Have you ever been to Starbucks in oversea, you order a latte.. When the barista asking you, ” What’s your name?” and you tell them, “Karen”, the simplest name on earth and yet they screw it up. When your drink is ready, the barista call your name, ” Carrot, your drink is ready!”
Oh what? Carrot ?? not only carrot .. oh well .. Karen. They mishear you probably but then i realised they got a lot of names that spelled wrongly, Bob ordered a mocha and he was called ” Boob” when his mocha was ready. You might thought what’s wrong with these barista, why can’t they spelled even a simple names correctly, well! there is a reason behind.
Since 2012, barista in Starbucks starting to get names from their customer trying to get things a little impersonal, brand royalty and retaining customers. However, 8 out of 10 times, you name was spelled wrongly.
There is even a Facebook page, named ” When Starbucks Gets Your Name Wrong”, some was really funny!
One of the store assistant manager told cosmopolitan, the barista purposely spell names ridiculously wrong. But most of the customer walked into the shop had a good laugh and most of the Starbucks employees using it as a marketing tool.
Most people aren’t going to post a photo to social media of a cup of coffee with their name spelled correctly. But when the names spelled wrongly and it’s funny, most likely these people will be posting on their social media. It’s a kind of viral marketing where they use it as a way to promote the business.
Viral Marketing is that which is able to generate interest and the potential sale of a brand or product through messages that spread like a virus, in other words, quickly, and from person to person. The idea is for it to be the users themselves that choose to share the content.
Due to their speed and ease to share, social networks are the natural habitat of this kind of marketing. The most widespread example in recent times is the creation of emotional, surprising, funny or unique post/content that shared on Facebook, IG, Twitter and other channels.
Smart move indeed!