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Welcome back to Digital Gravity 🪐
This week, Maddie explains why the best part of Starbucks’ latest campaign happened in the comments.
Enjoy 👇
Martha Stewart Has Entered the Chat ☕️
Starbucks brought Martha Stewart and Belmont Cameli together for the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte.
Because apparently the PSL needed a male lead.
I must admit, I never could have guessed that Miss Martha and Belmont from the smutty hockey show would end up in an ad together.
But I love it.
The ad is cute. Martha gets her drink. Belmont walks in with an iced PSL. She asks if she’s supposed to know him.
Nothing too crazy. Just another Starbucks celebrity campaign.
Then Martha went into the comments.
And honestly? She understood the assignment.
She revealed that she had actually filmed her scenes with a stand-in for Belmont and then commented:
“This guy is cuter!!!!”
Martha.
That feels like something you say to your friend. Not something you say under your own Starbucks ad.
But she said it anyway, and you gotta respect her for it.
The woman who taught us how to fold a fitted sheet just publicly reviewed the recast of her own commercial.
Naturally, people lost it.
And suddenly, the comments became part of the campaign.
Which is kind of the whole point.
Because the best part of social marketing is often the part nobody can fully plan. Brands are increasingly treating the comments section as part of the actual strategy, using it to build relationships, test ideas, and keep conversations going.
You can have the celebrity. You can have the production budget. You can have the perfectly focus-tested tagline.
But then Martha Stewart logs onto Instagram and decides to provide casting notes in public.
And somehow, that’s the part everyone remembers.
There’s a pretty good lesson hiding in all of this.
Your comments are not the waiting room.
Too many of us post something on LinkedIn, say “Thoughts?” and then disappear.
Meanwhile, the comments are where the interesting stuff is happening.
Someone asks the question your next post should answer.
Someone disagrees with your take.
Someone tells a story that is 10x more interesting than the original post.
Someone drops a completely unhinged analogy that somehow explains your product better than your entire sales deck.
That is the content.
B2B marketers will spend an insane amount of time trying to sound human.
Maybe start by actually talking to humans.
The post is the opener. The comments are where the conversation happens.
And sometimes, the thing that makes people remember the campaign is something you never planned to write in the first place.
Martha, if you and Belmont are chatting, or you happen to run into any of his equally handsome costars, please put in a good word for me.
Otherwise, I’ll be on Etsy looking for a witch who specializes in getting people cast in Starbucks commercials.
—Maddie
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