The Starbucks cup "controversy" is advertising, both sides of the controversy are created by Starbucks ( conspiracy )

submitted by magnora

These people who are mad at Starbucks were mostly hired by Starbucks to publicly "attack" them, which fits in nicely to the "war on Christmas" narrative. People are attracted to the controversy and Starbucks gets tons of exposure.

It's similar to native advertising. Native advertising focuses on buying upvotes and planting comments and upvotes to make certain narratives look popular, which is frequent on reddit. But because people are naturally attracted to controversy, the story gets repeated everywhere, so they don't even have to buy upvotes. It's like sex, it sells. People are naturally drawn to it through some primal instincts, and they use that knowledge to draw people's attention to their product. The Starbucks "controversy" is on reddit, it's on facebook, people I know mentioned it in person.

The controversy is the commodity they use to attract viewers, but the controversy is largely falsely generated by Starbucks to attract attention. Most of the people being outraged come after the original falsified outrage paid for by starbucks has been aired on fox news or whatever. They hire a company to find these vocal christian loons and stir them up about this particular story and then give them an audience by allowing them to speak on tv about this particular issue. This fuels the controversy which drives views. It makes it look like there's a bunch of people who are seriously outraged about this thing, even though there might only be 5 in total and they're being handed microphones and given interviews left and right.

Most importantly, this type of "advertising through controversy" generates organic views (and organic community-driven upvotes and comments) from places like reddit who are amazed that the controversy exists in the first place and upvote it to mock those people fighting starbucks (who don't really exist in any large numbers in the first place). So "everyone" is laughing at "everyone" being pissed at a company, and meanwhile everyone is repeating "Starbucks" over and over and talking about their cup designs. It's advertising. People need to get real.

There are so many distracted ignorant people who are wasting so much time on simulated controversy and it's one big reason why our culture, society, and government are crumbling. They think they are looking at something that matters, but is in actuality completely unimportant. This is the circus of the modern day. These "organic" controversies, that are, in reality, largely advertising and distractions. You see this pattern everywhere once you start looking for it.

magnora

No there isn't, fuck off with your victimhood bullshit

Simpleusername

The limp wristed effete liberal consumer slave loves to feed money to phony controversy.

un1ty

Playing both sides is a time tested technique to make lots of money off the gullible consumers willing to fight for or against each side and in doing so, giving up hard earned valuables.

anustart2015

Great, I had no idea about this so I'm glad I can continue not caring. Goodbye.

Umrtvovacz

This is why I am subbed to v/conspiracy . Thanks.

TropicalJupiter

This is probably advertising. I hadn't heard of this either. Fuck the burn bean bistroMcStarbucks. Coffee tastes like dirt and isn't worth a fucking dime.

magnora

It's like 99% certain it is fact, given the history of their advertising campaigns and the way this has played out throughout the media. 99% is enough to state it clearly without adding qualifiers.

magnora

You mean the cup "controversy" was created by this guy? Did you see him on some talk show before this all started or something?

magnora

The "controversy" is that they took some symbols that were Christmas-y off their cups and people are making it out like it's more of the "war on christmas" PC obliteration of culture kind of crap. But it's just a manufactured controversy by a company trying to save money on advertising.

magnora

It's a very cost-effective form of advertising. They've done it before, just a couple years ago. This type of controversy probably saves them tons of money in advertising costs. They'd be dumb not to do it.

There's absolutely zero reason to assume the outrage originated organically. I bet the first mention of this whole thing was on Fox News or something like that, which has plenty of well-known corporate ties.

magnora

Good. You're doing it right.

magnora

It is easy to recognize for starbucks, but do you realize this also applies to almost everything in American media, from presidential candidates to wars in the middle east? All this manufactured controversy is a way for the "elite" to control the plebs and guide them in to doing what they want. This is just an example of one company's successful usage of that tactic.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

-- H. L. Mencken

TheDude2

Starbucks is just a piece of shit company selling fat drinks.

voiceofflawedlogic

If it weren't for this controversy, I wouldn't know what a starbucks was! /s

Seriously, do you think starbucks needs to advertise? The addicts who need their $14 coffee three times a day don't need to be reminded of starbucks.

magnora

Yes I do. Coke-cola spent 7% of their budget, $3.37 Billion, on advertising in 2014 alone. They're clearly a well known brand, yet they keep spending. Advertising is how a company maintains relevancy, which is how they maintain sales.

greiierg

Well it appears Starbucks has discovered how to get attention. Remember the "racetogether" campaign that failed miserably back in March?

gosso920

"There's no such thing as bad publicity."

Spry

I was just listening to this on talk radio today. Thank you so much for putting this into perspective.

I'm having a hard time discerning reality.

magnora

Me too, I feel like reality doesn't make sense anymore in a lot of ways. I'm tired of the media manipulating everyone, but I'm even more tired of everyone buying in to it, which is why I wrote this post.

umatbro

Sometimes I think reality is scripted...

I feel like reality doesn't make sense anymore in a lot of ways.

...And Vince Russo is writing reality.

AlphaWookie

OP you are wrong it is much more simple. The CEO is a jew he does not like Christmas and pushed that dumb ass race relation cup thing after Ferguson and the Baltimore riots. He is just a partisan hack injecting ideology into the business.

KentBrockman

And how do we know this post isn't paid for by Starbucks?

magnora

because why would they give away their secret advertising technique, then it wouldn't work anymore

gosso920

Voat. Such meta. Wow.

entropyosaurus

I'd go so far as to wonder if any of the "vocal christian loons" at any time during a campaign like this are real. Usually they're only described by media as existing, eg, "people are outraged by x decision."

magnora

Certainly there are some small number of them, but they might be being paid to be outraged as well. It could literally be 5 people in total that were initially vocal about hating the cups

entropyosaurus

Ya probably, but I'd bet PR companies have at their disposal programs like Persona Management which easily allows one operator to manage many user accounts -- i bet reddit is filled with them as it's a major "sounding board" for public opinion. Not sure if Starbucks would go this route, but I could see Fox News doing so.

Empire_of_the_mind

You are correct. They've used this technique several times in the past.

Phivex

Source?

Empire_of_the_mind

dude, this sort of thing is not in a fucking magazine article or a PLOS journal. You have to learn to think for yourself sometimes. Or study advertising a bit.

Phivex

I'm confused as to why you're coming across aggressive. I was simply asking for a source for your allegation. If anyone is going to say something, they should have the means to back it up, otherwise every allegation is a rumor with no evidence to support it. I prefer to make my decisions based on facts than rumors.

Empire_of_the_mind

are you autistic? it's socially awkward to aggressively doubt people. this is not a grandiose claim by any means, and it's clearly not the sort of thing that comes with a "source." It's the kind of thing you have to apply knowledge to information to understand. there may well be some trade rag in the advertising industry talking about Starbuck's successful use of this technique, but I'm not really in the mood to go hunting it down. It's rather self-evident. Any aggressiveness is an equal response to someone essentially asking for a source on "water is wet."

If you had said something like "Hey, this sounds outlandish and unreal, do you have any more information about this or are you just making shit up?" then i'd be more inclined to follow-up. "Source?" is an entitled response - I'm not a robot and I don't owe you shit. Believe it or not, or go research to find more info. That's how the world fucking works. You're welcome.

More seriously, this kind of shit is the forefront of advertising the past decade. The industry uses far more manipulation than the laymen would believe and I recommend learning about it - interesting stuff that helps you better understand your world. I can't recall the term for this particular technique but any one in advertising creative could tell you exactly. Look up "advertising nudging" for a start on what goes on. Check out this link from 1999 that gets into some of this - imagine how far it's gone ( http://www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9911/deadly.persuasion/ )

Phivex

Wow dude. You have some serious anger issues. I bet people hate emailing or texting you.

Just because you infer a specific tone-of-voice to text, doesn't mean it was projected in that way. An entitled response would include no question mark. Because of the fact that mine had one, it implies I'm asking for a source instead of demanding one.

In all actuality, you only had to respond with a link or the last paragraph in your previous comment. Instead, you decided to waste your and my time in this frivolous argument. Thanks for the info and I hope you have a great day. Below are a couple of links that may help

  1. new york
  2. oakland

Empire_of_the_mind

don't be such a pussy, life is hard and soft is no way to go through it. if you think i'm actually angry you're out of your mind.

greiierg

racetogether experiment. http://bit.ly/1Orj3MQ

BRITTEACH

Everything you said about Starbucks advertising strategy is true. It still doesn't change the fact that the company hates the baby Jesus!

gosso920

What Would Jesus Drink?

Sosacms

It was likely expected to cause this shit storm, but there isn't much that can be said or done that won't polarize the country. It doesn't take much effort to cause drama in this drama hungry nation.

magnora

No, it wasn't "likely expected." It was engineered. It was a created controversy. It was not a side effect or some accident, it is the main purpose of the advertising campaign. People are not as dumb as TV makes us think they are, they ham up the drama for idiots to get suckered in