Starbucks pauses Advertising on all Social Media(cnbc.com)
cnbc.com
Starbucks pauses Advertising on all Social Media
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/28/starbucks-latest-company-to-pause-ads-across-social-media-platforms.html
12 comments
Do brands as well-known as Starbucks and Coca-Cola really need to advertise on social media at all? I've ever met a person who isn't familiar with these brands.
Let them save money, they don't need to be on these platforms.
Worst case, a few "social media managers" are out of work. The world will get by.
Let them save money, they don't need to be on these platforms.
Worst case, a few "social media managers" are out of work. The world will get by.
It's a reminder that "Oh yeah, I enjoy Brand X, I should get some of their product". You may enjoy Coca Cola, but if nobody around you drinks a can, and you don't ever see an ad, you're less likely to remain a consumer of the brand.
It's also why you might continue getting ads for subscriptions you pay for. They want to remind you of the value continually provided-- it's for retention purposes.
It's also why you might continue getting ads for subscriptions you pay for. They want to remind you of the value continually provided-- it's for retention purposes.
>Do brands as well-known as Starbucks and Coca-Cola really need to advertise on social media at all?
No but they do see increased short and long term sales as a direct result of their advertising campaigns, usually. Especially company's that sell sweet caffeine drinks. Sure you know Coke exists... but are you craving one now? The answer is more likely to be yes for most of their clients soon after being reminded it exists.
Edit: Phrasing
No but they do see increased short and long term sales as a direct result of their advertising campaigns, usually. Especially company's that sell sweet caffeine drinks. Sure you know Coke exists... but are you craving one now? The answer is more likely to be yes for most of their clients soon after being reminded it exists.
Edit: Phrasing
I"m not an advertising expert but I'd imagine those brands became well-known largely because of their advertising, and that continuing to advertising helps maintain their mindshare/encouraging people to "default" to those brand choices.
I'm sure they don't need to advertise in order to inform people about their brand, but advertisements may lead people consume more than they otherwise would. At least some of their ads end with a crack of a can opening, glug glug glug, and then a refreshed 'ahhh'. It seems pretty clear they're trying to get you to think about drinking coke, so you will go drink a coke.
Yes, because they need to make you feel like your life is incomplete and can be completed if you pay them for X.
Coca Cola makes people fat and gives them tooth decay. Their product has a socially negative value. It's essential that they counter these facts with positive images.
Coca Cola makes people fat and gives them tooth decay. Their product has a socially negative value. It's essential that they counter these facts with positive images.
I uhh… what? We’re talking about a soda manufacturer here. Look I mean I get the crusade against sugar and being mindful about how many calories are in a bottle. But that’s a harsh opinion about fizzy water that lots of people enjoy drinking enough to pay a premium for. Nobody buys a candy bar because of some existential crisis.
Like do you hold the same opinion of coffee shops that sell sugary drinks, pastry shops, candy makers, snack food makers, ice cream shops, breweries, distilleries? Does “treats taste good” not qualify as a positive?
Like it’s wild to me to think that if I served you a piece of chocolate cake you would be like “how dare you! It has excessive calories and will rot my teeth!”
Like do you hold the same opinion of coffee shops that sell sugary drinks, pastry shops, candy makers, snack food makers, ice cream shops, breweries, distilleries? Does “treats taste good” not qualify as a positive?
Like it’s wild to me to think that if I served you a piece of chocolate cake you would be like “how dare you! It has excessive calories and will rot my teeth!”
It's not so much serving a piece of chocolate cake as spending $10,000,000,000 every year on highly sophisticated psychologically fine-tuned mental bombardment to get to serve you a piece of chocolate cake.
The constant fight for your attention. Billboards, storefronts, internet, tv, radio, everywhere you go you have highly researched pictures and sounds that try to manipulate your feeble mammal brain to purchase their products.
Your first paragraph suggests you regard advertising as something far more benign that it is.
The constant fight for your attention. Billboards, storefronts, internet, tv, radio, everywhere you go you have highly researched pictures and sounds that try to manipulate your feeble mammal brain to purchase their products.
Your first paragraph suggests you regard advertising as something far more benign that it is.
Let’s just take the premise that ads are 100% effective and that I, a previously non-soda drinker, now am fiercely loyal to Pepsi Co.
Cool, but I’m still a person who has has a diet, normal hunger, and watches my sugar intake. Like it’s not as if I’m suddenly going to guzzle sugary soda indiscriminately. And it’s not like soda is special in this regard.
If I see an ad for a new flavor of Oreos that interests me it’s not like I’m compelled to buy a box and eat the whole thing in one sitting on top of my regular diet.
Cool, but I’m still a person who has has a diet, normal hunger, and watches my sugar intake. Like it’s not as if I’m suddenly going to guzzle sugary soda indiscriminately. And it’s not like soda is special in this regard.
If I see an ad for a new flavor of Oreos that interests me it’s not like I’m compelled to buy a box and eat the whole thing in one sitting on top of my regular diet.
Exactly. Comparing to a local cafe is ludicrous.
I mean when I said coffee shop I was imagining Starbucks.
But that seems a little weird. Does coming from a local soda shop suddenly make the drinks have fewer calories or less sugar?
But that seems a little weird. Does coming from a local soda shop suddenly make the drinks have fewer calories or less sugar?
You didn't say that. And I didn't say it either. And it's got nothing to do with anything.
Then what does it have to do with?
* Soda, like all sweets, are bad for your health if not consumed in moderation or at least with mindfulness about their nutritional content.
* Large food-stuff manufactures are quite good at convincing consumers to buy their products and choose their brand over others with very expensive ad campaigns.
What I’m not convinced of, and what doesn’t follow from these, is that ads are effective at persuading consumers to buy and consume their products on top of their regular diets which is what would be required for them to be a public health issue.
* Soda, like all sweets, are bad for your health if not consumed in moderation or at least with mindfulness about their nutritional content.
* Large food-stuff manufactures are quite good at convincing consumers to buy their products and choose their brand over others with very expensive ad campaigns.
What I’m not convinced of, and what doesn’t follow from these, is that ads are effective at persuading consumers to buy and consume their products on top of their regular diets which is what would be required for them to be a public health issue.
Yes, I too assume that despite being a 600 billion USD/yr business, advertising doesn't really work.
If a given person is eating a 2000 calorie diet then I don't believe the presence of ads will suddenly make them eat a 2500 calorie diet to accommodate some products they saw in an ad.
Advertising can be 100% effective but it doesn't make peoples' stomachs bigger.
Advertising can be 100% effective but it doesn't make peoples' stomachs bigger.
well you must totally disagree with the head of advertising at every single large company on the planet.
I wonder who is wrong.
I wonder who is wrong.
This may apply to lesser-known 'influencers' that depend on ads and can't afford to suspend them to 'fight hate speech' or participate in this 'effort'. Unless they have outside revenue like sponsorship deals, Patreon, etc.
As someone that's a real sucker for advertising the adverts for new drinks always work on me, which make me go to Starbucks when I wouldn't class myself as a regular.
Yes. They want to stay in your mind’s eye.
Well apart from this being a good PR play in a time when advertising is naturally cut back due to the uncertaintly, it will be a big test (if not just acknowledgement) that social media traffic is just as crap traffic as e.g. forums. The old adage about 50% of ad spending being wasted is true , the it's just that the perception of where it is that's changing. My theory is that FB & Google are just better at dazzling advertisers with fancy dashboards that they can show their bosses.
Advertising on TV and in Newspapers is 50% wasted because there is no a way to have targeted advertising, but with Facebook and Google advertisers have an option to target their audience and efficiency of an advertising campaign is drastically improved.
if that were true, the switch to online advertisement should have led to increased consumption/sales per person compared to previous decades, but that's not happened
Obviously, this "pause" hasn't begun yet. I got a fresh sponsored post from Starbucks on my Facebook feed 2 minutes ago. The article didn't give a start date. Does anyone know more?
Starbucks doesn’t have a big red button so pausing can take a few days. Starbucks contacts their marketing agency, who goes to their digital marketing agency, who goes to their media buying agency, who goes to their vendor, etc.
hmm I wonder what the total ad spend of these 100 marketers is. FB seems like a business with long tails.
If we're talking $1B annual chunk of FB's $70B, and the pause is probably til november at the longest = 0.5B, it's a hit but not a death blow
also wonder if big brands were ever a fit for hyper-targeted ads -- they're not suing for mesothelioma or trying to drive a single sale, they're blanketing media to maintain public awareness
also wonder if social platforms will tweak visibility rules to make it harder for big brands to spread the word organically
If we're talking $1B annual chunk of FB's $70B, and the pause is probably til november at the longest = 0.5B, it's a hit but not a death blow
also wonder if big brands were ever a fit for hyper-targeted ads -- they're not suing for mesothelioma or trying to drive a single sale, they're blanketing media to maintain public awareness
also wonder if social platforms will tweak visibility rules to make it harder for big brands to spread the word organically
If it weren't for all the confounding factors, this would be a nice natural experiment to answer the question "how effective is social media advertising?".
Heh. Political ads are getting cheaper with each passing day it looks like. As more and more advertisers withdraw, the overall CPC will go down. FB, Twitter, et al are going to get even more cancerous as a result, driving further advertiser exodus.
The solution to this is offering sustained use discounts, like Google Cloud does. Have ongoing campaigns at a certain spending level? FB takes a slightly smaller cut, so you pay less. Turn shit on and off all the time? FB takes a larger cut, so you pay what you'd normally pay.
The solution to this is offering sustained use discounts, like Google Cloud does. Have ongoing campaigns at a certain spending level? FB takes a slightly smaller cut, so you pay less. Turn shit on and off all the time? FB takes a larger cut, so you pay what you'd normally pay.
How much of this is pausing or moving their budgets around because social media was performing poorly anyways?
I wonder if Facebook and others will miss earnings. This seems to be gathering speed.
This is a great step at stopping not just the spread of hate speech but also at stopping hate itself. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook have done and continue to do too much to encourage and then monetize rage.
Haha. Good luck. You have no idea how these platforms make money. Starbucks, Coca Cola don't spend much on these platforms anyways. They are just using this as an opportunity to gain brownie points without incurring much harm anyways. Performance advertisers are their bed and butter. For example, that app install ad or that ad from Direct to Consumer advertiser (for example Allbirds) are the ones who cherish FB. They must be really happy since their CAC just went down as brand advertisers are running away! THey will literally double down spending on FB/Twitter.
Starbucks spent close to $100 million advertising with Facebook
Doesn't matter. That money will be replaced by performance advertisers. Top 100 Fortune brands make up 6% of FB ad revenue. This is why all these boycott FB ads doesn't make any sense. THe only thing which will hurt FB is users boycotting - not advertisers. There are always opportunistic advertisers who will want to gain access to cheap(er) inventory to reduce their acquisition costs.
Given the pandemic situation, Starbucks needs that $100m more than Facebook does. Their actions won't change or address anything. So let them save it.
Nice, this will hurt both Starbucks and social media. The rest of us win.
what's nice about starbucks hurting?
My biggest pet peeve with them is they seem to hurt local coffee shops. You can find starbucks almost ubitquiously, but it's very difficult now to find a local shop ouside of a larger city. I don't think that is a coincedence (I also thought I read an article about their strong arming tactis to local shops, but I cannot readily find it, so maybe I was imaging it and combining it with a confirmation bias).
Also, their drinks are very sugary and VERY calorie packed. I personally think starbucks on average is worse for someone versus a Coke/Soda/Pop:
https://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/867c147d5dcc46e9af...
Additionally, I don't think their actual coffee tastes very good (granted, this is my preference). Even the lightest roast tastes burnt. Starbucks was the reason I thought I did not like french roast for the longest time. When I actually tried a different brand, I was surprised at how much I actually liked it.
Also, their drinks are very sugary and VERY calorie packed. I personally think starbucks on average is worse for someone versus a Coke/Soda/Pop:
https://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/867c147d5dcc46e9af...
Additionally, I don't think their actual coffee tastes very good (granted, this is my preference). Even the lightest roast tastes burnt. Starbucks was the reason I thought I did not like french roast for the longest time. When I actually tried a different brand, I was surprised at how much I actually liked it.
>it's very difficult now to find a local shop ouside of a larger city
I'm skeptical. How hard have you looked? Or what do you consider a "larger city"? Towns and cities of 80-100K people near where I live seem to have independent coffee shops. Sometimes across the street from Starbucks.
I'm skeptical. How hard have you looked? Or what do you consider a "larger city"? Towns and cities of 80-100K people near where I live seem to have independent coffee shops. Sometimes across the street from Starbucks.
Here's my point of view.
You talk about high calorie, but I never drink sugar stuff there. I only get Americano, so it's unfair to criticize them for things they make available when there's plenty of options if you want to stay healthy. It's your choice, it's not like they only sell unhealthy stuff. Just to be clear, a lot of popular hipster cafes sell sugary stuff too.
Also, their Americano tastes great. In fact I would rate it as one of the top grade even comparing to all the NY & SF hipster coffee stores I frequent.
Next, they are the only ones who provide large sized coffee (Venti) bar none. I drink a lot so I really hope other cafes provide large sized coffee but I have yet to find any non franchise coffee shop which does that. All the hipster coffee shops tend to only serve small sized coffee.
Also, Starbucks gives you infinite refill if you're their gold member, which is pretty easy status to achieve if you're a regular coffee drinker.
Also, Starbucks is the only coffee chain which reliably provides free wifi access. A lot of the local coffee places don't provide wifi at all, or don't like it when you try to use wifi for a long time.
I really want to support "local coffee shops" but all these things keep me from stop going to starbucks.
If I think about it, I go to starbucks about 50% of the time and the rest 50% I go to the other local cafes. But really, they don't give me high enough incentive to go.
This is what capitalism is, Starbucks provides a product which makes the quality of my life higher compared to other local cafes, so I have no way but to go there more often. It has nothing to do with an evil organization depriving the nice local cafes of their opportunity to compete.
You talk about high calorie, but I never drink sugar stuff there. I only get Americano, so it's unfair to criticize them for things they make available when there's plenty of options if you want to stay healthy. It's your choice, it's not like they only sell unhealthy stuff. Just to be clear, a lot of popular hipster cafes sell sugary stuff too.
Also, their Americano tastes great. In fact I would rate it as one of the top grade even comparing to all the NY & SF hipster coffee stores I frequent.
Next, they are the only ones who provide large sized coffee (Venti) bar none. I drink a lot so I really hope other cafes provide large sized coffee but I have yet to find any non franchise coffee shop which does that. All the hipster coffee shops tend to only serve small sized coffee.
Also, Starbucks gives you infinite refill if you're their gold member, which is pretty easy status to achieve if you're a regular coffee drinker.
Also, Starbucks is the only coffee chain which reliably provides free wifi access. A lot of the local coffee places don't provide wifi at all, or don't like it when you try to use wifi for a long time.
I really want to support "local coffee shops" but all these things keep me from stop going to starbucks.
If I think about it, I go to starbucks about 50% of the time and the rest 50% I go to the other local cafes. But really, they don't give me high enough incentive to go.
This is what capitalism is, Starbucks provides a product which makes the quality of my life higher compared to other local cafes, so I have no way but to go there more often. It has nothing to do with an evil organization depriving the nice local cafes of their opportunity to compete.
The refill and acceptance of just hanging out for hours doing work are some of the benefits of Starbucks, but as someone who worked there as a barista, only the blonde espresso & coffee are palatable. It's of course subjective, but the rest of their coffee is usually gross.
For other coffee shops, why don't you just get a smaller Americano? it's just espresso shots + hot water, so a smaller Americano will be less diluted but the same amount of caffeine and better flavour. (amount of espresso varies from shop to shop, but you can just ask for another shot or two)
For other coffee shops, why don't you just get a smaller Americano? it's just espresso shots + hot water, so a smaller Americano will be less diluted but the same amount of caffeine and better flavour. (amount of espresso varies from shop to shop, but you can just ask for another shot or two)
> For other coffee shops, why don't you just get a smaller Americano? it's just espresso shots + hot water, so a smaller Americano will be less diluted but the same amount of caffeine and better flavour. (amount of espresso varies from shop to shop, but you can just ask for another shot or two)
You probably know this already but Starbucks lets you get extra shot americano for Venti. So you have the option of getting more quantity AND still not get diluted. You don't get that from other cafes because they don't even provide large cups to begin with.
> only the blonde espresso & coffee are palatable. It's of course subjective, but the rest of their coffee is usually gross.
Yeah I am not saying Starbucks makes the best coffee in the world for every category, I'm just saying at least for Americano (which is basically just Espresso + water) it's actually on my top ranking, I know a lot of hipsters will throw stones at me for this but I personally find Starbucks americano much better than the hyped up blue bottle coffee.
You probably know this already but Starbucks lets you get extra shot americano for Venti. So you have the option of getting more quantity AND still not get diluted. You don't get that from other cafes because they don't even provide large cups to begin with.
> only the blonde espresso & coffee are palatable. It's of course subjective, but the rest of their coffee is usually gross.
Yeah I am not saying Starbucks makes the best coffee in the world for every category, I'm just saying at least for Americano (which is basically just Espresso + water) it's actually on my top ranking, I know a lot of hipsters will throw stones at me for this but I personally find Starbucks americano much better than the hyped up blue bottle coffee.
Right that's what I was getting at. At coffee shops that don't have 20oz cups, I just get the 16oz with the same amount of shots as the Venti at SB would have, which is 4. I find that I usually get bored and don't finish the 20oz unless I'm driving long distance anyway, but with the 16oz I get the same amount of caffeine, flavour, and actually finish it. It's $3.50 CAD at my local shop to get one with 4 shots in 16oz or 20oz, but only $0.50 more for each additional.
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It's the mcdonalds of coffee
So obviously this is a principled act not self interested bullshit trying to whitewash an economic decision.