Design Mimic Starbucks Promotes Service with Pledge5

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-01-22 08:44:00 UTC
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As part of this week's celebration of MLK Jr. Day and Barack Obama's inauguration and President Obama's national call to service, Starbucks launched the Pledge5 campaign. Basically, the idea is to get Americans to commit to five hours of service as part of a collective campaign. Anyone who does between now and January 25th also gets a free cup of coffee.

So far 602,000 hours have been pledged. Although things like these "days of service" can feel pretty gimmicky, I actually like them when they're done well. It's not about "doing your good deed" and moving on, its about moments of collective action that signify a more sustained commitment.

One of the most interesting things about the campaign to me is the video they're using to promote it. I wrote before about how Starbucks seemed to pretty self-conciously be plucking design excellence from the Girl Effect video that went viral last year. Well, this time around, they tapped MC Yogi to create something that mirrored a popular campaign video he created last year.

Check out Starbucks video:

Now watch MC Yogi's "Obama '08 - Vote for Hope" video released during the campaign:

This tells me a few things. One, its clear that Starbucks has an eye for good design and powerful multimedia. Two, I think its interesting and smart that the video they're using to promote Pledge5 is not at all about Starbucks. From Starbucks' side, their goal needs to be (and obviously is) to continue to be the coffee shop of choice for the socially conscious consumer. The free coffee is not the bargain, its just a bonus. Check out our Fair Trade blog to see whether we should buy it.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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