Local coffee, for local people
The strangest thing happened to me today. Urban Coffee, a new coffee shop found out I was off for a coffee in Birmingham City Centre and asked me to come to their shop instead of my usual place. A bit of Twitter based banter later, I was there enjoying a free croissant, beautiful coffee and more good banter.
I wouldn’t normally take the time to write up a social media marketing case study. The fact that I am leads me to the main point I want to make: Urban Coffee have used social media to take me from an unaware prospect to a brand ambassador in about ten minutes. How did they do that? Well there’s three parts to the story really.
Part 1 – The functional part
It all came about because they saw me tweet my dissatisfaction with my usual coffee shop:
Anyone in Brum for crap food, average coffee and good wifi at Coffee Lounge this lunchtime?
They followed it up, saying:
@jonhickman you should come over to Urban Coffee, great cakes, great coffee and free wifi
As simple as that. They listened, they answered. Well it’s not really that simple. I don’t just do what people tell me afterall.
Part 2 – The networking part
What made this a compelling offer rather than a corporate spam was the fact that two nice people I know – Neil & Jamie – Tweeted me to recommend I try Urban Coffee out. Suddenly my network is making a recommendation to me. I’m now near to buying in to this brand.
Part 3 – The experience part
For some reason I decided to be cheeky and request a free cake in return for my custom. This led to a lighthearted banter on Twitter ending with the offer of a free cake:
@jonhickman You have to come in and say “The weather is good for the time of year” to receive your free food
Let’s face it, it would be rude to knock back that sort of offer, so I was on my way to the coffee shop. I walked past my normal place, arranged to meet Neil & Jamie there for lunch, and my other friends were now chatting with Urban Coffee’s owner Simon too.
By this stage I had a feeling for what I was going to find at the coffee shop: a warm welcome, an independent spirit, a relaxing place where I could work and chat, and nice people. Luckily the shop followed through on these Twitter based expectations.
I was warmly greeted, the space is light and airy, the WiFi strong, and they have good stout tables, big enough to get four coworkers and their laptops around (they have plenty of plug sockets upstairs too). The coffee was great, the banter was there, and of course, my cake was free.
#1 by Benjibrum at August 13th, 2009
I can echo this experience, without the twitter based banter.
Nipped in for a coffee and a gossip with my friend Monica and enjoyed some witty banter with the delightful young ladies who served me coffee.
I really liked the idea of having breakfast in there at their communal table. Something akin to the School of Life’s Breakfast. A little more structured than @likemind coffee morning’s but just as inspiring.
#2 by Caroline Beavon at August 13th, 2009
Hurrah for Twitter.. Saw the conversations about Urban Coffee and thought I’d pop in.
( reccomend the frappe)
Lovely place – much airier than the crowded cluttered and HOT other places out there.
Now I’m not saying I would never have crossed its threshold unless I’d heard about it on Twitter, but it was kinda nice to be able to SEE the conversation about it, then be part of it within 20 minutes.
#3 by Jon Hickman at August 13th, 2009
Ah yes, you’re so right: we can’t pin this down and say “Caroline went here because of Twitter”. Interestingly though a lot of the science of marketing is educated guesswork. A lot of the techniques behind calculating “Return on Investment” (ROI) are well educated guesses.
What’s nice here is that Simon can say, without a shadow of a doubt that he got one customer (me) from a small bit of marketing activity. He just had to ask and be genuine for me to come over.
Beyond that, who can say how valuable that investment of one croissant is? It’s all just guess work after all…
#4 by Simon Jenner at August 14th, 2009
Well the results are in. It appears if twitter marketing has worked for us. We have had 30 new followers and I would say about 6 new customers in today as a result of the twitter marketing with John yesterday. So for the cost of a free croissant we have gained 6 customers which is very good.
The real question is can this be repeated or is it a one-off. We will keep trying and see
#5 by Jamie Garner at August 16th, 2009
I have to say Urban Coffee is fantastic, but what I really liked about it was I followed the whole process of Simon and opening the shop through twitter and his blog.