Coffee Cup Sleeve Ad

Traditional advertising channels are slipping as market share gets diluted to the now 40+ channels that marketers have to choose from. The classic three of radio, TV, and print can still have some unique applications.

Take for examples these coffee cup sleeves spotted at Imperio coffee in Columbus, Ohio. Promoting WOW Cable, the real estate that is usually occupied by a brand logo is replaced with a full color promotion for WOW's cable, phone, and internet service.

Is this effective? It's a difficult campaign to measure. This particular ad did not have a QR code, mobile page, or campaign specific URL. Without one of those three pieces, the sleeves are no different than a print ad, billboard, or bus sign. It's more effective if the ads are targeted. The challenge of targeting directly conflicts with the economics of printing.

Is it worth it for the coffee shop? Depends on the coffee shop. Small businesses need to save money and you could expect that the ad pays for all or a portion of the coffee sleeve and the coffee shop gets the discount in exchange for the service.

Who would do this? This marketin channel is for small, neighborhood coffee shops only. Why wouldn't Starbucks do this? 1.) they don't have to. 2.) they would not sacrifice the brand image to save a few pennies 3.) Customers would distain the change from their symbol of affluence that turns them into walking billboards. And 4.) They couldn't afford it.

That may be a slight exaggeration since Starbucks could surely afford to spend more on their sleeves, but they would lose the economies of scale that their operation has and their buying power would be diminished. Big brands buy in bulk and the high volume prints for paper and packaging are static, repeated images.

There is a startup in Columbus working on this exact challenge. How to provide measurable, localized, small runs for independent coffee shops. They also have a mission to donate a cup of water for every coffee sleeve.

Check them out at coveredcoffee.com