Celebrate Starbucks’ 40th birthday with a foursquare badge
Starbucks is celebrating their 40th birthday this week by rolling out an all-new identity and launching an in-store celebration called Tribute Days. They’re letting foursquare users in on the celebration, too, by offering a new Starbucks Tribute badge.
Users will be able to unlock the badge by following Starbucks on foursquare and checking in at any US Starbucks location during Tribute Days, which run today through Saturday. The unlock text reads:
Thank you. We started in 1971 and are turning 40. You’ve earned this badge and a chance to win a $40 Starbucks card. Sweepstakes ends 3/12/11. For complete details: http://sbux.co/TributeBadgeRules
They’ll be giving away 500 of the $40 gift cards to lucky foursquare users. In addition to the contest, anyone who buys a beverage today from 2-5 pm will get one of their new Petites free. Petites are eight small sweets including Cake Pops (available in Birthday Cake, Rocky Road and Tiramisu flavors), Red Velvet Whoopie Pies, Mini Cupcakes (Carrot Cake and Peanut Butter) and Sweet Squares (Lemon and Salty Caramel).
Starbucks has partnered with foursquare in the past. The Barista badge — which launched a year ago tomorrow — honors users who’ve checked in at five different Starbucks. Last May, they became the first nationwide chain to offer a foursquare Mayor special. Mayors got $1 off a Frappuccino beverage. The campaign earned mixed reviews.
I’m a little disappointed that their beautiful new identity isn’t tied into the badge, but I’m glad to see Starbucks partnering up again with foursquare for this campaign. Limited time partner badges always garner a lot of attention among foursquare users, and this pairing with one of the country’s most ubiquitous brands should be no different.
No related posts.
You’ll most likely need to check in at a venue that Starbucks has claimed in order to earn the badge.
Which kind of stinks because there are A LOT of unclaimed Starbucks locations.
And of course, all the inevitable duplicate venues. I’ll definitely make a point of getting a lot of those (in my area, at least…and also in Austin, if I have time) merged this morning.
It looks like Starbucks is actively working on claiming unclaimed locations, as the three Sbux locations in my hometown are claimed this morning. Went to two locations yesterday and couldn’t get it to work at all, but when I went this morning it was working great.
Yes I found out the hard way when the Starbucks inside my local Safeway was NOT claimed. Too bad, I drove to another nearby one that was claimed and unlocked it there. There will be many unhappy users complaining…
I think this will be very similar to the old mayor promotion where it had to be an actual Starbucks store, not one of the affiliate locations in Target, Safeway, college campuses, etc.
Finally … a badge in almost 3 weeks… tooooo slow I think …
The contest rules says: ITS VOID IN NEW YORK! That’s a first…
That makes me smile inside…. really. TAKE THAT NY! You may have lots of badges for you and you only, but no contest for you! lol
+1… thought the same thing when I saw that.
Would love to see this in the UK
The beauty of Starbucks tho… unclaimed or not… is that they are everywhere… and its not like Today is the only day… You get until Saturday to find a claimed venue…
Luckily, I work right across the street from a very popular West Loop Starbucks and got it this morning before I even read the morning edition of AboutFoursquare.
How does one know, if they are claimed?
A dead giveaway would be the staff listed on the website, but you won’t know if there’s one if you’re not anywhere near a computer…
How annoying. I visit England, New York and Florida all the time on account of where I live and where family are. All 3 places are prohibited.
What’s going on with that?
I know they should set it up for the world
My understanding is that the contest is prohibited by law in those states for some reason. It’s out of foursquare’s/Starbucks’ control.
They should’ve let people all over the world unlock the badge but have the contest open to US resident only. Argh.
Dens tweeted that it’s US Only for now & Tristan confirmed the same.
I would imagine you could still get the badge in those locations, just not qualify for the sweepstakes. Hopefully this is be the case. Not that I’m too worried, being in SoCal.
Absolutely insane that a global company like Starbucks limits a social media reward like a badge to just one country. In-sane.
Starbucks might’ve looked like an early adopter of Foursquare with their own Barista badge, but I’m beginning to think that was more from the 4Sq team than it was from some suit at Starbucks.
Hi –
I work on social media for Starbucks and wanted to chime in here since I worked on this. We would have very much liked to included the entire world in this, but sweepstakes rules are very complex, not only across different countries, but between states as well. We had to limit it due to specific legal requirements and also due to the time we had to implement this badge. I hope you guys can understand that.
The response has been tremendous, and we’re not even through the first day! We’re very excited by this.
Experimentation in social media is important to us, so thanks for the feedback. We’ll take it into account as we try new things.
Thanks,
brad
Thanks for the explanation. Really love what you guys have done with Foursquare so far, keep up the great work!
Epic fail. This has nothing to do with the sweepstakes, this is about offering a tiny non-financial reward to your customers who check-in to your shops outside of the United States.
I’m off to Costa!
Tell you what, how about this – how about you open the badge up to the rest of the world after the sweepstake contest is over? Anniversaries can last a whole 12 months, you know.
Can you not reopen the badge to people without a promotion behind it? You do realize that a lot of foursquare users love Starbucks, right?
Foursquare don’t care about people outside the USA.
Sucks that the badge is limited just to the US. We – in Canada are always shafted when it comes to badges.
Please open up the badge to the rest of the world – but keep the sweepstakes to your the US then.
I’m in Georgia and, not kidding, checked in to 5 different starbucks. No badge. And all of them were stand alone stores…..wuuuuut?!
A major fail… Mexico is crowded with Starbucks franchises… Even worst, Cancun is like a little Miami… Why not sharing the badge outside the U.S.? C’mon Starbucks! It’s spring break and in Cancun you can see americans everywhere! They’ll be angry too when they comeback home and find out they didn’t score the badge even though they visited a Starbucks in Mexico… Child please!
I am following Starbucks and I checked in here in Wisconsin. Didn’t get a badge.
UPDATE – I was able to unlock this at a different Starbucks location here in Wisconsin.
The first location I tried that did NOT work was located in a strip mall.
The second location that UNLOCKED the badge was a standalone store location.
Hope that helps others unlock this limited badge!
Checked into 5 different locations and still no badge. Are we having Super Bowl badge-type issue here?
Checked in at a NorCal location and got the badge with no problems. Was offered a free Petite even though it was well past 6pm. Thanks, AF for the heads-up, and thanks, Starbucks for my free lemon bar!
Well crap! Is there any way to get Starbucks to claim some local locations?
Went to two stores today and no badge. My pixels!!
How’s sad, that’s for US only. But there are many starbucks around the world !!
double that! I drove 100 miles yesterday to the nearest starbucks until I read the “small print” of the “contract”.
[...] Brad who claimed to have worked on the social media marketing project for Starbucks chimed in with this response: Hi [...]
I wrote about my displeasure about how the badge couldn’t be separate from the sweepstakes yesterday. I totally get the part about local regulations regarding gambling and sweepstakes… but the badge could definitely be made available to people in other parts of the world.
I got it on my first check in today at my local Starbucks in Boston – http://foursquare.com/venue/60472
<3 you Starbucks. And I got a free pettite thingee too because I ordered a hand crafted beverage.
[...] Celebrate Starbucks' 40th birthday with a foursquare badge [...]
Did you have to be following Starbucks on foursquare in order to get this? I checked into a standalone Starbucks today and got no such badge.
Ok, I’m stupid, nevermind. I knew I should have followed them before I left home!
Hmm, strange that some people haven’t been able to unlock this badge in New York. I happened to be on vacation in New York the past week and unlocked it on Thursday (March 10th) at a Starbucks on the Upper West Side (near the AMoNH).
As others have noted here, you have to be following Starbucks on Foursquare though.
I checked into an official Starbucks on the 10th, live on the west coast of the US and I still did not get the badge. Can ideas on how we can get it if we did everything and still did not get it.
I checked into this Starbucks after following the company on Foursquare and still did not receive the badge:
http://foursquare.com/venue/2270626
It kind of sucks because I was unable to get GPS to pick up my location for most of the short window of time when the promotion was available (not sure if the Foursquare servers were just flooded, or if it was upgrading to the latest version of the app that killed it), so I wasn’t able to try again for the badge.
Is there some way we can retroactively get the badges if we checked into an actual location that, for some reason, was not recognized?
Short sighted not to have this available in other markets. We get very little love from Brand on Foursquare in the UK.
I didn’t get it when I checked in at one today.. It’s located in a strip mall. Is that why?
Oh nevermind. I thought it went until THIS saturday??
