Dive Brief:
- Starbucks is running a new content marketing campaign called 1st & Main, an animated series created in conjunction with three writers from The Simpsons, according to a company news post.
- The seven-episode series will creatively bring to life moments that happen in Starbucks stores across the country and star a cast of animated animal characters.
- “Starbucks talks about the ‘third place’ between work and home,” said Simpsons writer Joel H. Cohen in the post. “That’s ultimately the theme of the series: every person at every table has a story. At our table, we are the three weird guys watching the other tables.” The campaign kicks off Dec. 16 on Starbucks’s website at starbucks.com/1standmain.
Dive Insight:
Starbucks' latest effort is another example of a big consumer brand diving into the more creative side of content marketing. Other companies like Marriott have seen solid success producing branded web series — the hotel chain's Two Bellmen videos are so popular they even generate their own revenues. This is Starbucks' second foray into content marketing coming on the heels of Upstanders, a 10-part series about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, which debuted in September.
Taco Bell is another brand using a similar tactic with its recently launched weekly YouTube series Taco Tales, featuring stories from actual Taco Bell customers posted to Twitter and Reddit that are then reenacted. Starbucks' 1st&Main puts a similar emphasis on reimagining the everyday consumer experience, a tactic which might connect with those familiar and loyal to the Starbucks brand.
The 1st & Main episodes will each run around 90 seconds and are created by the Simpson writers' production company Tolerable Entertainment. Starbucks recently released a five-year growth plan includes what the company called “expanding the digital flywheel,” and more branded content marketing may be a component of that.
