False alarm! Despite arriving in my inbox today tagged as happening in the United Kingdom, this article was actually from April 13, 2009 in Birmingham, Alabama U.S.A. (the US280 reference should have been a tipoff). Nevertheless, it’s clear that the marketing campaigns continue and my comments following the article are still valid…
Just when you thought the media had developed an immunity to Starbucks’ pay-it-forward viral marketing campaign, a new strain has resurfaced: this time, in the UK.
BIRMINGHAM (UK) – Sharon Dierking was at a Starbucks on U.S. 280, placing an order for a mocha frappucino. When she pulled up to the window, the barista told her the driver in the car ahead of her had paid for her order.
“I was completely dumbfounded,” Dierking said, “but I was thrilled.”
Dierking wanted to return the kindness to another, but her car was last in line. A few days later, she was able to pay it forward at a Starbucks in Inverness.
“It makes you feel good and it brightens your day,” she said.
Random acts of kindness are popping up at Birmingham area coffee shops, as customers are anonymously picking up others’ tabs.
Stacie Elm, a barista at an Alabaster Starbucks, said a line of five cars recently paid it forward. Customers are in a bit of disbelief when they discover their order has been paid for, she said. “Most are like, `You’re kidding.’”
But the shock gives way to generosity as people are compelled to pass along the kind gesture.
Baristas at Starbucks shops in eastern Birmingham, Hoover and Vestavia Hills also reported episodes of paying it forward – actually, backward, since the person in the front car paid for the person’s order in line behind him.
A Starbucks spokeswoman said the Seattle-based company promoted a Cheer Pass program in 2007, designed to remind customers to spread kindness. However, the pay-it-forward phenomenon is “consumer-driven,” she wrote.
And kindness comes in more forms than a cup of coffee. Dierking said she saw the practice once at a grocery store when a stranger paid for groceries that a woman could not afford.
The Pay It Forward Movement was launched in 2000 by Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of the book “Pay It Forward.” The phrase refers to the concept of repaying kindness by doing kind things for other people….
…and here we go again. A mysterious stranger who practices gestures of prepaid beverage benevolence only at Starbucks stores mysteriously predicts the value of the next customer’s order and adds it to his or her bill. The recipient of this “random” act of grande kindness is so pleased that he or she immediately drafts a press release and contacts the local media to discuss how wonderful Starbucks customers must be.
Come and experience human decency — only available at Starbucks while supplies last. Offer not valid where prohibited by law.
Even advocates of the phenomenon admit that the proliferation of pay-it-forward events at Starbucks locations (why not your local gas station, grocery store or non-Starbucks coffee shop?) is unusual, but are quick to counter: “even if it is a marketing program, what’s so bad with a company giving people a little joy?”
Critics, including myself, feel that any commercially fabricated outpouring of humanity for the sole purpose of gaining media attention and subsequently selling more beverages is both irresponsible and unethical. Engineered campaigns that blur the line between reality and corporate advertising message damage all of our abilities to distinguish between genuine and fabricated experiences, risking our further sensory withdrawal from daily life.
How often does one take notice of the daily inundation of radio, television and billboard advertisements anymore? What would happen if the same suspiciousness and resistance that we have developed to, for example, spam email, was now also applied to every personal interaction or emotion?
I, for one, don’t want to be in the position of someday questioning whether the kind “Good morning” and smile of each stranger jogging by is a genuine friendly gesture or somehow tied to a marketing promotion for a new product launch.
2 responses so far ↓
1 tinysbrother // Jul 31, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I doubt that it is guesswork about how much the bill will be. The driver of the car behind has probably placed the order using a microphone and the benevolent driver simply asks the clerk how much it will cost. I like it. I think it gives us a better feeling about the direction of civility.
2 Tarvis // Oct 20, 2009 at 5:34 pm
This happened to my wife today (in Austin, TX, USA). That is, she was told by a glowing cashier that it was a pay-it-forward day and her coffee was paid for and would she like to pay for the person behind her. She “simply asked how much it would cost” (I’m referencing the previous comment), and the cashier would not tell her. She looked at the multiple adults in the vehicle behind her and sensibly decided not to go along. How do we know that the first “pay” is real at all? Maybe Starbucks absorbs the cost of the first coffee saying that someone, somewhere before that costumer has payed for it. That customer might infer that it was the previous customer. Or Startbucks employees may straight-up lie about that aspect. I don’t know.
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