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
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