By Miranda Fitzgerald, marketingmagazine.co.uk, 09 March 2009, 1:00pm

Costa Coffee campaign targets rival Starbucks

LONDON - Costa Coffee has launched its first national marketing campaign, which aggressively targets rivals coffee chain Starbucks.

The ads, created by Karmarama, claim ‘7 out of 10 coffee lovers prefer Costa'. One execution carries the line: ‘Sorry Starbucks, The People Have Voted'.

The £1.5m campaign runs across national press, online, regional outdoor and radio as well as in stores.

It is based on independent research by Tangible Branding, which carried out blind taste tests and found that seven out of ten coffee drinkers preferred Costa Coffee's cappuccinos to those of its leading competitors.

Costa appointed former Phones4U marketing director Jim Slater as its marketing director last November. He took over from David Hutchinson, who is now heading up the marketing team for the Chez Gerard restaurant chain.

Slater said that his main marketing objectives were to communicate the superiority of the company's product offering and increase customer loyalty.

The company is trialling a digital loyalty card in Scotland, on which consumers can earn rewards and store money.

Costa appears to be weathering the recession better than Starbucks. It reported a 2% increase in like-for-like sales and a 22% jump in sales for 2008, while Starbucks announced last month that it will close 300 stores worldwide following a 9% drop in sales in the last quarter.

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All Comments

David Moritz - 12 March 2009

Although in independent taste tests Costa Coffee may well beat that of Starbuck's, the approach Costa are using is no different to what Burger King have been doing to McDonald's for the past fifteen years, in particular the 1997 US French Fries campaign BK launched - "the taste that beat McDonald's fries", which mirrored the ongoing Coca-Cola/Pepsi debate stating that Pepsi is the preferred choice in blind taste tests.

Costa's strap line, 'Sorry Starbucks, The People Have Voted', is surely just another example of the underdog trying to outdo the champion? As with Burger King and Pepsi, Costa's wow factor is considerably lower than Starbucks, who ranked 85th in the 2008 Interbrand best global brands. In terms brand perception, why have BMW when you can have Rolls Royce, even if BMW if faster?