Caribou Coffee | Brand Experience Strategy

Situation

You may know that Caribou Coffee was founded by a husband and wife—two high-powered business execs—who went on an awe-inspiring Alaskan vacation and thought to themselves there must be more to life than this. My team helped them codify their brand purpose as “Life is Short. Stay Awake for it,” and I was responsible for bringing that purpose to life across touchpoints.

My Role

As the digital strategy lead on Caribou Coffee I delivered strategy and guidance for all digital channels (website, email, social, etc.) and helped connect the dots between retail and digital experiences so that ever interaction with Caribou felt consistent and authentic to the brand.

Project Highlights

Real Inspiration Blend | A coffee inspired by fans on Pinterest

Situation

In a heated race against commoditization (and Starbucks), Caribou needed to create interest in what is often a sleepy event: the launch of a new coffee roast.

Crowdsourcing a New Coffee Blend

This project outlines how my team used the power of Pinterest, a relatively new social platform at the time, to create a groundswell of social participation that manifested in a massive in-real-life activation for a product launch that might have otherwise been a just another coffee blend on the shelf.

Inviting Caribou Fans to Inspire the Roastmasters

We used social media as an R&D input that helped Caribou create a consumer co-authored, co-created coffee brew. As the digital strategy lead I put together a social plan that encouaged Caribou fans to pin images using #InspireCaribou that could be used by roastmasters to develop a new blend, aptly named the Real Inspiration Blend.

Launching the Blend with the Worlds Largest Pinterest Board

Once roastmasters were inspired and the new blend was ready to be launched we went big and built world’s largest living Pinterest board at the Mall of America. During the week long activation shoppers sampled the coffee and were encouraged to snap a photo and share on social with #InspireCaribou to be featured within the live pins on the board.

Results

We set out to launch a new coffee blend in a big way and we succeeded.

  • 24 million impressions

  • Case study was featured as a success story on Pinterest for Business

  • 7% increase in sales