Starbucks earns billions in free ads from GoT episode: Report

Picture for representation (Image: Flickr.com)

Starbucks reportedly gained around $2.3 billion via free advertisements in the past few days after a modern coffee cup was spotted in a Game of Thrones episode. It was later discovered that the cup was not from Starbucks.

After the fourth episode of this season was released earlier this week, hawk-eyed fans of the fantasy epic spotted the modern-day coffee cup placed in front of one of the lead characters of the show in the feast scene. In no time, photos and videos of the same went viral across multiple social media platforms.

Now, incidentally, the coffee cup spotted bore a striking resemblance with the one given out by the Seattle-based coffee chain. From there on, purely based on speculations Starbucks gained billions of dollars just like that, reported CNBC.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the news.

Stacy Jones, the CEO of marketing firm Hollywood Branded, said the approximate money made courtesy the buzz would stand around $2.3 billion. A PR subscriptions service has tallied more than 10,000 mentions of Starbucks and Game of Thrones across various media platforms around the world.

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Jones believes this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the coffee chain, and the estimated profit could just be the tip of the iceberg because social media and word of mouth mentions had not been taken into consideration yet.

Talkwalker, a social media monitoring platform tallied close to two lakh mentions in 48 hours, including a variety of hashtags on Starbucks and Game of Thrones on Twitter, blogs, and news websites, etc.

Starbucks declined to comment.

The coffee cup has now been edited out of the scene, but discussions surrounding it continue to abound on Twitter and Reddit.

Hill Impact CEO Dan Hill said this could not be considered as product placement, because it happened purely by accident, making it “more valuable”.

He explained how this would live on as a meme and continue to reap benefits for the company, hence making it difficult to quantify the actual gains. The viral nature of the incident, however, may have less to do with the power of Starbucks and more about pointing out the blooper made by the makers of the show.

Noah Mallin, who heads the content and sponsorship division at media agency Wavemaker, pointed out that product placement in GoT could cost a company a neat six figures because of the high ratings of the show. The episode in concern, for example, got 11.8 million viewers for the first airing.

Mallin also pointed out how any advertising company would otherwise find it very difficult to reproduce this kind of buzz organically.

Soon after the episode was aired, there were multiple memes on social media.

After the Starbucks cup scandal on #GameofThrones many fans are now reporting a Starbucks sigil in the #GoT opening pic.twitter.com/AaZOs5593s

— Puglate.com (@puglateweb) May 6, 2019

A new Starbucks outlet in Westroes!

this is how Starbucks was born, it's her icon on the cup#got #Starbucks @emiliaclarke @JimCarrey pic.twitter.com/tgvvr1MmGy

— DK (@DKShi5) May 8, 2019

A new Starbucks outlet in Westroes!

A new Starbucks outlet in Westroes!

GoT editor this morning pic.twitter.com/xq0Opnot2v

— liz (@HappyToBeLizzie) May 6, 2019

And, this is the scene in question:

game of thrones really left a starbucks coffee cup on set lmao #GoT pic.twitter.com/YObI4Re0Aq

— khaleesi (@monica__richey) May 6, 2019