
Starbucks pauses Advertising on all Social Media - op03
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/28/starbucks-latest-company-to-pause-ads-across-social-media-platforms.html
======
LatteLazy
They've advertised on these platforms for years. It wasn't a problem when hate
groups popped up or Russians interfered with elections or privacy concerns
were highlighted. Right now they desperately need to cut their advertising
budget (and some other budgets) because of coronavirus.

So obviously this is a principled act not self interested bullshit trying to
whitewash an economic decision.

------
booleandilemma
Do brands as well-known as Starbucks and Coca-Cola really need to advertise on
social media at all? I've ever met a person who isn't familiar with these
brands.

Let them save money, they don't need to be on these platforms.

Worst case, a few "social media managers" are out of work. The world will get
by.

~~~
amiga_500
Yes, because they need to make you feel like your life is incomplete and can
be completed if you pay them for X.

Coca Cola makes people fat and gives them tooth decay. Their product has a
socially negative value. It's _essential_ that they counter these facts with
positive images.

~~~
Spivak
I uhh… what? We’re talking about a soda manufacturer here. Look I mean I get
the crusade against sugar and being mindful about how many calories are in a
bottle. But that’s a harsh opinion about fizzy water that lots of people enjoy
drinking enough to pay a premium for. Nobody buys a candy bar because of some
existential crisis.

Like do you hold the same opinion of coffee shops that sell sugary drinks,
pastry shops, candy makers, snack food makers, ice cream shops, breweries,
distilleries? Does “treats taste good” not qualify as a positive?

Like it’s wild to me to think that if I served you a piece of chocolate cake
you would be like “how dare you! It has excessive calories and will rot my
teeth!”

~~~
andrepd
It's not so much serving a piece of chocolate cake as spending $10,000,000,000
every year on highly sophisticated psychologically fine-tuned mental
bombardment to get to serve you a piece of chocolate cake.

The constant fight for your attention. Billboards, storefronts, internet, tv,
radio, everywhere you go you have highly researched pictures and sounds that
try to manipulate your feeble mammal brain to purchase their products.

Your first paragraph suggests you regard advertising as something far more
benign that it is.

~~~
amiga_500
Exactly. Comparing to a local cafe is ludicrous.

~~~
Spivak
I mean when I said coffee shop I was imagining Starbucks.

But that seems a little weird. Does coming from a local soda shop suddenly
make the drinks have fewer calories or less sugar?

~~~
amiga_500
You didn't say that. And I didn't say it either. And it's got nothing to do
with anything.

~~~
Spivak
Then what does it have to do with?

* Soda, like all sweets, are bad for your health if not consumed in moderation or at least with mindfulness about their nutritional content.

* Large food-stuff manufactures are quite good at convincing consumers to buy their products and choose their brand over others with very expensive ad campaigns.

What I’m not convinced of, and what doesn’t follow from these, is that ads are
effective at persuading consumers to buy and consume their products _on top_
of their regular diets which is what would be required for them to be a public
health issue.

~~~
andrepd
Yes, I too assume that despite being a 600 billion USD/yr business,
advertising doesn't really work.

~~~
Spivak
If a given person is eating a 2000 calorie diet then I don't believe the
presence of ads will suddenly make them eat a 2500 calorie diet to accommodate
some products they saw in an ad.

Advertising can be 100% effective but it doesn't make peoples' stomachs
bigger.

------
buboard
Well apart from this being a good PR play in a time when advertising is
naturally cut back due to the uncertaintly, it will be a big test (if not just
acknowledgement) that social media traffic is just as crap traffic as e.g.
forums. The old adage about 50% of ad spending being wasted is true , the it's
just that the perception of where it is that's changing. My theory is that FB
& Google are just better at dazzling advertisers with fancy dashboards that
they can show their bosses.

~~~
mrkramer
Advertising on TV and in Newspapers is 50% wasted because there is no a way to
have targeted advertising, but with Facebook and Google advertisers have an
option to target their audience and efficiency of an advertising campaign is
drastically improved.

~~~
buboard
if that were true, the switch to online advertisement should have led to
increased consumption/sales per person compared to previous decades, but
that's not happened

------
AznHisoka
Who is going to be the main beneficiary of this move? Where else are these
advertisers going to shift their ad dollars

~~~
kediz
In the U.S the beneficiary might be political ads? If this is the case, would
it make social medias more reliant on divisive speeches?

------
brewdad
Obviously, this "pause" hasn't begun yet. I got a fresh sponsored post from
Starbucks on my Facebook feed 2 minutes ago. The article didn't give a start
date. Does anyone know more?

~~~
soared
Starbucks doesn’t have a big red button so pausing can take a few days.
Starbucks contacts their marketing agency, who goes to their digital marketing
agency, who goes to their media buying agency, who goes to their vendor, etc.

------
awinter-py
hmm I wonder what the total ad spend of these 100 marketers is. FB seems like
a business with long tails.

If we're talking $1B annual chunk of FB's $70B, and the pause is probably til
november at the longest = 0.5B, it's a hit but not a death blow

also wonder if big brands were ever a fit for hyper-targeted ads -- they're
not suing for mesothelioma or trying to drive a single sale, they're
blanketing media to maintain public awareness

also wonder if social platforms will tweak visibility rules to make it harder
for big brands to spread the word organically

------
ianmcgowan
If it weren't for all the confounding factors, this would be a nice natural
experiment to answer the question "how effective is social media
advertising?".

------
m0zg
Heh. Political ads are getting cheaper with each passing day it looks like. As
more and more advertisers withdraw, the overall CPC will go down. FB, Twitter,
et al are going to get even more cancerous as a result, driving further
advertiser exodus.

The solution to this is offering sustained use discounts, like Google Cloud
does. Have ongoing campaigns at a certain spending level? FB takes a slightly
smaller cut, so you pay less. Turn shit on and off all the time? FB takes a
larger cut, so you pay what you'd normally pay.

------
pl0x
How much of this is pausing or moving their budgets around because social
media was performing poorly anyways?

------
perl4ever
I wonder if Facebook and others will miss earnings. This seems to be gathering
speed.

------
firmnoodle
This is a great step at stopping not just the spread of hate speech but also
at stopping hate itself. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook have done and
continue to do too much to encourage and then monetize rage.

~~~
product50
Haha. Good luck. You have no idea how these platforms make money. Starbucks,
Coca Cola don't spend much on these platforms anyways. They are just using
this as an opportunity to gain brownie points without incurring much harm
anyways. Performance advertisers are their bed and butter. For example, that
app install ad or that ad from Direct to Consumer advertiser (for example
Allbirds) are the ones who cherish FB. They must be really happy since their
CAC just went down as brand advertisers are running away! THey will literally
double down spending on FB/Twitter.

~~~
bearcobra
Starbucks spent close to $100 million advertising with Facebook

~~~
product50
Doesn't matter. That money will be replaced by performance advertisers. Top
100 Fortune brands make up 6% of FB ad revenue. This is why all these boycott
FB ads doesn't make any sense. THe only thing which will hurt FB is users
boycotting - not advertisers. There are always opportunistic advertisers who
will want to gain access to cheap(er) inventory to reduce their acquisition
costs.

------
fabrika
Nice, this will hurt both Starbucks and social media. The rest of us win.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
what's nice about starbucks hurting?

~~~
kop316
My biggest pet peeve with them is they seem to hurt local coffee shops. You
can find starbucks almost ubitquiously, but it's very difficult now to find a
local shop ouside of a larger city. I don't think that is a coincedence (I
also thought I read an article about their strong arming tactis to local
shops, but I cannot readily find it, so maybe I was imaging it and combining
it with a confirmation bias).

Also, their drinks are very sugary and VERY calorie packed. I personally think
starbucks on average is worse for someone versus a Coke/Soda/Pop:

[https://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/867c147d5dcc46e9af...](https://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/867c147d5dcc46e9afb307093d5172e1.pdf)

Additionally, I don't think their actual coffee tastes very good (granted,
this is my preference). Even the lightest roast tastes burnt. Starbucks was
the reason I thought I did not like french roast for the longest time. When I
actually tried a different brand, I was surprised at how much I actually liked
it.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Here's my point of view.

You talk about high calorie, but I never drink sugar stuff there. I only get
Americano, so it's unfair to criticize them for things they make available
when there's plenty of options if you want to stay healthy. It's your choice,
it's not like they only sell unhealthy stuff. Just to be clear, a lot of
popular hipster cafes sell sugary stuff too.

Also, their Americano tastes great. In fact I would rate it as one of the top
grade even comparing to all the NY & SF hipster coffee stores I frequent.

Next, they are the only ones who provide large sized coffee (Venti) bar none.
I drink a lot so I really hope other cafes provide large sized coffee but I
have yet to find any non franchise coffee shop which does that. All the
hipster coffee shops tend to only serve small sized coffee.

Also, Starbucks gives you infinite refill if you're their gold member, which
is pretty easy status to achieve if you're a regular coffee drinker.

Also, Starbucks is the only coffee chain which reliably provides free wifi
access. A lot of the local coffee places don't provide wifi at all, or don't
like it when you try to use wifi for a long time.

I really want to support "local coffee shops" but all these things keep me
from stop going to starbucks.

If I think about it, I go to starbucks about 50% of the time and the rest 50%
I go to the other local cafes. But really, they don't give me high enough
incentive to go.

This is what capitalism is, Starbucks provides a product which makes the
quality of my life higher compared to other local cafes, so I have no way but
to go there more often. It has nothing to do with an evil organization
depriving the nice local cafes of their opportunity to compete.

~~~
brailsafe
The refill and acceptance of just hanging out for hours doing work are some of
the benefits of Starbucks, but as someone who worked there as a barista, only
the blonde espresso & coffee are palatable. It's of course subjective, but the
rest of their coffee is usually gross.

For other coffee shops, why don't you just get a smaller Americano? it's just
espresso shots + hot water, so a smaller Americano will be less diluted but
the same amount of caffeine and better flavour. (amount of espresso varies
from shop to shop, but you can just ask for another shot or two)

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
> For other coffee shops, why don't you just get a smaller Americano? it's
> just espresso shots + hot water, so a smaller Americano will be less diluted
> but the same amount of caffeine and better flavour. (amount of espresso
> varies from shop to shop, but you can just ask for another shot or two)

You probably know this already but Starbucks lets you get extra shot americano
for Venti. So you have the option of getting more quantity AND still not get
diluted. You don't get that from other cafes because they don't even provide
large cups to begin with.

> only the blonde espresso & coffee are palatable. It's of course subjective,
> but the rest of their coffee is usually gross.

Yeah I am not saying Starbucks makes the best coffee in the world for every
category, I'm just saying at least for Americano (which is basically just
Espresso + water) it's actually on my top ranking, I know a lot of hipsters
will throw stones at me for this but I personally find Starbucks americano
much better than the hyped up blue bottle coffee.

~~~
brailsafe
Right that's what I was getting at. At coffee shops that don't have 20oz cups,
I just get the 16oz with the same amount of shots as the Venti at SB would
have, which is 4. I find that I usually get bored and don't finish the 20oz
unless I'm driving long distance anyway, but with the 16oz I get the same
amount of caffeine, flavour, and actually finish it. It's $3.50 CAD at my
local shop to get one with 4 shots in 16oz or 20oz, but only $0.50 more for
each additional.

