If you need to kick-start your holiday spirit or simply revel in the wonders of the season, www.TheRedCup.com may have just what you crave. For client Starbucks, creatives at Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., developed the site to give the coffee shop’s patrons virtual gifts each day of the season. The effort is part of the “It Only Happens Once a Year” campaign.
With a new entry every weekday, the content ranges from amusing animations to games and helpful tips. For example, on the day after Thanksgiving, when many people go shopping, the site gave suggestions about taking care of your feet. The offerings included a recipe for a rosemary and peppermint footbath, a Eucalyptus salt scrub, a milk and honey foot soak and brown sugar scrub.
“[The creatives] tried to really key into the dates, to look at the calendar and think about what happens when and so it’s not that each day is completely random,” creative director Danielle Flagg related. “They tried to think, leading up to Thanksgiving, ‘What are some of the things that would be fun things to think about like side dishes or table setting.’ “
As we move into December, the references are turning to ice skating and gingerbread houses. The former is presented as an interactive game where a visitor to the site can draw a path on the ice with his mouse and then animated skaters will glide along the route. For the gingerbread house, the site offers printable blueprints for non-traditional structures, like a barn and the Washington Monument, as well as a gingerbread recipe.
“There was really no interest or pressure from Starbucks to turn this into a site that sells [their products], they really wanted it to just be fun,” creative director Jed Alger said.
The site officially launched on November 10 because that’s when Starbucks introduces the red cups in its stores. These take the place of the white cups they offer the rest of the year. Additionally on that date, the client reintroduced its holiday beverages: the Eggnog Latte, Peppermint Mocha and the Gingerbread Latte. “One of the things we’ve learned working on the business is that really hardcore Starbucks fans totally look forward to this time of year because those beverages you can’t get otherwise,” Alger noted.
Though the site isn’t strongly pushing the drinks or merchandise, they do make appearances. One of the games allows a visitor to create an illustration for an insert in a Starbucks Memory Tumbler, a travel mug the company sells in its shops. Another installment about holiday beverages features tips like using a cinnamon stick as a stirrer in cider, tea or coffee. It also includes a recipe for the Starbucks Eggnog Latte that you can make at home by combining eggnog and milk.
“They challenged us to make this more of a gift to their regular customers than an opportunity to market their drinks,” Alger shared. “… It’s still advertising and marketing but they really wanted it to feel like you got something out of it.”
COMING TO LIFE
In addition to the charming still illustrations, the site also has animation in the same style. The clips feature funny holiday moments, like decorating the roof of a house for Christmas. In “Men Decorate,” four guys discuss the proper formation of Santa and his reindeer considering the pitch of the roof and last year’s arrangement. Portland area artist Patrick Long was the illustrator for the campaign. At W+K, art director Aaron Allen and copywriter Sheena Brady handled the animation, print and out-of-home elements while copywriter Margo Stern and art director Sasha Swetschinski created the Web site.
There are also two live action clips included on the site. In the first one “Fear Santa,” a man places his red cup from Starbucks on the roof of a taxi and leaves it there during the ride. As the cab speeds through city streets, and almost runs over a woman who is in its path, the cup magically stays on top of the car. When the man exits the taxi, he sees the cup and looks surprised. As he reaches for it, a man in a Santa outfit grabs it and runs away. An end tag appears: “Fear Santa.”
Last year this site existed on a smaller scale through agency Creature, Seattle. “Fear Santa” appeared on the site at that time and the shop has created another live action piece “Tis the Season” for this year’s site, creative director/principal at Creature Matt Peterson related.
On each page of TheRedCup.com a menu of icons at the bottom of the page allows visitors to access past entries according to type. The symbols, like an ornament and a snowman, denote the categories: “Keep In Touch,” “Good Cheer,” “Friday Feature,” “Holiday 101,” “Fun and Games,” “Stories” and “Food and Drink.” Once Stern and Swetschinski developed the various daily offerings, they devised this system of organization to “categorize things so it doesn’t feel chaotic,” Flagg said.
The site is meant to be more secular in nature though it does touch on the largest holidays of the season: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukah. For the Jewish celebration, the site will include an e-dreidel.
Online, print and outdoor ads as well as word of mouth are driving traffic to the site. Part of the online initiative includes a deal with Evite where people can send holiday invitations with a style similar to that of the Web site.
Additional credit for the holiday campaign at W+K goes to Dan Wieden, executive creative director, and Katie Shields, Web producer. For the animated clips “Airport” (:55), “Men Decorate” (:40) and “Surprise Gift” (:25), Kevin Diller was producer.
The Web production company was The Electric Company, Toronto.
Credit for the animated pieces also goes to LAIKA/house, Portland, and Aaron Sorenson, director, Jan Johnson, executive producers/producer, and Lourri Hammack, executive producer.
For Starbucks, Troy Yung acted as a liaison between the company’s internal Internet department and agency creatives. “Because they have some Web components going on internally over there, we just wanted to be sure to keep them involved in the process,” Flagg commented.
Credit at Creature for “Fear Santa” goes to Jim Haven, creative director/copywriter; the aforementioned Peterson, creative director/art director; Matt Mulvey, copywriter; Travis Britton and Lawrence Melilli, art directors; and Jay Howard, producer. For “Tis the Season” Haven was again creative director/copywriter; Pierre Lipton, copywriter; Peterson was again creative director/art director; Britton, art director; and Aime Graham, produced.
Eric King of Headquarters, Santa Monica, Calif., directed both “Fear Santa” and “Tis the Season” with Darrin Ball producing. For “Tis the Season” Marc Benardout was executive producer. For “Fear Santa” Todd Antonio Smodevilla was DP and Karri McGough was assistant producer. Paul Goldsmith was DP on “Tis the Season.”