Starbucks released a limited time drink called “Unicorn Frappuccino” around National Unicorn Day which is April 9th. Above is an image of what they had tweeted out to the world which showed off their new drink along with captioning it, “As rare as… a unicorn. The color-changing, flavor-changing #UnicornFrappuccino—here for a limited time at participating stores”. They launched this campaign to gain more customers and increase promotion. Starbucks as everyone already knows is one of America’s top coffee chains. They attract people who normally go to Starbucks or in general love and enjoy drinking lattes, frappuccino’s, or coffee. They do this to get more and more people to buy their drinks who will then talk about it with others also creating another marketing technique. Starbucks uses these tactics that will be discussed later very effectively to promote their business. 

      To go more in depth with the audience, these people can usually be of any age since even young children enjoy their drinks. They used social media to promote their new drink since thousands and thousands of people are always on social media. According to, “5 Marketing Tactics from Starbuck’s Unicorn Frappucino Launch You Can Copy” by Kate Harrison, she mentions how “Social Media Is Key” in this process saying, “this created a huge suspense for consumers”. It will catch a younger child’s eye or a teenager and young adult because they would want to join in on this “trend”. Nowadays, not a lot of young people like being left out and will almost do anything to follow what others are doing. Everyone will be posting about this drink and it will lure more people into Starbucks. Additionally, young children tend to believe almost anything meaning there might be children who just love unicorns and would want to try this drink. Now that they have targeted a specific audience, this “new marketing technique” will manifest their purpose which is to gain even a bigger audience by promoting their drink. Starbucks wants as many people as possible to get their hands on this drink and then tell others about it which will lead to others buying it.  

       Another tactic they use to create this sort of excitement is by including “here for a limited time” which a lot of fast food places do so people can immediately buy their food. It creates this urgency for everyone and in their head, they now are thinking they must buy this item. This appeals to logos because they are informing people from what time they can buy this drink since they cannot get it whenever they like. A third tactic they use which represents pathos is the fact they released this drink around National Unicorn Day which takes place April 9th causing even more excitement since this drink is all about unicorns. Kate Harrison highlights in her article, “Use National News and Awareness Days”. Now it makes people think they must get their hands on this for this “special” day especially if they genuinely love unicorns. Mostly everyone has already heard of Starbucks and the amazing drinks they sell. This automatically increases the chances of buying a drink from them even more since everyone around is buying from this shop. This appeals to ethos because Starbucks tweeted this out allowing everyone to know that this is indeed valid, and nobody is making this up. If someone hasn’t heard about Starbucks, now they have and can know if this coffee shop is one of the best or not. The way they presented their drink shows they are going for more of an emotional appeal which represents pathos. In the same article, she emphasizes, “Create an Aesthetically Pleasing Product”. The tweet Starbucks tweeted out utilizes many pretty colors making the image and drink itself look aesthetically pleasing attracting customers to buy it. They have the drink placed right in the center of the image with a colorful background which immediately catches the audience’s attention. It makes them all happy and excited to buy it. The background is a purplish color covered in sparkles. The drink itself has a very “dreamy” or “fairy-like hues of pink, blue, and purple” as Harrison mentions creating sort of an ombre pattern. It makes a person want to buy it even more once they see if it looks that aesthetically pleasing.  

      Starbucks created this drink for a couple of reasons. The first reason might be because they are starting to think they are dying down and need to create something new and bizarre to bring back the excitement. With this drink people will start posting about it more and retweeting it which will make people conversate about this. This leads into the second reason because they can grow as a business. With all this taking place, more people will go their nearest Starbucks and buy different drinks and food. They will keep gaining customers as this cycle continues. The medium is the tweet Starbucks tweeted out. It makes it easier for them as people will retweet this and more people will be informed about it. Mostly everyone is always on social media so this makes it become almost impossible to miss.            

      Overall, Starbucks has used many different techniques including the way they presented their drink with colors to promote their drink. Besides the beautiful patterns of colors, they include, they use phrases such as “limited time” and pay attention to when is the perfect time to release this drink. It makes everyone even more excited to buy it because it is not a plain everyday drink you can get anytime. The platform they used to inform people about it allows people to know when they can get it and then creates tension because now people are waiting for this drink to release. In the future, other drinks can be analyzed to compare the new drinks they are releasing. This is to see if these new limited time drinks make any difference in Starbucks’ wealth. 

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