Starbucks brews up spot on the list of top social brands in 2008

Starbucks Coffee, like many competitors, is trying to figure out social media and make it work from a business standpoint. But so far the 16,000-unit chain can boast some staggering numbers, including more than 1 million Facebook fans and more than 81,000 Twitter followers. The most telling statistic, however, may be Starbucks’ No. 6 spot on the Top 100 Social Brands of 2008 list.

Top 100 Social Brands of 2008

Those rankings, compiled by social-media marketing firm Vitrue, measure the attention companies and products commanded across all online media, including social-networking sites like Facebook or Twitter and media-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr. Starbucks ranked just behind the iPhone, CNN, Apple, Disney and Xbox.

“We don’t see this as a promotional strategy,” said Chris Bruzzo, vice president of brand content and online for Starbucks. “We see it as a connection strategy. We ask every day: Where are our customers? They’re on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.”

The next closest foodservice brands in Vitrue’s rankings are McDonald’s at No. 32 and Subway at No. 40. Rounding out the industry’s representation are Wendy’s, Burger King, Chili’s, KFC and Taco Bell at Nos. 56, 57, 88, 93 and 96, respectively.

Reggie Bradford, chief executive of Vitrue, wasn’t surprised that eight restaurant brands made the list, given how often people talk about dining out.

“Food is a social category,” he said. “People talk about it every single day.… Restaurants come up in conversations all the time, and the larger message is that marketers need to take notice and provide consumers experience environments where they can participate with the brand.”

However, restaurants that get the most attention don’t necessarily have the most positive “buzz,” according to research from BrandIndex, a firm that tracks customer perceptions of more than 1,000 companies. In terms of “mindshare,” which BrandIndex defines as the percentage of survey respondents who have heard anything about a given brand during a two-week period, the eight restaurant brands on Vitrue’s list also ranked very high in 2008.

Starbucks, Subway and McDonald’s are Nos. 4, 6 and 10, respectively, in BrandIndex’s mind-share rankings.

However, the firm also tracked “buzz” for 2008, which accounts for whether the attention was positive or negative. Higher scores for that metric mean more of the online chatter was positive, and Starbucks and McDonald’s fared worse by that metric.

Starbucks’ 7.8-percent buzz score put it at No. 361 out of more than 1,000 companies, while McDonald’s 11.1-percent score put it at No. 266.

Subway, however, was the No. 4 company for buzz rank, with a 42.8-percent positive rating.

In Starbucks’ case, the brand not only answers customer service questions with its “tweets,” or postings on Twitter, but it also ran three promotions on Facebook. One promised customers free coffee for voting on Election Day, and two others called on fans to pledge five hours of service to their communities or give money to AIDS outreach via the Red Campaign.

Bruzzo said the effort to engage customers to participate in a cause fits the brand’s intended mission to be a gathering place for the community, making the campaigns more appropriate than just a sales pitch for social media.

“It’s one thing to set a goal and say that we’re going to put some promotion into these channels so that we can have viral growth,” Bruzzo said. “But if your motivation is about why those channels exist—for connection and engagement—and if you’re appealing to things that matter, then it takes off.”

The tie-in for the Red Campaign produced what Facebook called 390 million “viral impressions,” meaning any activity from a user joining a group to support the cause or just writing about it on a personal page or in a message to other users. Starbucks hoped to enlist 1 million hours of community service from fans during its “I’m In” Facebook campaign, Bruzzo said, and got 1.25 million hours committed during a five-day period.

The social-media strategies even complemented Starbucks’ traditional ad planning. The company promoted its Election Day coffee giveaway with one national TV spot during “Saturday Night Live” a few days before voters went to the polls.

“You can’t go to market anymore with just a traditional approach or just online media,” Bruzzo said. “You should plan across all channels. Think about how one media might lead to others.”

But for some brands, even ones that made Vitrue’s top 100, a social-media strategy still isn’t easy to formulate. Like the other chains on the list, Wendy’s has more than 100,000 Facebook fans, and it has produced a few videos for YouTube, but senior vice president of communications Denny Lynch admits that Wendy’s has no formal strategy yet.

“Right now, we’re evolving,” Lynch said, adding that Wendy’s is big enough to get lots of people talking about it, even without an active effort in social media.

Yet Wendy’s took a leap forward March 25 by launching its “99-cent Bid for Value” online auction, meant to promote its three 99-cent sandwiches. In the reverse auctions that ran for two weeks, Wendy’s let customers “bid” on items by answering a trivia question, which lowered the price of the item by 1 cent until, several thousand bids later, the winning customer got to own the prize for 99 cents.

Wendy’s auctioned off things like an electric guitar, autographed sports memorabilia and even a custom tattoo. The contest was advertised only through social networks, Lynch said, and participants received updates about certain items via Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

“The sky’s the limit as far as this can go,” he said. “Is this a viable way to engage the bloggers and the social networks? Is this something they will think is cool? They’ll tell us whether or not it is. But it is certainly not a toe in the water. We dove in, and we’re going to measure [its effectiveness].”