Christmas 2014, the market's first
The promotional planner for the first Christmas in Colombia: key dates, the Siren's Eye store standards and the marketing initiatives by week, from red cups to gift cards, for every store open by December.
Starbucks Colombia · Marketing Leader · Feb 2014 to Feb 2015 · Bogotá
Bringing Colombian coffee home.
The neighborhood assessment belongs before the lease, not after the opening.
At a glance
0
store openings in seven months, including the first flagship
0%
of sales targets
Sales vs budget, 11 stores, first seven months
32% → 38%
Food and Merchandise share of sales
Combined Food and Merchandise share of total sales
- Owned the department P&L; quarterly results to Alsea and Starbucks C-level
- Green Apron Award, Starbucks México
Context
In 2014 Starbucks entered Colombia through Alsea, its Latin American operator. Colombia was a symbolic market: the company had bought Colombian coffee for over forty years, and every cup sold in the country would be 100% Colombian. The first store opened at Parque 93 in July 2014.
Challenge
Open eleven stores in seven months in a market with a strong local coffee culture, a skeptical press and no brand history on the ground. Each store had a different neighborhood, a different customer and a different budget.
What we did
Market entry, store by store.
Every location got its own trade-area and penetration strategy: consumer research, catchment analysis, competitive mapping and a launch plan tied to that store's budget. Openings ran on a countdown from week -24 to week +16.
The opening campaign.
Three pieces localized and deployed across the launch: the New Store Core campaign, "Proudly 100% Colombian Coffee" and "A cup of coffee is a team work", built on photography of Colombian farms and the hands that pick the coffee. Then the seasonal calendar: Spring 2014, the market's first Christmas, and Cappuccino Love and Macchiato developed and left launch-ready.
Food, merchandise and the store.
The Food category end to end, from assortment to execution, and everything the customer saw: menus, merchandising, signage and opening events.
Press and digital.
Trained by Edelman as brand spokesperson; represented the brand at select opening events and ran press relations with the agency and media behind the scenes, generating $200K in earned coverage. Digital and social strategy built from zero, reaching 32% engagement across brand channels.
Opening campaign · 2014
The campaign calendar · 2014
One market, twelve months of campaigns.
The opening was one campaign among many. In twelve months the market got a social launch built from zero, its first Christmas, two beverage platforms and a store-opening journey that every new store reused.
Jul 9
Coming soon
Jul 11
The menu
Jul 17
We are open
Jul 22
100% Colombian
Jul 24
Friends
Jul 29
Espresso
Jul 31
In the press
Social launch · July 2014 · brand channels built from zero, 32% engagement
Cappuccino Love and Macchiato
Two beverage platforms developed for 2015 and left launch-ready: execution workbook, store materials and the digital plan, so the team could run them after my handover.
The store-opening journey
The customer journey for every new store: back-of-bar posters, the welcome banner, lobby and window pieces, all localized from the global Market Opening Campaign and adapted to each location's budget.
What I learned
The second store taught me more than the first. It opened three weeks after Parque 93 in an office district and by week seven was running below budget: the building meant to feed it was a quarter occupied, and most of the foot traffic outside was not our customer. The team recovered with a local marketing plan built in two weeks, thirty traffic generators visited, coffee cuppings outside the store, coupon codes tracked at the register to see which neighbors actually came.
Marketing needs a seat at site selection. That lesson became the first chapter of the store-opening playbook I still use.
Marketing needs a seat at site selection.