This week, Target and Starbucks moved to revolutionize the art of picking up groceries by partnering to bring consumers a coffee curbside, and made big waves doing it — with some of the attention coming from unexpected places.
The retailer announced on February 23rd that it would be testing an expansion of its Starbucks offering to include coffee delivery during pick-ups, and the news has quietly made big waves, particularly among moms who shop at the store.
Since the announcement, there have been almost 300 articles written about the move, but those have combined for an overall engagement of nearly 80k across the reporting, which is expected to grow as media interest rises once again.
Motherly appeals to Target moms
The top story on the partnership came from CNN, and had more than half of the 78k engagements, and the Facebook post that drove the engagement for the publisher was full of Love and Wow emojis, receiving positive attention from the audience.
And while it saw less engagement, perhaps just as notable was the attention the story got from Motherly, a publication that serves a key demographic for the store — American moms.
The publication explicitly called out the demographic in its headline “Calling all Target moms—you’ll be able to get curbside Starbucks soon!” and its Facebook post on the matter framed it as yet another reason to go to Target.
Much like the CNN post, the engagement was almost all positive, with some users talking about single-handedly keeping the company in business with the amount of times they would use the service.
Engagement in unexpected places
While the announcement clearly made waves on the web and Facebook, some engagement came from unexpected places too. As we said, there were tens of thousands of engagements to the web coverage of the planned expansion, but Instagram also drove significant attention, and not from traditional news outlets either.
Rather, the account ‘targetdoesitagain’ posted a photo and a long caption about Starbucks deliveries to Target customers, and asked its followers what they thought of the move.
Once again, the comments were filled with people saying that this would make life much easier for moms, and that they were massively looking forward to the change.
Brewing backlash
While the move did get mostly positive attention, particularly from consumers, it wasn’t all positive. There was some backlash on Twitter to the Target News account’s post making the announcement in particular. Many Twitter users responded to the news by saying the planned partnership would make life more difficult for drive-up employees and baristas.
Neither Starbucks nor Target have posted much about this planned change on their owned accounts beyond the announcement by Target News.
Whether the new offering is implemented seamlessly — or even if it will be a permanent change — remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that the announcement has made waves across digital and social media, with moms in particular excited about its potential impact.
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