Viral Marketing Can Make You Sick

Sometimes it's the craziest little things that can stir up a firestorm of negative publicity. You really didn't mean for something to come across in a bad way, but it did anyway. And now there's hell to pay for it.

Take, for example, Starbucks. Their name has been tossed around by the media the last week like a hot potato. And it just keeps getting worse by the day.

It all started when Starbucks launched an innocent email campaign to its employees last month. The email contained a coupon for a free iced beverage, and recipients were encouraged to forward the email to friends and family.

Bad move.

Starbucks apparently doesn't understand how viral marketing works, because suddenly everyone and their brother was trying to redeem these coupons. So Starbucks stopped honoring the coupons last week, almost a month shy of its published expiration date. But to make matters worse, now someone has sued Starbucks in a class action case for $114 million, claiming that the Seattle coffee baron used deceptive advertising. The $114 million was calculated as the value of the "lost" beverages that all the potential customers could have gulped had their coupons been accepted.

Naturally, Starbucks thinks there are no grounds for this suit. Pun intended.

The bad part is that Starbucks comes out looking bad no matter what happens. Sure, the suit is frivolous. But what about cancelling the promotion? No matter what Starbucks does now, they look a little worse than they did the day before.

Which goes to show you the power of PR...good or bad.

For Starbucks to not understand how powerful viral marketing is reveals a frightening weakness at top management levels. To pull the coupons prematurely shows how little they understand negative PR, and how long it can linger in the minds of consumers.

While the Starbucks lawsuit is a lot like the poor sap who sued McDonald's for serving her hot coffee, this case is different in that Starbucks should know better. At least McDonald's was doing what any reasonable customer would expect by serving coffee the way customers expect it to be served.

Starbucks should just suck it up and give away the drinks. After all, it would get people in the store, and traffic is the key to retail success anyway. Even if you're giving stuff away. And if they can convince you to buy an over-priced scone, they've already broken even on the deal...and maybe even made a little profit.

The best thing a company can do when they're taking on water is get all hands on deck with buckets. If not, they'll be left with a Venti full of their own tears.

Dr "Wake Up And Smell The Coffee" Gerlich