Analyzing Starbucks Frappuccino Launch Campaigns

For the last 28 years, Starbucks has been marketing and selling its Frappuccino frozen beverages as one of its most popular drinks. Though the Starbucks Frappuccino campaign is ongoing with new flavor combinations introduced each year alongside returning seasonal favorites, the voice and persona that Starbucks has created for its Frappuccino product resonates with fans and sets Starbucks’ social media strategy apart. Through integrated and innovative social media strategies, Starbucks is able to keep their Frappuccino brand relevant and in-demand with their audience year after year.

Target Audience

The target audience for Frappuccino launches is rather large as there is a near constant demand for the Frappuccino product amongst the Starbucks faithful. By diversifying their advertising, Starbucks is able to appeal to a larger percentage of the population by utilizing traditional advertising channels, commercials, in-person ads, and social media marketing. This allows their target audience to be mostly middle- and upper-middle class consumers, aged 16–40. Barbara Bean-Mellinger (2019) describes Starbucks’ target audience as “on-the-go, … technology early adapters, … healthy-ish professionals, … [and] socially conscious.” This balance includes both highly paid professionals and dedicated students who are willing to set aside “Starbucks money” in their more limited budgets, due to their brand dedication. Starbucks rewards this dedication through their approachable, personable advertising and social media presence to humanize the brand.

Starbucks has its largest social media presence on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Starbucks (@starbucks) boasts 10.9 million followers on Twitter, a platform with 56.4% male users primarily between the ages of 25–34 (Hirose, 2022). On Instagram, Starbucks (@starbucks) has a staggering 18.1 million followers, a platform that boasts a fairly even 50/50 split between male and female users amongst various age demographics, with 31.5% of users between 25–34 years of age (McLachlan, 2022). A newer platform, TikTok has seen the most success with females aged 18–24, of which Starbucks (@starbucks) hosts 2.1 million in their follower count (McLachlan, 2023). With 2.82 billion daily users, Facebook remains a social media powerhouse, ranked as the most popular social media network for men and women aged 35–44 (Beveridge, 2022). Starbucks’ business page on Facebook has 36 million page likes with 35 million daily followers.

Reach and Engagement

As the Starbucks Frappuccino campaigns are ongoing as seasons change and see the return and retirement of old favorites alongside the introduction of new flavor obsessions, pulling exact data is not possible. However, Starbucks often employs cross posting strategies of reusing the same content on multiple platforms, which allows us to study such examples and analyze their effectiveness.

Example 1

In this example, we can see that the same image and captions have been used in Starbucks’ Instagram (Above) and Facebook (Below) advertising the return of their Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino. The posts were made on the same day, and very likely at the exact same time.

Engagements

Both of these identical posts received a fair amount of engagement, and both posts included interactions from Starbucks with their audience. Starbucks’ Instagram (@starbucks) boasts 18.1M followers and received 31,521 likes and 315 comments on this post. Starbucks’ Facebook (@starbucks) has 36M followers and received 1,600 likes and 329 comments with 169 shares.

Example 2

In this example, we again see the same video used, posted on the same day, however the text is slightly different between the Instagram (Above) and Facebook (Below) posts announcing the return of summer Frappuccino flavors this year.

Engagements

Unlike the first example, these similar posts vary in their layout and captions which further reveals the difference between the Frappuccino campaign on Instagram and Facebook. While neither platform shows a large return on engagement, Instagram seems to foster a more active, engaged audience via likes and comments on Starbucks’ Frappuccino posts. Starbucks’ Instagram post used the caption: “Welcome to Camp Frappuccino.” and received 32,280 likes and 726 comments. Starbucks’ Facebook post used the caption: “Now arriving: Summer at Starbucks.” and received 1,500 likes, 450 comments, and 105 shares.

Results

A hallmark of Starbucks’ social media presence is the level of engagement they have with their followers. Starbucks’ teams are usually quick to respond to concerns about product quality, share excitement over a delicious drink, and correct inaccurate information. The team seems to have an established practice to avoid engaging in negative comments about the brand, its pricing, or its practices unless strictly necessary as this can often exacerbate situations (Newberry, 2023).

What Starbucks does well with their Frappuccino campaign is provide a diverse repertoire of content. From videos to slideshows to still photos, Starbucks provides a variety of original and user-generated content for each of its social media platforms. This level of audience engagement and participation with the brand helps further brand loyalty and draw fans back again and again to Starbucks’ online presence and in-person stores. Overall, I would consider this campaign a success due to the continued interest and demand driven to Starbucks stores after seeing Frappuccino advertisements.

Conclusion

The ongoing Starbucks Frappuccino campaigns are ultimately a success thanks to the longevity and diversity of their efforts. Starbucks is not afraid to experiment with new platforms and types of posts to drive engagement on their posts and have a consistent brand style and expectations that ensure seamless interactions both online and in-person (Newberry, 2023). As these campaigns are ongoing and are not set by time frames, it is hard to individually analyze the campaign much further, but it has been an overarching success over the last 28 years.

My biggest takeaway from studying this campaign has been the sheer amount of data involved in social media campaigns. When establishing the best practices for both the Starbucks brand and the Frappuccino product, it is clear that the Starbucks team has considered nearly every aspect of their target audience to ensure they can meet that audience where they already exist, whether online, in-person, or through traditional advertising. Beyond creating this guide, however, it is hard to fully predict your audience and their behavior, but Starbucks has set themselves apart as leaders on social media with high engagement and interaction on each of their posts.

References:

Bean-Mellinger, B. (2019, February 5). Who Is Starbucks’ Target Audience? Chron. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/starbucks-target-audience-10553.html

Beveridge, C. (2022, March 24). 19 Facebook Demographics to Inform Your Strategy in 2023. Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-demographics/

Hirose, A. (2022, September 20). 24 Twitter Demographics That Matter to Marketers in 2023. Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-demographics/

McLachlan, S. (2022, March 24). Instagram Demographics in 2023: Most Important User Stats for Marketers. Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-demographics/

McLachlan, S. (2023, April 13). 50+ Important TikTok Stats Marketers Need to Know in 2023. Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/tiktok-stats/

Newberry, C. (2023, June 14). How to Build a Strong Brand Voice on Social Media (and Beyond). Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/brand-voice/

SOCi. (n.d.). Why Starbucks Is Killing It On Social Media. SOCi. https://www.meetsoci.com/resources/blog/social-media/starbucks-social-media/

Starbucks. (n.d.). Our Company. Starbucks. https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/#:~:text=In%20everything%20we%20do%2C%20we,limitless%20possibilities%20of%20human%20connection.

Starbucks Stories. (2015, March 25). Frappuccino Turns 20: The Story behind Starbucks Beloved Beverage. Starbucks Stories. https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2015/frappuccino-turns-20/