Commentary

"All You Need is Love"... and a Video Camera to Raise Money to Fight AIDS in Africa

  • by , Staff Writer, January 11, 2010

Digital agencies are now producing work that traditional agencies handle, so it's only natural that traditional agencies are beefing up their digital résumé.

Starbucks launched a worldwide sing-along Dec. 7 to promote its one-year anniversary in partnership with (RED). Singers from multiple countries, languages and time zones sang "All You Need Is Love." The live event was streamed online to a location in London that housed every location's performance.

Artists played traditional instruments representative of their respective countries and the live event set a Guinness World Record for "Most Nations in an Online Sing-Along." Some 124 countries participated in the Starbucks love project, conceived and executed by BBDO. Apparently, anyone can set a Guinness World Record. What's next? Most People To Order Peppermint Latte?

Online, visitors can replay the global event and upload a video of them singing "All You Need Is Love" using their video camera or instantly record themselves singing via Webcam and background music. I'm waiting for celebrity bad boys to record "All You Need Is A Good Lawyer And a Canny Publicist."

For every video that is submitted, Starbucks will donate 5 cents to the Global Fund to help fight AIDS in Africa. (There's a cap at 1 million submissions.) For a corporation as large as Starbucks, this equates to a hefty digital initiative with a seemingly minimal charitable payout. Am I wrong here?

"The holiday season was the perfect time to reinforce how Starbucks brings people together to celebrate shared experiences," said Linda Honan, creative director, BBDO New York. "So we wanted to come up with a holiday idea that could do that. A natural way in was through music. This program demonstrates the collective impact that Starbucks and its customers can have globally."

The traditional agency has created digital work for other Starbucks' campaigns, but this was their largest digital work to date for the brand.
1 comment about ""All You Need is Love"... and a Video Camera to Raise Money to Fight AIDS in Africa".
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  1. Robert Sawyer, January 11, 2010 at 5:29 p.m.

    Starbuck's effort is as sentimental as it is repulsive. The fact that Starbuck's management may feel warm and fuzzy at the first bars of this Beatles' anthem hardly warrants such a global efforts. Are they going to give friendly natives Starbucks' tee-shirts, too?

    This is an example of content without any sense or respect to the hard-issues at the core of the problems that Starbucks and other marketers exploit in their desperate reach for relevance.

    It may make the comfortable folks at Starbucks and BBDO feel really good—updating Coca-Cola's old tried-and-true act, but if a rehash of old media passes for new media, then it appears BBDO doesn't understand that it's not the technology it's the idea at work.

    In closing, yes Ms. Corr, Starbucks is hardly being charitable, but we both know that isn't the point. It was/is a sad bit of work, in which everyone involved is exploited. And, the really terrible thing, I don't think it will move the dial at all for the brand.

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About the Author

Amy Corr is managing editor, online newsletters for MediaPost. She can be reached at amyc@mediapost.com.