KEY POINTS:
Sometimes all it takes to remind us that the Christmas spirit isn't dead is the marketing nous of a global coffee giant. The premise is simple - attach a fake coffee cup by a magnet to the top of a car and start driving around Auckland city.
And the reaction when Starbucks began its unconventional marketing campaign last week?
"Stop! Stop! Lady - you've left your coffee on the roof." Tooting horns, waving arms and hollering pedestrians all desperate to attract the driver's attention. And what do they get for their trouble? A voucher for two free coffees.
Starbucks marketing manager Joe Rich is reporting the promotion as a great success, with a group of five actors spending a whole week driving about the city with a fake coffee cup stuck on the car roof.
"We asked them to look really incognito, like [using] average cars, and people driving them didn't have to be supermodels but someone who looks exactly like they've left the coffee on the top of the car."
Rich says there was "a two-fold objective" behind the stunt. Firstly, it was designed to spread seasonal cheer because Starbucks has a "pass the Christmas cheer" theme in its stores.
The aim was to do "random nice things to strangers and reward them", in this case free coffees for people who alerted the driver to the coffee cup perched on the car roof.
The other part of the stunt was part "social experiment" says Rich - how many people would stop and let someone know.
"We were amazed at how often they would get stopped," he says. "It was like every minute they were being hounded, pulled over."
A lot of the drivers were stopped at traffic lights when there were pedestrians going past.
The coffee cup itself - hardened plastic attached with a powerful magnet to the roof of the car - was not the iconic white Starbucks cup with green images, but a red-coloured Christmas-issue cup.
Rich says reports coming back from the drivers are good - that public reaction was positive and not marred by any embarrassment or irritation at good intentions being taken for granted in a marketing campaign.
"It was all really positive. They were really genuinely surprised and thought it was a great idea to inspire those acts of kindness."
And New Zealanders have turned out to be just as kind spirited as people overseas.
"It was just as successful as what we heard from other markets," says Rich. "They had to stop it in the United States because people would chase down the car once they clicked they would get a free drink."
A Starbucks gossip website, which is not run by the company, has reports of the same stunt being performed overseas.
"There are two ways to look at this whole wacky coffee-cup-on-the-car-roof thing," writes Peter Carlson.
"You could think of it simply as a clever promotion for Starbucks, the coffee company that seems bent on conquering the known world one street corner at a time.
"Or you could see it as a study of human nature, a test of whether the modern urban human will pause to help a stranger who left a coffee cup on his roof."
Another reader reports being "freaked out" by the public response.
"We had people running up to our car trying to rescue the cup. We had one lady jump out of her car at a stop-light and run through traffic to grab the cup off the roof. I was amazed at the danger people would put themselves in to save a cup of coffee.
"We stopped after 20 minutes of driving around. We were afraid someone would get hurt."
