Starbucks is getting burned over the all-to-successful viral coupon campaign. Who would have imagined a class-action suit over Frappuccinos! But in today’s media-saturated world, nothing a company does should discount the possibility of how consumers could trump an marketing or PR move. As a now regular listener to ‘FIR’, the Hobson and Holtz Report, I have come to appreciate their point of view on how communications encompasses –permeates, actually– everything companies do, and many of them are unprepared for this. All companies, whether they like it or not, whether they are prepared for it or not, are in the media business, they say.

Starbucks may never have realized –so soon after the ‘Agency.com kerfluffle’– the potential or the dangers when treading a viral path. As many have observed, some companies would kill for this kind of offtake, where your coupon becomes so widely distributed. But they discontinued it, because it had been ‘redistributed beyond the original intent.’ 

We’ve all had coupons passed along to us by colleagues and friends that would qualify as being redistributed beyond original intent. So this kinda excuse is meaningless, in the face of an event that tarnishes all the other good work Starbucks has done by sheer word of mouth.