We approached the challenge in a very down to earth way by asking the question: how could we befriend our customers? The answer was simple: ask them their name and buy them a cup of coffee. This led us to adopt the idea of writing names on Starbucks cups as a personal touch alongside the unprecedented and generous offer of a free latte for every customer for one morning only.

The promotion drove 330,000 people in store on the morning – equating to up to 2,000 lattes every minute. That’s 551 per store (above the 500 target). Transactions were up 168% on the morning from 240 the previous year to 643. Over 100,000 more lattes were sold in the week following the promotion. Over 140,000 people were repeat visitors in the 2 weeks after launch with redemption rates as high as 23%. Latte and cappuccino sales were up 9% in the quarter vs the previous year. The promotion helped generate over 150,000 additional Facebook fans and quadrupled our Twitter following.