Cheers to Starbucks

For the holiday season, Starbucks is spreading good cheer and carrying out a viral marketing campaign at the same time. According to Womnibus Weekly #2.13, they are giving out small gifts to customers, such as a bus pass, movie pass and only asking that in return, the recipient do a good deed for someone. When the good deed is done, the person on the receiving end gets a “cheer pass” which is numbered. They are encouraged to go to Starbucks’ “It’s Red Again” website and write about the good deed they received or a holiday tradition.

Starbucks says that this is a campaign to show appreciation to their customers, and "to inspire customers to pass along the holiday tradition of kindness." Around a half million “cheer passes” are being given out. This definitely seems like a good way to create buzz and positive attitudes toward Starbucks. It will be interesting to see if “cheer pass” recipients actually post on the site enabling the “good cheer” and success of the marketing campaign to be tracked.

In any event, doing a good deed for someone and spreading holiday cheer, can never be encouraged too much or carried out too often - - any time of the year!

Cassie

[audio:cassie2.5.mp3 | titles=Cassie |artists=music2work2]

It’s been about a week since I last wrote anything here. It was a week of pain, grief, doubt, and loss.

My dear, sweet dog Cassie, who had been a constant companion and friend for 13 years, lost her life last Friday. Cassie had been a stray who had lost a hind leg due to its being caught in a trap. Having gotten her leg free herself, she wandered the streets with this mangled and I’m sure extremely painful leg for a week or so, until she was hit by a car. The first time I saw her, someone who worked at the vet’s office where I took the dog I had at that time, had found her after she was hit by the car and took her to the veterinarian’s office where they were about to remove her mangled leg and do surgery to repair the damage from the automobile. She looked me straight in the eyes and stole a piece of my heart.

The fact that she only had three legs didn’t slow her down for much of her life; she loved to run and play and chase squirrels. She was primarily a Norwegian Elkhound, and not a lap dog but she didn’t know that. She was a big baby, loving attention and, admittedly, had me trained well. She was my protector and faithful friend.

In spite of all the trauma and pain she had been through in her life, she was sweet and loving. Hip dysplasia from having only the one hind leg had been a problem for several years, but recently her mobility had become decreased and the pain increased. It became too severe for her to continue to endure last week.

The music session, Cassie, was written especially for her by my dear friend and partner in music2work2; it is a perfect representation of the life she lived. The slow, somber section is appropriate to the pain she endured, and the grief of losing her long before I was ready to let her go.

However, further into the piece, the image evoked is of her running, playing, sort of bouncing along on those three legs. People often didn’t realize she was even missing the fourth leg, and when she was younger, it was as if she didn’t either.

My heart is still breaking from the loss of my dear Cassie. But, this lovely musical tribute to her helps ease the pain and grief I feel by helping me to remember her as the funny, fun-loving, playful, sweet, and loving companion and friend she was. I was blessed by having had her in my life.

Thank you, Andrew, for this beautiful, healing music.

The Use of Podcasts

Word of Mouth Marketing Association (Womma) is preparing for its Word of Mouth Summit to be held in Washington, DC next week. One of the papers that will be presented at the Word of Mouth Marketing Research Symposium on December 11, 2006, is Podcasts: Driving Word of Mouth.

According to this paper, to be presented by Dave Evans, VP of Social Media for Digital Voodoo and founder of HearThis.com, prior to a previous conference, WOMMAs Word of Mouth Basic Training (WOMBAT) Conference, traffic to the site increased from the time of the first podcast release up to the beginning of the conference.

My partner in music2work2 and I were discussing new plans for the website and marketing today. One of the many items in the plans are podcasts. It is reassuring to hear that others have found podcasts to be such an important part of marketing for their businesses. I am really anxious for us to be able to start making some of the changes, adding new music and new features. It's going to be terrific!