With neigborhood Starbucks stores serving as caffeinated town-squares, it just makes sense that entertainment companies are turning to the ubiquitous coffee houses as marketing partners. The LA Times’ Sharon Waxman has this piece today about the coffee giant’s deal awith the William Morris Agency to find movie and book projects to market. Moreover, Starbucks’ small entertainment group is moving from the company’s Seattle headquarters to Santa Monica to get closer to the movie biz action.
Starbucks has already had great success in helping to promote music in its outlets (some would say too much success given the not-low-volume hawking of music in most Starbucks outlets). The chain also recently promoted a Lionsgate movie called “Akeelah and the Bee,” which opened eighth last weekend despite Starbucks involvement. (However, that’s not stopping the studios from jumping on a good thing when they see it.)
While Starbucks’ new-found Hollywood-ways will no doubt make its stores slightly less…well, comforting, at least the company claims it will promote only high-quality fare.
“We’re looking for quality, and substance,” he [Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz] said. “We want to see our name associated with the kind of music, literature and movies that people will say, ‘I’m glad Starbucks brought this to the marketplace.’ ” He gave “Crash” as an example of the kind of movie that Starbucks might promote. The film, which was about racial tension and also was from Lionsgate, was a sleeper hit at the box office and went on to win an Oscar for best picture this year.
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:38 PM|Comments(0)
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