Starbucks holiday season plans include customizable cups

Starbucks is wrapping its drinks, gift cards and coffee packages in festive and customizable holiday designs the brand hopes will inspire joy and gift-giving among its customers. Revealed today at the coffee chain’s 15,000-plus U.S. outlets, “Red Cup Season” signals the unwrapping of the leading coffee chain's holiday marketing season, generating excitement—and the occasional controversy. This year, Starbucks has four new cups, each featuring a combination of its signature holiday red and green with flashes of shimmering lilac. There are also new food and beverage items and the return of others. Suzie Reecer, associate creative director at Starbucks Creative Studio, the in-house agency that produced the campaign, in an interview said that this year’s designs are distinguished by customizable “gift tags” printed on the cups. This design draws inspiration from baristas known for having used cups to jot their own messages to customers over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Ad plans include 15-second commercials, full-page ad placements in weekly magazines, display banners, custom content and social posts. “The entire campaign this year has a gift-inspired element where we've got ribbons, we have wrapping paper and these elements that sparkle and shimmer because we know customers are going to be excited to get back to their friends and family, and when they get to Starbucks, it should be joyful and celebratory,” Reecer said. “The gift tags are an element that are going to set us apart from the rest,” she continued. “It’s going to make our customers smile when they get their own messages to friends and family, or, as we saw baristas doing during the pandemic, using the side of the cup to deliver all kinds of joyful notes. I can’t wait to see what people will do with it.” The tag element was added after the team had already come up with "50-plus ideas for the cups," Reecer said. "I thought back to when I was wrapping gifts with my mom, and she’d have sheets and sheets of gift tags, and we thought ‘what if we had that?’ That was got us here,” Reecer said. “And our designers took it further by saying let’s have different shapes and designs for the tags." TV commercials highlight Starbucks drinks as small gifts for diverse groups of families and friends who encounter one another while shopping, departing for a ski trip, or while trimming a tree. “These are stories inspired by the gift cup,” Reecer said. “Our cups are the portal into these worlds of reconnection and joy.” A tree-trimming ad is set in a sunny poolside yard, as Seattle-based Starbucks sought to highlight that customers in warmer climates “celebrate the holidays just as hard as those of us in a cold place.” A beverage in that ad is the new Iced Sugar Cookie Almondmilk Latte. The Peppermint Mocha is back for a 19th straight year; other returning holiday beverages include the Irish Cream Cold Brew, the Caramel Brulee Latte, Toasted White Chocolate Mocha and Chestnut Praline Latte. A new Reindeer Cake Pop joins the Sugar Plum Cheese Danish, and treats including the Cranberry Bliss Bar and Snowman Cookie are back. Starbucks’ rival Dunkin’ is also rolling out a new holiday menu and new cup designs, accompanying them with an in-store program to support the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation, which benefits kids battling hunger or illness. New drinks at Dunkin' include the Holiday Blend Coffee, Toasted White Chocolate Signature Latte and White Mocha Hot Chocolate. Its cups feature the holiday’s “simple, perfectly imperfect joys,” according to Dunkin', including candy crumbs, tangled lights and peeking at gifts. Dunkin’ customers who donate $1 to Dunkin's foundation in its restaurants will be given a lightbulb-shaped sticker with their name to be displayed on a restaurant poster, plus a coupon that can be redeemed for $1 off the purchase of a dozen donuts. Donations are also being accepted with orders on its mobile app.

Starbucks holiday season plans include customizable cups

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