As I’m sure my fellow coffee addicts and friends will attest, Starbucks has entered an interesting new area with the support of their first movie, “akeelah and the bee“.  For the last month or so, every Starbucks I’ve been to has been littered with paraphernalia related to the movie.  

This is an interesting move for Starbucks.  The way I understand it, Starbucks is actually taking a percentage of the box office in return for marketing the movie in their retail stores nationwide.  Starbucks has long been working on becoming the ‘third place’ in peoples’ lives, and now they are going to attempt to use that influence to generate profits for themselves at the box office.  

I must say, I’m impressed with Starbuck management on this one.  They are taking it upon themselves to generate returns for a movie that otherwise might have flown under the radar and gone unnoticed.  This is a nice example of how I think advertising partnerships should work – a big guy getting on the bandwagon of a little guy and promoting the little guy to the profit of both.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the rest of the world always worked that way?