If you popped into your local Starbucks this week you may have gotten a song to go with your ' iced decaf triple grande four pump soy no whip Mocha'. In about 600 Starbucks locations in New York and Seattle the 'Now Playing' service, an exclusive venture between Apple and the coffee maker was quietly rolled out. U sing the new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store you could instantly preview, buy, and download the music currently being played in the store. It also allowed you to see what had recently been played and offered an exclusive Starbucks section on the iTunes website. Despite some hiccups and snafus on the west coast, for the most part it was a successful launch. What was notable however was the lack of noise around the whole affair. There were no dramatic press conferences or signs flashing the event and the download vouchers for a free Bob Dylan song were kept not out front with the other gift cards, but tucked away in the back behind the baristas who handed you one with your coffee. You'd think that the Seattle based retailer would want to get out the bull horn and trumpet its exclusive marketing coup, to rub it in the face of competitors, 'Take that Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf' or 'Eat your heart out Peet's Coffee'. But Starbucks was the very picture of modesty and discretion. Or was it? Could it be that the worlds biggest coffee purveyor was playing its cards close to the vest incase the venture did not work as well as planned? It had good reason to be wary, Starbucks has been burnt before.

Starbucks is a proven phenomenon when it comes to music. It has been called one of the biggest influences in the way that music is sold and promoted. In an business knee deep in P2P piracy, stagnant CD sales and battles between record companies and artists over digital rights management, Starbucks managed to sell 3.5 million CD's in 2005, promoting acts from Bob Dyan to Coldplay and debuting the group Antigone Rising and Sonya Kitchell. It purchased California based Hear Music in 1999 and has signed Sir Paul McCartney (who was at Capitol Records for decades) to the label. Its debut album, McCartney's 'Memory Almost Full' has sold 231 000 copies in Starbuck's North American stores alone. Starbucks scored real big way back in 2004 with its co-production of 'Genius Loves Company' a Ray Charles album featuring the late jazz legend singing duets with contemporary artists. The CD won 8 Grammys and sold over 2 million copies in its first 6 months (more than a quarter of those at Starbucks) going on to a worldwide total of 5.5 million units. They even have their own XM satellite radio channel. And if you walk into one of the ubiquitous green signed stores you will agree that music seems a natural fit for them. In a typical store, along with the aroma of freshly brewed java and people huddled in groups or hunched over a laptop you will hear the strains of Norah Jones, Dave Matthews or Ella Fitzgerald. Music and Mocha go hand in hand. It is a whole other story when it comes to movies and the company did not consider this when they set out to conquer Hollywood. Hint, while there are speakers in your local Starbucks on which to play the latest song, there are no public screens of any discernable size on which to show a trailer.

Following the hugely succesful documentary adventure 'March of the Penguins', the odds seemed stacked in favor of 'Arctic Tale' an environmental ode to the maternal instinct that starred a polar bear and her cubs and a walrus and her calf. The film was produced by National Geographic Films the same people behind the blockbuster 'Penguins' which scored $127 million worldwide for Warner Independent. More importantly, Paramount Classics which was realeasing 'Arctic Tale' had the marketing muscle of Starbucks behind it. And seriously who can resist cute polar bears? But they were in for a cold reception. The movie managed to bring in only $484 000 in the first four weeks (in the same time frame 'Penguins' had tucked $4 million under its belt). As of last month 'Arctic Tale' which cost less than $5 million to produce had raked in a dissapointing $600 000 domestic since its July 25 opening. So what went wrong? Short of naming a drink the 'ice blended Arctic blizzard Frappuccino' Starbucks seemed to have all the hallmarks of a promotional campaign in place. In 6 800 stores they had stickers, special promotional cup sleeves, the soundtrack, stuffed plush walruses and it even held global warming discussions at some locations. But f or all its pervasiveness, its locations on every corner, its plethora of beverage choices and steady foot traffic, Starbucks has not seemed to find the winning formula for movies. And this is not its first time in the kitchen either.

'Akeelah and the Bee' released in April 2006 was its first foray into the movies. The feel good family film told the story of a gifted African American girl who goes from South-Central Los Angeles all the way to the Scripps National Spelling Bee . In partnership with Canadian studio Lionsgate Entertainment, the coffee colossus used its locations to promote the movie. The marketing onslaught featured stickers on doors and windows, signs by the cash register and spelling words like 'prestidigitation' slapped on menu boards, cup sleeves, CD racks and shelves. As soon as the partnership was announced (to great fanfare I might add) Starbucks was swamped by solicitations from distributors eager to jump into bed with the coffee giant. Suddenly Starbucks Entertainment's director of business development, Nikkole E. Denson was in every studio exec's rolodex. This prompted the company to seek out the expertise of the venerable William Morris Agency to help them sift through the avalanche of offers that came their way. There was talk about having at least two or three movies to promote in theatres and on DVD a year. The company even relocated its small entertainment department from rainy Seattle to sunny Santa Monica so they could be in the thick of the movie bizz. 'Akeelah', ultimately earned $19 million which was not bad considering it was made on a shoestring $8 million budget. However it cost roughly $20 million to market it. The movie managed to break even but the results were underwhelming and all the rhetoric about Starbucks being the new gun in town and changing the 'rules of the game for film marketing and distribution' looked to be just full of hot air.

When the partnership with Lionsgate was announced and its film ambitions made public, Starbucks Chairman Howard D. Schultz claimed that the company had no desire to become an investor in the entertainment industry in the traditional sense but wanted to find the type of movies that if felt were in tune with the brand. What he left out was that by promoting 'Akeelah' in its roughly 5 500 company-operated U.S. and Canadian stores, and selling the DVD and the soundtrack it got an undisclosed equity stake as well. You see, dealing with Starbucks is not like the usual promotional tie-ins that studios are accustomed to. There are no product placements or McDonalds Happy meals with little toy characters. The coffee house gets a cut of overall profits in exchange for its marketing muscle, we are talking a percentage of all box office sales, merchandise sales, TV revenues and soundtrack and DVD sales even those from non Starbucks retail locations. This unique arrangement puts a bigger focus on the box office results of the movies that Starbucks does promote.

Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment claims he is pleased with the results of the 'Arctic Tale' campaign so far, noting that it was aimed at spreading a social message rather than at driving ticket sales. Apparently their yardstick of success was not the box office but how much they could be a catalyst for discussion of the issues, a means to introduce films to their customers that they might not normally have been exposed to. Who are they kidding last time I walked into my favorite Starbucks whether at the Lincoln Center in Manhattan or on Robertson Blvd in West Hollywood they were busy trying to sell caffeinated beverages not to discuss them. Studio honchos know that surprise hits like 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' occur because people actually go and buy tickets to see the film not just talk about it and this is what they expect from Starbucks customers.

Starbucks is hoping to leverage its 13 168 total locations and 44 million weekly customers into finding new ways of growing their brand beyond the confines of caffeine. Under the stewardship of Schultz it has fashioned itself as the 'third place' your comfort zone after home and the office and now it wants to become a cultural arbiter, a tastemaker akin to Oprah whose book club endorsement catapults an author from relative unknown to the top of the Amazon and New York Times bestseller lists. It is gambling on the strong brand loyalty of its customer base, hoping that if they can be trusted to deliver your daily 'cup of joe' maybe they can also be the ones to choose your entertainment for you.

Hollywood is also is in desperate need of partners as new technology makes traditional film distribution models obsolete. While the old paradigms are not quite dead, it is crucial that new methods of delivering content in the age of Web 2.0, smart phones and DVR's are found. As the studios look elsewhere for ways to feed the ever escalating cost of advertising their finished product they are quick to court big advertisers and popular consumer brands some of which would hopefully throw substantial cash into the promotion. Starbucks which opens nearly five stores a day worldwide, has 7 521 company operated locations, 5 647 joint venture and licensed outlets as well as a presence in many supermarkets and airports was the secret weapon that film honchos hoped would sell movies as fast as they sold Macchiatos. But it has not happened yet.

The Starbucks mermaid's touch has worked for other media. In the past year, the brewer has promoted two best selling books: 'A Long Way Gone' , the harrowing memoir of Ishmael Beah, an former child soldier from Sierra Leone, and 'For One More Day' ,a novel by author Mitch Albom who also wrote 'Tuesdays with Morie'. Its U.S. stores alone sold more than 100 000 copies of each and helped put sales of Beah's book on top of the NYT best sellers list. So ' Arctic Tale' may still do ok in the long run when the DVD rolls out. Starbucks was much more successful when it came to the DVD release of 'Akeelah and the Bee' managing to sell a respectable number of units. It has also had impressive sales numbers for other DVD releases like the animated film 'Happy Feet' and the Will Smith vehicle 'The Pursuit of Happyness'. However there is a world of difference between an impulse buy that occurs when while standing in line for your passion iced tea you pickup what looks like an intriguing book, CD or DVD title and the intangible act of being convinced to go to the local multiplex because you saw a movie advertised on your coffee cup. In-store, Starbucks controls the environment but what happens once you step outside is another matter.

It is a tricky balancing act, one that the company has yet to master. On the one hand it has established a valuable and enviable brand identity as a 'home-away-from-home' that it has to protect and on the other it needs to do more when it comes to effectively pushing its movie assets. Starbucks is wary of becoming over commercialized and going too far in its efforts and offending customers with visible movie tie-ins but in film distribution, a field known for outrageous marketing stunts, subtlety is a poor substitute for in-your-face pitches. Tom Hanks has just signed on to star in Universal Pictures 'How Starbucks saved my life' based on the best selling book of the same name. It centers on a man who goes to work at Starbucks after being fired from his high powered advertising job, loosing his wife, becoming an unexpected dad and being diagnosed with a brain tumor for which he has no health insurance. There has been no talk as yet of this being a Starbucks promotion but I could not conceive of a more perfect project. Here is a movie with a title that sounds like a Starbucks ad campaign. They could hard sell and push it as much as they wanted without seeming obnoxious or offending a single customer. Note to Schultz, you really should check this one out. Maybe, just maybe third time is the charm.