Has the Game of Thrones coffee cup made Starbucks ‘tens of millions’ in publicity?
Starbucks did not pay for one of its iconic coffee cups to be surreptitiously left in a scene of Game of Thrones.
On Monday, HBO confirmed that the rogue coffee spotted in a scene of the eighth season’s fourth episode, “The Last of the Starks”, was from the set’s craft services, which serves drinks and food to the cast and crew.
The television network joked that the latte that appeared on the episode was a mistake: “Daenerys had ordered a herbal tea”.
However, the cardboard takeaway cup has become so synonymous with the Seattle-based coffee chain that everyone just [wrongly] assumed that it was theirs.
The scale of the fantasy series and the viral nature of the anachronistic cup are such that experts say Starbucks has earned millions in free publicity.
Stacy Jones, the CEO of the marketing agency Hollywood Branded, which specialises in product placement, said Starbucks would have had to pay from US$250,000 to US$1 million for one of its containers to be gratuitously left in front of the Mother of Dragons.
“If we were looking at this in the grand scheme of things and we were comparing Game of Thrones to the other largest-watched content out there … you’re looking at the US$250,000 to US$1 million range for product placement where that product was positioned with a very central character,” Jones said.
However, she stipulated that HBO “doesn’t take dollars” from advertisers in its content because its customers are paying for an ad-free experience: “They [HBO] believe their audience should not pay for their content as well as have brands feature that are paying to be in their content.”
Jones said the publicity value for the coffee company was enormous.
“The total audience that is talking about this – we’re surpassing 100 million people probably and it’s all over the world,” Jones said.
“The entire world right now is talking about Starbucks and Game of Thrones, which is crazy. That doesn’t happen for a brand,” she added.
On Monday, Apex Marketing Group told MarketWatch that the anachronistic cup could be worth about US$11.6 million, but Jones said this figure has likely “tripled, quadrupled, or grown by five times since then”.
“The publicity value is going into the tens of millions,” she said, adding: “It doesn’t matter, at all” that the coffee isn’t actually from Starbucks.
Jones said it was a testament to the coffee chain’s branding that everyone just assumes any coffee cup – “even if it’s dark and blurry” – is going to be from Starbucks.
HBO didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Twitter spokeswoman told MarketWatch that Starbucks tweets were running at 10 times their average hourly tweets on Monday morning.
“There have been more than 310,000 tweets today, and I’d say on an average normal day there are usually less than 100,000 tweets,” she said.
When contacted, Starbucks referred us to its earlier statement, which read: “TBH we’re surprised she didn’t order a Dragon Drink”.
The pink drink Starbucks was referring to is a “tropical-inspired pick-me-up [that] is crafted with a refreshing combination of sweet mango and dragon fruit flavours”, according to the company’s website.
Thrones executive producer Bernie Caulfield apologised for the blooper on WNYC on Monday, jokingly adding: “Westeros was the first place to actually, you know, have Starbucks”.
Meanwhile, production designer Hauke Richter told Variety that “things can get forgotten on set”, and that the anachronistic coffee was getting “blown out of proportion [because] it has not happened with Thrones so far”.
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- Product placement expert estimates that the total audience discussing the matter is more than 100 million people