THE TWEET
Game of Thrones superfan Zane kicked
off conversation with a tweet at 11:41 pm.
8. Response — The Starbucks Episode
Over
500k
social media
mentions
#1
most
retweeted
organic
tweet
9. T H E F I N E L I N E B E T W E E N
O P P O R T U N I S T I C A N D T H I R S T Y
10. thirst·y
adjective /ˈTHərstē/
1. feeling a need to drink something. (Google, 2019)
2. too eager to get something. (Urban Dictionary, 2015)
3. inauthentically and deliberately fishing for attention on social
media—measured in terms of likes, comments, RTs and/or
shares.
11. Real Time Content: Evaluation Checklist
W H O B A C K S T O R Y T I M E L E G A L A U T H E N T I C I T Y
12. G O A L T I M I N G
Real Time Content: Content Creation Process
C H A N N E L S C O N T E N T
E X T E N S I O N
C R E A T I V E
R E S O U R C E S
C O N T E N T
C R E A T I O N +
A P P R O V A L S
JOE - I’m Joe Gooding, and my Starbucks drink is a Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew
ARCHANA - My name is Archana Ramachandran, and my Starbucks drink is a Honey Citrus Mint Tea.
MADELINE - My name is Madeline Moy, and my Starbucks drink is black coffee.
MEGAN - I’m Megan Futej, and my Starbucks drink is a Blonde Iced Americano.
ARCHANA
ARCHANA - We watch pop culture all of the time and Game of Thrones has been on our radar for awhile.
ARCHANA
Bump-up engagement #s on tweet screenshots
What are the times we say no?
Add screenshot to slide
Takeaway: Create authentic content that is relevant to your brand AND your audience
** animate **
MEGAN
“On May 6, I woke up at 6am thinking it was going to be a normal day..”
-Original Tweet
-Morning Rush (Started at 6am, teams involved, obstacles in place)
-Our Reply
-Response
-Results
-Takeaway
https://twitter.com/sulaymehn/status/1125450263559413762
https://twitter.com/julimicheletti/status/1125451352665145345
https://twitter.com/CupcakeNova/status/1125761666539491328
In one week, we saw 501,600 social media mentions and is still our #1 retweeted organic tweet to date.
Joe *to format tweets*
MEGAN
JOE
Speaking of Dragon Drink... Is anyone thirsty? You may be wondering about the title of our presentation and how it relates to what we’ll be discussing today. Thirsty is a word that’s classically been defined as an experience we’ve all had, aka “feeling a need to drink something”, but since about 2015 the word has entered pop cultural vernacular with a different definition.
Urban Dictionary defines thirsty as being “too eager to get something” and for the purposes of our presentation, we’d like to take this definition a step further. Being thirsty means “inauthentically and deliberately fishing for attention on social media” and this can be measured in terms of likes, comments, RTs and social shares.
Now I want to give you a few seconds to think about some brands, influencers or celebrities that might be thirsty. With those examples in mind, we’re going to give you a few guidelines on how NOT to be thirsty when creating real-time reactive content.
Take out examples
ARCHANA
So when a real time content opportunity hits our radar, we use a checklist like this to evaluate if it’s right for the brand. We look at….
The who - who exactly is talking about this topic? Just customers? Are brands participating or leading it? Are politicians anywhere near this? The news media?
The backstory - particularly in social where there’s a backstory to every meme and joke, it’s critical to understand the nuances in order to effectively evaluate if it’s the right chance for your brand to participate.
Time - nobody wants to be Steve Buscemi, hello fellow kids and jump on something too late. And too late can also be a very fine line. Our team looks at if opportunistic content is just talking off, peaking, or dying out.
Legal - We want to protect the brand, especially when we’re moving fast, and with the best practices training we’ve received from legal, we still ask ourselves questions like is this trademarked? Is there artwork or creative that prevents us from participating?
And finally, authenticity - we want this to be genuine and meaningful to both our employees and customers. Our team member Jeremy Bronson puts it really nicely - will this set up the brand to be dunked on? Our brand is about creating meaningful connections, and while that can show up in a variety of ways as you’ll see, it’s important to still ask yourself as a brand steward in social if it feels right.
ARCHANA
ARCHANA
MEGAN
MADELINE
Now that you know more about our team’s processes, we wanted to share some examples of some of our favorite real-time activations. I’m going to talk about one that we did this past January.
It all started with a simple request from the Starbucks Music team.
They had a new Spotify playlist based on songs from the musical, Hamilton, and wanted the main Starbucks account to retweet the link to the playlist for Alexander Hamilton’s birthday.
We said sure, and then we also considered if we could do more--because of some key customer insights. Through social listening, we knew that in-store music is an important part of the Starbucks experience for our customers and that a cross-section of them are Hamilton fans.
Starbucks also had a connection to Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton. After Hurricane Maria, Starbucks partnered with him and his family to support recovery efforts in Puerto Rico.
And so because we had an existing relationship with Lin-Manuel and because music has been a long-standing part of the Starbucks brand, we saw an opportunity to do something special for our community around Hamilton.
Our team came together for a quick brainstorm and then we produced these two tweets within 36 hours. We published the first one Thursday night and then followed up with the second on Friday morning. Both contain references to Hamilton that fans would instantly know.
Our Twitter community immediately responded and the Campaign Management team engaged with lyrics from the show and Hamilton GIFs that we were able to use with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s permission.
And the result? The Hamilton teaser tweet is currently our 3rd most-liked organic tweet of all time.
MADELINE
We also got lucky in that #BroadwayCon happened to start the same time we published our Hamilton tweets..
Another awesome result was that this activation drove store visits. We saw many people tweeting about going to their local Starbucks specifically to get a drink and sit in the store just so they could listen to the Hamilton playlist.
The intersection of coffee, music, and community is an authentic space for Starbucks, and that’s why this activation was so successful.
https://twitter.com/Starbucks/status/1170717945435021312
Dial-up urgency of content creation
https://twitter.com/Real_Rash/status/1164661230398664705
https://twitter.com/Target/status/1164953810827128836
https://twitter.com/PrimaD2011/status/1164690353087221760
Timing
Background
WHY this works:
This is a BIG pop culture moment. (Per usual with Taylor!)
We have an established playful relationship with Taylor on Twitter, including the fun misconception that her Blank Space lyrics say “Starbucks lovers.”
The Starbucks overlap with Taylor is big!
Starbucks & music is a genuine theme we’ve explored and our audience responds well to (i.e. Hamilton).
Taylor will be trending all day and all weekend, so we’re confident that adding Starbucks into that conversation will help drive additional in-store traffic for PSL next week!
Copy is playful, cryptic, and doesn’t tread on anyone’s trademarks or IP.
https://twitter.com/Starbucks/status/1170717945435021312
Dial-up urgency of content creation
https://twitter.com/Real_Rash/status/1164661230398664705
https://twitter.com/Target/status/1164953810827128836
https://twitter.com/PrimaD2011/status/1164690353087221760
Timing
Background
WHY this works:
This is a BIG pop culture moment. (Per usual with Taylor!)
We have an established playful relationship with Taylor on Twitter, including the fun misconception that her Blank Space lyrics say “Starbucks lovers.”
The Starbucks overlap with Taylor is big!
Starbucks & music is a genuine theme we’ve explored and our audience responds well to (i.e. Hamilton).
Taylor will be trending all day and all weekend, so we’re confident that adding Starbucks into that conversation will help drive additional in-store traffic for PSL next week!
Copy is playful, cryptic, and doesn’t tread on anyone’s trademarks or IP.
Flip → Images
Authentic Positivity and joy
Intersection between cultural and product trend, tie-into how younger people
Within winter, based on these we saw an astronomical lift in coffee culture conversation.
JOE →The only fandom as big as the Swiftie fandom is the Iced Coffee fandom on Twitter. They believe Iced Coffee can be enjoyed not just in the warmer seasons but in EVERY season, And last winter we found ourselves in the middle of a perfect social media storm.
From a viral image of a New Yorker braving a blizzard with an iced coffee in hand, to influencers bolding proclaiming their love of our Cold Brew all-year-round, we knew we had to join this conversation in a relevant way on social. And we thought what better way to do that than with some Twitter memes.
In the examples you see here we took popular meme constructions and altered them to fit our particularly positive brand voice. The “Some of you have never [fill in the blank] and it shows.” meme construction can tend to skew a bit sarcastic, but we made it work for our audience by adding positive language. In doing so, we found that people that were familiar with the meme engaged with it enthusiastically and people that weren’t familiar with the meme still found it entertaining.
Plugging into these memes resulted in significant year over year growth in total coffee culture conversation and our “Drinks iced coffee in 10 degree weather” tweet is one of our top tweets in terms of engagement.
We learned that with these particular moments, you’ll only be seen as thirsty if you’re sipping the wrong drink.
Takeaway:
While we’re the ones up here presenting
ARCHANA
We’re hiring! We have two open role on our team. Come talk to us afterwards if you’re interested.