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Starbucks - Playing Photo Trivia (Mobile Marketing)
http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/ask/archives/016670.html

Julie Ask | July 21, 2006, 05:57 PM

I blogged about the Starbucks mobile marketing campaign yesterday. I was texting in answers. Today, I tried taking photos of the answers. I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical when I started and wanted to test its limits. I used the LG 9000 camera phone (Verizon) for all of these submissions.

The first question asked for the name of a city. I took a photo of a photo of a major tourist attraction in this city and sent it in. My second try was going to be writing the word (i.e., name of the city) on a piece of paper. I was also sure that it would take much longer to validate than the simple text message. It didn't. I had a response in less than one minute and they gave me credit for the answer. Maybe they really did some ID of the photo? maybe they just gave me credit for sending in any photo? Still, another $5 gift card sent my way.

The second question came. I decided to test my hypothesis of "any picture will work" first. I sent in a photo of my cat. It was rejected. Impressive. I next took a photo of a "beverage" on their web site that I knew to be the correct answer (because I've been through this before with text). It worked. I was awarded another pat on the back.

The next clue comes. I start hunting around in my cupboards for something in a jar that shares the same name. I took a photo of the food label and sent it in. That worked. Fully intrigued now. It may have taken a couple of minutes though. Still not sure if these are being manually scanned.

My last clue of the week comes. The answer is the name of a place. In trying to test the limits, I sent in a photo of a satellite image of the place from Google online. Whoa! They gave me credit. Maybe two or three minutes - seemed like a wait, but not long.

Another clue arrives. It is a food. This time I go to Google Images for a picture of this ingredient in a drink. It seems to be taking a few minutes now as well. This works, too. Pretty cool. Another ice coffee awarded.

Last clue arrives. This time I take a photo of a well known brand that makes/sells this product. Is this a brand known well enough for it's product to be one in the same like Xerox or Kleenex? Wait more than a minute ... maybe two and I receive confirmation that my answer is correct. Another suggestion to donate a book to a library arrives.

Need to find out who is behind the campaign. The photos cost more, but it's fun - fun to hunt around for something that symbolizes the products. The Internet is an easy shortcut, but still entertaining.

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Starbucks Corporate Citizenship
Julie Ask | July 21, 2006, 05:51 PM
http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/ask/archives/016669.html
I blogged about Starbucks' mobile marketing campaign yesterday. I answered the 6th clue correctly today. They suggested that I go donate a book to a library. Interesting that they've mixed in their corporate philosophy of doing good for the world into this campaign.

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Starbucks Summer's Perfect Storm
http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/ask/archives/016639.html
Julie Ask | July 20, 2006, 12:01 PM

Starbucks is running a mobile marketing program this summer. (I think that I first read about it in Moco or Fierce to be fair, but I can't find the link to their story right now.)Anyway. Here is the link for the information on the contest.

I love the campaign. Components include:

(for me the consumer)
- Short code to sign up (easy) - text "Summer" to 66268
- Trivia questions delivered via SMS - it amuses me
- I won a $5 gift card (ok, real value here) on my first right answer
- Won a drink coupon 5 correct answers later
- Entry into bigger sweepstakes

(for Starbuck's)
- Online registration
- Online opt-in for future promotions
- Trivia questions/answers tied into their products
- (will eventually drive foot traffic)

(for the carriers)

- if someone plays the entire contest, they will receive 57 SMS messages AND there is full disclosure on the web site so the player knows up front (at first I was horrified by the number of messages that I would be sending, but then I received the $5 gift card and the coupon for a free drink and I thought ... ok, at 10 cents per message, I'm already even)

- one can also submit answers via MMS (photos) - I haven't trialed this yet, but plan to so stay tuned. At 30 to 50 cents per message (answer), this could generate a lot of revenue

What I haven't seen/what is missing:

- Wouldn't know it existed if it weren't for the press
- Coupons are being mailed to me rather than having in-store redemption right away

I'm sure they thought of these things and there are reasons why they didn't do them, but still. So not exactly the perfect campaign, but it seems really close so far. Stay tuned for how the MMS version works with submitting photos of answers. I can only imagine that these are verified manually. We'll see.