Facebook may be teaming with McDonald’s, but Foursquare refuses to be outdone in adding big brands to its portfolio. Starbucks is increasing their partnership with Foursquare by offering a mayor special at select locations across the US from May 17 through June 28. Mayors will receive $1 off a Frappuccino beverage by showing the unlock screen on their phone to the barista.
Starbucks is a frequent experimenter in the social media space, with a heavy presence on Facebook and Twitter. In fact, Foursquare and Starbucks have previously teamed to offer the Barista badge to users who check in to five or more Starbucks locations. At that time the NY Times’ Bits Blog reported Starbucks was excited about Foursquare because “it’s where the intersection between digital and physical starts to get interesting,” said Chris Bruzzo, vice president for brand, content and online at Starbucks. “Starbucks loves that, because we’re always looking for that intersection, which we think is the evolution of social networks.”
The biggest problem I see with this initiative is that Starbucks employees are not prevented from holding the mayorship of their stores. For instance, at one local Starbucks the mayor is an employee with 40 checkins over the past two months. It would be almost impossible for an honest-to-goodness customer to become mayor of that venue and unlock the mayor special. Starbucks has claimed most of their stores as the owner, but they haven’t added any of the local employees as staff, which would prevent them from holding the mayorship.
Starbucks becomes the largest major national chain to offer a mayor special nationwide. Partnering with Starbucks will certainly help propel Foursquare use into the mainstream as users at more than 11,000 locations will be exposed to the Foursquare concept for an extended period of time.
UPDATE (5/16 11:15 pm): The special is now live on Starbucks’ venue pages:
#1 by Mike Stenger on May 12, 2010 - 5:53 pm
Awesome! Will be cool to see how well this works out for Starbucks
#2 by Joe McCarthy on May 12, 2010 - 7:12 pm
Starbucks seems to be covering all – or at least two – of the bases, given the announcement today that Brightkite will [also] be offering Starbucks badges and other incentives.
#3 by Michael Bauser on May 13, 2010 - 10:28 am
Chris, do you actually have a source for this story? It’s not mentioned on any page you linked to, nor on Starbuck’s Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, or home pages.
So far, I have no evidence that you haven’t made this story up.
(Also, for Joe: Brightkite hasn’t offered any “incentives,” so far. That half-price frappucino offer isn’t limited to Brightkite users. Brightkite’s blog post is misleading, like most Brightkite blog posts.)
#4 by Chris Thompson on May 13, 2010 - 1:29 pm
Photo confirmation via @SocialWendy:
http://tweetreel.com/?4327f
#5 by Michael Bauser on May 14, 2010 - 8:57 pm
OK, you’ve got a source now, but it you were “reporting” without a source, you should have admitted you were reporting a rumor.
That said, this story still suffers from a huge leap in logic when it says things like “users at more than 11,000 locations will be exposed to the Foursquare concept for an extended period of time.” So far, you haven’t given us any evidence that Starbucks will be promoting this to people who don’t already know about Foursquare!
The Barista badge has been around for 2 months, and it’s not even mentioned on Starbucks.com yet. Likewise, I didn’t see any advertising for it in any Starbucks I’ve visited recently. Just offering the discount doesn’t prove Starbucks is going to cross-promote Foursquare to non-users.
(Similarly, the recent Starbucks/Brightkite deal isn’t mentioned on Starbucks.com (or Frappucino.com, which might be more appropriate for the Brightkite promotion). I think people are misreading Starbucks’s check-in experiments. They’re not ready to declare a favored service or advertise one; they’re using viral promotions to figure out which service works better for them.)
#6 by Chris Thompson on May 15, 2010 - 12:44 am
Thanks for your criticisms. I’m new to this blogging thing, so I’m still learning and every little bit helps.
I originally had the story written as a rumor post based on some Twitter and Facebook posts. But, after talking to Starbucks managers in three different states — two of whom actually read me the exact same memo (that we’ve since seen in the photo) without me even asking — I decided to change it to confirmed. The additional circumstantial evidence of Starbucks simultaneously popping up as the owner of almost all of their stores only helped to support the conclusion.
Could I have done a better job of reporting my source? Probably. But I wasn’t sure how to say in the post what I just said in the paragraph above. My reporting was solid, but my writing in that regard was not. It’s definitely something I’ll try to improve on in the future.
With regard to Starbucks cross promoting Foursquare, I think you’re right: it’s unlikely that we’ll see any signage advertising this deal in a store. It WILL be talked about, however, in both the tech press and the mainstream press and as mayors show their phones to baristas in stores across the country. That in itself will help to raise awareness of Foursquare, much in the way awareness was raised for Twitter in the early going.
#7 by Turner on May 14, 2010 - 10:47 pm
40 checkins in 2 months? For a super-regular who goes to Starbucks daily this shouldn’t be a problem. Most employees aren’t there daily, some customers certainly are.
#8 by Spam on May 16, 2010 - 11:41 pm
foursquare users can resign from any of their mayorships by simply clicking the [X] next to the venue name in their mayorships list, so I don’t see the employee mayorship issue being something that can’t be dealt with easily.
#9 by cheyes on May 18, 2010 - 5:48 pm
i tried to cash in on it at a starbucks location and got denied. there is no promo code listed.
#10 by Chris Thompson on May 19, 2010 - 11:18 am
That’s really strange. Was it a brick and mortar location, as opposed to one inside a store (like Target or Kroger)? Those locations do not appear to be participating. Did the colored unlock screen appear for you?
As you can see from the photo linked above, instructions went out to all baristas on how to redeem the offer.
#11 by Adam Cohen on May 19, 2010 - 12:07 pm
Initially the cashier at SBUX didn’t know what to do when I asked, but another employee said “see the ‘need to know’ list, the promo code is on there.” I wrote about my experience as mayor yesterday here: http://adamhcohen.com/friends-with-benefits-starbucks-and-foursquare
#12 by Karl on May 24, 2010 - 7:54 pm
My local sbux doesn’t have the “need to know” list. They’re a real separate franchise (not inside a Safeway). I might call around to see if any of the other stores in my area know what this is.
I don’t want to haggle for this promo every time… I like my sbux and don’t want to be a jerk.
#13 by Michael Bauser on May 19, 2010 - 11:13 pm
Well, Starbucks has mentioned the Mayor Special on their twitter feed,
http://twitter.com/Starbucks/status/14170239334
but had to provide a link to the Mashable story to explain it. Guess that’s the best they can do if they don’t want to mention it on Starbucks.com.
#14 by Michael Bauser on June 1, 2010 - 12:24 pm
Adding credence to the “Starbucks will partner with anybody” theory: Mashable says Starbucks is a launch partner with Loopt Star.