The following post from Caribou has everything I love in corporate marketing; free stuff, a small nimble company taking advantage of a large company stumble, and relevance to the current mood of the country.
Starbucks recently announced that it is eliminating at-the-ready decaf coffee in the afternoon. In response, Caribou Coffee is offering free decaf coffee on Friday afternoon, January 30th. Given the current state of our economy, I have to think that this will effectively pull in some customers who don’t normally get their coffee at Caribou. I am certain Caribou is hoping that some of these customers will become new regulars. In addition, even those people who don’t make it to a Caribou on Friday will probably still remember that they made a good-natured poke at Starbucks and made Starbucks look like another big corporation that is overly concerned with the bottom line.
In the interests of full disclosure, I also proudly admit that Caribou Coffee is a client of Questar/CEM.
What are your thoughts? Is this type of marketing effective or counter productive?
The following is the Caribou release:
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Decaf drinkers deserve better!
You may have heard that Starbucks(r) is eliminating decaf coffee at-the-ready in the afternoons. We think that customers deserve the very best coffee, when, where and how they want it. So all Caribou Coffee locations will offer free 12-ounce cups of decaffeinated coffee from noon until closing this Friday, January 30.
We invite all decaf coffee drinkers to experience Caribou Coffee’s exceptional Natural Decaf(tm) coffee on the house. To learn more about our all-natural decaffeination process, visit http://www.cariboucoffee.com/page/1/all-natural-decaf.jsp
-Tom McGoldrick
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Starbucks made a huge blunder by focusing their advertising and policies on their bottom line rather than their customers. Ok, so maybe they don’t have a ton of decaf customers in the afternoon, maybe they should have figured out a way to make these people special (on-demand coffee freshly brewed just for you!) rather than making them feel like a pain in Starbucks corporate backside.
Cheers to Caribou!
Comment by Lori Laflin January 30, 2009 @ 8:20 amNow there’s a thought- that’s the least they could have done. Now, Dunkin Donuts also ran a print ad that slammed Starbucks for this decision. They gave every competitor an open opportunity to make them look horrible.
Comment by Liz February 5, 2009 @ 10:00 pm