Reaching Starbucks customers in lockdown with anonymised mobile data

Client: Starbucks

In September 2020, Starbucks set a commercial aim to return to pre-covid sales by March 2021. Pumpkin Spice Latte season was fast approaching, and the business chose this seasonal moment to achieve short-term commercial success to kick-start the longer term objective.

With the UK entering a second lockdown, in-store and out-of-home campaigns were no longer effective in reaching customers. Starbucks briefed media agency partner, Havas, and programmatic partner, MiQ, to identify their ‘at home’ audience and execute an effective audience buying strategy. The big idea hinged on new-to-market anonymised mobile data. MiQ’s team of data analysts ingested the mobile data with Starbucks store postcode data, and layered on MiQ’s existing datasets to build high converting audience segments. Identifying who Starbucks’ new and potential customers were and where they were located was a game-changer. MiQ secured positive uplift across all brand campaign metrics measured. And Starbucks reported a 62% over delivery on Pumpkin Spice Latte sales versus business targets during the campaign period. “Achieving uplift for a global brand that's already so well-known is difficult; to achieve positive results across all the metrics was a significant win for Starbucks thanks to the sophistication of MiQ’s audience buying and activation." Alex Boniface, Client Partner, Havas Media Group London