Costa vs Starbucks

I love coffee. I've only really discovered it in the last few years, but boy! I had been missing out until then! I also love great marketing, so combining the two is just heavenly. So this brings me to a great debate, one close to my heart. Costa vs Starbucks.

As a consumer I love Costa. I love the taste of their skinny lattes, have a Costa Coffee Club card, there's a branch very close to my work, and I will seek one out for my afternoon perk on a Saturday shopping trip. However, as a marketer, they make me want to cry. Their website has got better recently (I quite like their 'See how we make it' videos - very English and rural and natural) but their e-marketing leaves a lot to be desired. Clicking through to a double-points scheme (which they regularly do) and the landing page is dire, the email itself - which had a useful points update - was dire. AND to top it all off, they're not big on social. Their facebook page is hit and miss (one post recently was about the top 10 holiday destinations! How does that bring me closer to the brand?!) and they missed the boat with twitter, with no centralised twitter account for the organisation and now all the twitter names have gone. They have such a warm tone of voice in their printed marketing materials, it would be great to see them more vocal via a social channel. So many times I've tweeted about sitting in a nice warm Costa shop with my favourite drink, as have many thousands of others, but all to deaf ears. I'm showing you spontaneous brand love (which money can't buy!) and you can't even interact with me!

Starbucks, on the other hand, is so digital it hurts. They have an active facebook page per country. I read in Marketing magazine that 'Starbucks has a dedicated social-media team in-house, whose job it is to have meaningful conversations with consumers.' And it's true! Their UK twitter feed is amazing, so interactive and chatty, with RTs and replies all over the shop. Their most recent campaign, pushing their stronger tasting lattes whilst emphasising the importance of personalisation, saw them giving away free lattes for one morning in March - but instead of 'latte' written on your takeaway cup, the barista asked for your name. Their 60 second TV advert the day before the promotion was brilliant. I'm not ashamed to say that I immediately tweeted (with the fully established hashtag) and joined the queue in the morning*.  And, to be fair, I'm not the biggest fan of their coffee.

So there we have it. Head or heart? Starbucks or Costa? I think this fight will continue for a while yet - I just hope that Costa, 'the nation's favourite coffee shop', finally jumps into the social ring to battle it out.


* I'll ignore that the barista spelt my name wrong. It's the thought that counts

Brand: It's only a game!

I purchased yet another board game to add to my collection last year. My family’s annual Boxing Day Bonanza was just around the corner, and I knew this board game would add that much-needed edge. Because, you see, it’s not just any board game. No – it’s a board game about brands – an enthusiastic marketer’s dream!

The Logo Board Game (available in lots of lovely shops, including Amazon) is brilliant. Ok, well, the actual ‘board’ part of it is a tad ropey, but the questions are gold dust!

• What does HMV stand for?
• Which soft drink gave you the ‘totally tropical taste’?
• What is the colour of the letter ‘b’ on the ebay logo?

What better way to measure your brand and product recognition than through a board game? It makes me wonder if it has been created by a market research company! And then it makes me ponder – do we want customers to keep this level of detail about our products and brand in their heads, or is it OK if they just have a vague feeling or memory? Is there a ‘right’ answer to this?
Whichever way you look at it, the goal of every B2C organisation should be to make it into the next iteration of this game – and for people to confidently shout out the correct answer.


Answers: His Master’s Voice; Lilt; Blue

Nothing if not consistent

Why ‘The Enthusiastic Marketer’?

Well, after delivering a company-wide presentation on the benefits of Twitter (more about this in another post, I dare say!) I received a fair bit of feedback on my performance, with one very consistent theme… “Very enthusiastic presentation!”, “Your passion for Twitter shone through”, “Wow, you really like this Twitter stuff don’t you?” About a dozen people, one after the other, all chuckling quietly to themselves.

Some say enthusiasm is a sign of youth and exuberance. If so, I never want to lose it. There are so many things I’m only just learning about marketing – I want to share these with you and hear your thoughts along the way. Who knows, maybe there’s a collection of us ‘enthusiastic marketers’ out there?