The Curious Case Of The Starbucks Cup On Game of Thrones
By: Franklin Ugobude
Tags: Game of Thrones, Branding, Starbucks, Marketing

Monday Morning is really really hectic for me for a lot of reasons. First, I’m fresh from the short weekend and then there’s always so much to do on Sunday which leaves me longing for more hours of sleep on Monday. However, the state of my job and the city I live in cannot permit the kind of sleep I want right now. (And that’s okay, or is it)

Anyway, everyone has been on Game of Thrones and it’s no surprise seeing as it’s the last season of the show. I keep imagining what do we do exactly when Game of Thrones has ended but I guess we’ll leave that to when it happens. The show airs on Monday morning by 2 am here in Lagos and in as much as I love the show SO MUCH, I really don’t see myself staying up or even waking up to watch it at that time because of sleep. My best bet really is to avoid the internet until I’ve watched it and then come and tweet my expressions in gifs because really, everyone has said what they had to say.

However, on Monday after Episode 4 aired, I had to do something on the internet for work and logged in to Twitter and everyone was talking about a Starbucks cup. Apparently, a Starbucks cup had made an appearance on the show and fans were losing their minds.

And of course, Starbucks took the opportunity. You’re welcome, Game of Thrones

For a couple of fans who had not been impressed with the writing of this season, it was the perfect opportunity to come at the Game of Thrones team for their poor attention to detail. I, on the other hand, couldn’t believe it wasn’t left there just like that. I refuse to believe that it went through shooting and post-production. But you know, I also believe it could have been an error. So here I am presenting it from two angles and trying to see how it goes.

Image: Verge

Angle A: It Was Intentional.

I’ve never had to work with product placements for movies and motion picture but I know it could be in two sides: very very subtle that sometimes it could really not pass for placement. For example, in Genevieve Nnaji’s ‘Lionheart’ movie, almost every time she ran, she was wearing a Nike trainer. It could easily be that she loves Nikes or you know, she was paid for it. Alternatively, it could be really really obvious like what Funke Akindele did with her Jenifa Diary for Glo, a telecommunications company where she outrightly tells a character why he/she should migrate to Glo or what AY does in his ‘A Trip to Jamaica’ film where he outrightly advertises Peak Milk.

All of this is dependent on the product/brand managers I think who have to make the decision. People don’t like to consume content that is paid for or sponsored because it feels like a bitter leaf and not a lot of people are so attentive to notice the subtle details. So therein lies the problem.

Anyway, I envisage that the Starbucks team needed to get in on the Game of Thrones hype as it is the last season and were willing to pay a huge sum to have their product on the show because really, as far as I know, I’ve never seen product placement on Game of Thrones (or maybe I have and it’s subtle and I have a short attention span). Anyway, if this is so, they could have as well pay a popular twitter influencer to ‘spot’ the cup and start all the conversation that seems organic.

I mean, we may never exactly know if this is what happened but if it did, shout out to the marketing team at Starbucks!

Angle B: It was not supposed to be there.

Welp! I don’t even want to imagine because asides the fact that it is careless, it is such a huge win for Starbucks — paying nothing and jumping on such a big trend. If this is true, then they’d have won #BrandWars seeing as Bud Light, Oreos and a host of other brands had tried to leverage on the show to push products and all. Starbucks will definitely have won because they obviously had the most product mentions. It’ll even be a greater win if they decide to launch an interesting campaign like writing your name in Dorthraki on the cups or even launching some interesting lines after the Game of Thrones character. They can as well name their outlets after Winterfell, Kings Landing, etc and see whatever it is.

The point of it is whatever way it goes, it’s a win for Starbucks and I hope they can leverage on it to the best.