Lively Holiday Cups!

Everyone LOVES when the holiday season rolls around and Starbucks finally ditches their regular coffee cups. Whether customers flock to the coffee shop for the holiday inspired lattes or for the cheerful red cups is up for debate. It seems to me that coffee just tastes better when it comes in a red cup with pictures of snowflakes or christmas trees.... but that's just me. My Starbucks holiday drink of choice is the Peppermint Mocha... I look forward to it every year! I also end up getting Starbucks 10 times more often... TEEHEE! 

This year, however, Starbucks holiday cups are even MORE awesome.

They're interactive!

Everyone has an iPhone or Droid (poor Blackberry), and Starbucks is using this technology trend to its advantage. In November, Starbucks launched an innovative augmented reality app, called Cup Magic, which lets customers animate their coffee cups with their smartphones! By pointing the phone's camera at the holiday cups (and other select Starbucks products) the app brings the characters to life! The engaging app highlights 5 holiday characters: an ice skater, a squirrel (Don't they hibernate during the holiday season?), a boy, a sledding dog, and a fox. 

The following video explains it all. Check it out.

The app also includes traditional and social sharing tools -- Duh. They'd be silly to forget social media! That's not all -- apparently there is also a prize at stake... incentivizing consumers to try to animate all 5 characters -- and buy more coffee!

There's still time to download the app and get your hands on those red cups! Now... if only I could get my hands on an iPhone...

POGS,

AKtually Ashley