My part in the 'Meet me in Starbucks' campaign

It was actually through this blog on LinkedIn, which goes to show the power of content marketing to create awareness and drive engagement in many ways, not just the intended ones.

Starbucks researched those that used Starbucks for various reasons, and my blog came up. Not least because my blog gained over 100,000 views on LinkedIn alone and inspired a very passionate for and against debate.

Starbucks contacted me and wanted to follow me around for the day to film a typical day in my working life. Singapore had been chosen to one of the featured ten cities across the world to have stories made out of a total of 39 to be filmed. I was very proud to be representing my adopted homeland.

The idea behind this great piece of content marketing was to capture how people across the globe use Starbucks in their everyday life for all kinds of things from business to pleasure. The films were all shot in a 24 hour period and put together to form the campaign 'Meet me in Starbucks'.

(I am not in the introductory video below, but the Singapore film should appear tomorrow on the company's YouTube channel for this campaign.)

This idea in Singapore was to film me at my usual business meetings in various Starbucks in Singapore.  I usually combine meetings at Starbucks with my co-working space The Collective Works so it was an easy request to agree to.

The whole day was a huge amount of fun as the Starbucks crew followed me around up and down the streets of Singapore and into various Starbucks to meet various clients, potential clients and partners.

This was much to amusement and bewilderment of passing Singaporean residents who were wondering why I was being followed by a camera crew. It’s no mean feat in 34°C and 80% humidity to carry sound equipment, cameras and everything else up and down the streets of a very sunny Singapore that day but the crew did a great job.

Being filmed when you have a meeting is very weird but by the fourth and fifth time it was becoming second nature. Even the other Starbucks customers weren’t batting an eyelid anymore.

Every person I met at my meetings was also a very good sport, and took all the filming in stride and played their part.

Sometimes the person I was meeting and I had to say hello and goodbye many times for the film crew, which did feel like we were starring in Starbucks – The Movie.  They also had to walk in and out from different directions just to get different looks and different angles right. It was just like being in a movie for a day without the glamour.

I expect a blooper reel to come out of all the bits not in the main Starbucks film. You could set it to Black Coffee by Sinead O’Connor or One More Cup of Coffee by the White Stripes or The Cranberries Wake up and Smell the Coffee or even Blur’s Coffee and TV. My favourite would be Hi-Fi Serious – Starbucks!

The Starbucks staff were fantastic, especially at my favourite Starbucks in Equity Plaza where they are generally amazing anyway. They were really happy to be featured and felt privileged that I and Starbucks had picked them out of the 100 Starbucks in Singapore.

The montage film above allows people to dip in and dip out of to see how people in 39 countries use Starbucks.

They even have compilation of people meeting in different ways, drinking coffee in different ways and generally how Starbucks is used differently and in fact the same across the world.

Whether you like Starbucks or no (and I know from my previous blog on the subject that people are divided) this is a great content-marketing strategy. They are putting their customers first and using them in the ultimate content-marketing film.

Starbucks knows that as soon as the film comes out, I and everyone else filmed will be sharing the film on social media. What great, simple viral PR on a global platform with ordinary people like me being happy brand advocates.