Starbucks
Experience Design
Using AR to spread Kindness across 16,000 Starbucks cafés
The Parnership
In collaboration with Tool and Edelman, we spearheaded a distinctive brand awareness activation for the Starbucks Kindness campaign. This initiative aimed to spread kindness and celebrate baristas. We developed an Augmented Reality experience that vividly demonstrated to customers and partners that even the smallest acts of kindness can have a profound impact.
The Experience
Deployed across over 16,000 Starbucks locations in the US, QR codes were strategically placed to engage guests. This allowed Starbucks fans and customers nationwide to access the augmented reality experience, discovering the campaign's Kindness content both in stores and on social media.
As users panned around, they discovered notes of kindness, watched videos and photos, and shared custom animated kindness cards, fully immersing themselves in the kindness surrounding them. They could like and share every act of kindness they encountered in the experience. The goal was for each user to leave the experience inspired by the power of small acts of kindness.
The Tech
As an evergreen platform, the AR experience is supported by a custom CMS that ensures users encounter dynamic content with each visit. This system empowers Starbucks to celebrate cultural moments and holidays by continuously adding new Kindness content.
We developed a fully accessible version of the AR experience, ensuring that all users could interact with the unique kindness content.
Utilizing Starbucks' Kindness Campaign toolkit, we extended the design into the mixed reality realm. We added texture and depth to the original designs, created assets to celebrate baristas, and animated elements such as the iconic Starbucks cup.
We took a 360 approach with different rings of content to arrange and layer the designs. We added zones to group and organize the content, allowing for discoverable moments and pacing in the experience.
