What’s your favourite social media campaign?

I’m not really a fan of Starbuck’s coffee, but I am a huge fan of their the back to basics approach to rebuild a business that was literally on its knees.

The founder of the business Howard Schultz became re-involved in the business at a grass roots level. He was understandably disappointed with the train wreck that his business had become.

His turnaround plan was massive but at its heart was a web site that openly encouraged consumers to offer their best Starbucks idea. MyStarbucksIdea.com started in July 2008 as a forum for consumers to make suggestions, ask questions and, in some cases, vent their spleen.

The website now has 180,000 registered users. 80,000 ideas have been submitted, 50 of these ideas have been implemented in-store. Starbucks has built a massive following with 5.7 million Facebook fans and 775,000 Twitter followers. Starbucks recognised that their stores were essentially a social network in themselves where friends got together to hang out with a coffee.

The business has started the turnaround with stores showing an obvious sales gain for the first time in years.

What’s your favourite Social Media campaign and why do you think it worked so well?

What’s your favourite Social media campaign disaster?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Social Media and tagged with Social, Social media campaign, Starbucks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.