BLITZ

Starbucks first approached BLITZ to undertake their Shared Planet initiative and help tell a truly amazing story about their 37 years of environmental stewardship and commitment to the world’s coffee farmers. Before this moment, the Seattle-based coffee giant kept their remarkable story within the Consumer Social Responsibility (CSR) group and did little outreach to the massive Starbucks audience.

The first step was to get into heads of our Starbucks clients to determine what exactly they were doing for the environment and why they would actually care. Our teams both agreed that we would use this online experience to be 100% transparent with Starbucks’ social responsibility goals.

We then realized that their story was too huge to tell in one piece, so a three-phase approach was decided upon: the first was to build awareness, the second was to elicit action, and the third, which launched on Earth Day 2009, was to showcase the bold progress through interactive charts, maps and videos, and a simple "mug pledge" that users could take part in to help extend knowledge and appreciation for commuter cups.

The end result was a successful strategy that spread awareness around the revered barista’s social and environmental efforts. Since the Shared Planet launch, it has gone on to become more than a CSR effort, but a stand-alone brand within Starbucks itself. To date, the Shared Planet initiative has initiated more than 114,000 hours of Starbucks V2V community service and more than 20,000 coffee-swilling fans have enlisted in the "mug pledge."