Is Jonathan’s Starbucks Card a Slick Marketing Campaign? (Updated: Good news, its legit!)

You apperceive that Starbuck's pay-it-forward idea hatched by Jonathan Stark? The one area you buy a coffee with a agenda and add money for the next person. Well, it may be a viral business campaign, not some feel-good amusing experiment.

The Jonathan's Starbucks Agenda hit the tech blogs beforehand this anniversary with the adventure of Jonathan Stark who absitively to allotment his Starbucks agenda with the world. He asked humans to allotment the account of his card, use it to buy a coffee and put some money on it so the next being could do the same. The agenda had a twitter account and a Facebook page area humans could clue the antithesis and leave comments. It was a beatific amusing agreement until Andrew Hetzel of The Coffee Business Strategies blog did some digging.

Hetzel credibility out that Mr. Stark is the Vice President of Application Architecture at Mobiquity, a adaptable accretion close that has formed in the accomplished with Starbucks. Now a accomplished accord doesn't necessarily beggarly the two companies are in cahoots, but it does attending suspicious, no?

Update: Jonathan Stark issued a acknowledgment on Facebook claiming this agreement is accepted and not a business ploy. He writes, "The Jonathan's Agenda agreement was actually my idea, Starbucks had actually annihilation to do with it." He stepped advanced because he does not wish the aloft rumor to "destroy the acceptable animosity that accept been congenital up by bags of humans who accept alternate in this admirable experiment."

[Coffee Strategies Blog]