From Unicorn Frappuccinos to VIP meet-and-greets: How 3 brands are turning buzz into business

The perfect mix of viral moment, urgency, and brand awareness can be summed up in two words: Unicorn Frappuccino. How Starbucks over the summer drummed up interest in a limited-time drink based on a mythical beast — and leveraged it to promote the coffee chain's new look — exemplifies one of the many ways companies are making marketing feel less like, well, marketing. As consumers spread their attention across television, streaming, social media, influencers, and other channels, companies are changing their strategies to reach them. At the same time, better data and technology are giving companies a clearer picture than in the past of which campaigns actually drive sales and where their dollars are best spent. "We're investing in the places where we believe we can drive transactions, drive the brand, build that loyalty and love, and make sure people understand what Starbucks stands for," Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol said on the company's fiscal 2026 third quarter earnings call back in late July. Niccol, a turnaround artist with a proven track record, is two years into breathing life back into Starbucks. In addition to traditional advertising and marketing, out-of-the-box creative strategies and unconventional endeavors are at the core of his mission to get that word out that the once-wayward brand is back. Unicorns and barista influencers The Unicorn Frappuccino, first released in 2017, is a great example of that new creative energy. After seeing renewed interest on social media in the pink-and-blue swirled drink earlier this year, Starbucks first brought it back at the Coachella music festival in April. The company then rolled it out globally for one weekend in August. The company sold 2 million of the drinks over those days, according to a Starbucks spokesperson. "That's just very holistic thinking of marketing in a way that's a bit viral, unique, that also creates urgency with the consumer and doesn't cause any discounting," William Blair analyst Sharon Zackfia told CNBC. "So, it's all full-price sales." It's also important for the economics of the Starbucks turnaround. Rather than relying on discounts to drive traffic, the company can use product innovation and marketing to give customers a reason to visit at full price. On the unconventional side, Starbucks is experimenting with a previously untapped channel: its own employees. The company has operated a Green Apron Creator Program, paying baristas to create social media content during dedicated shifts. It is now preparing a separate TikTok pilot that will pay a Starbucks employee and another outside creator to travel to Starbucks locations around the world and produce social content about the company's coffee, products, and stores. Employee-generated content could give Starbucks a more genuine way to reach younger consumers, with baristas who know the products and interact with customers every day serving as brand messengers. "There's a very keen suspicion about authenticity amongst that demographic [Gen Z] because they are maybe more accustomed to being fed digital content that is paid for," Zackfia said. "I think that is where having a barista do something that's eminently authentic … the authenticity kind of comes through in a way that paid media may not have the same impact." Still, cultural buzz only matters if it translates into business. "The real test is, do the consumers care? Are they coming back?" Melius Research analyst Jacob Aiken Phillips told CNBC. To measure the impact, Starbucks often looks at metrics including product trials, rewards engagement, customer frequency, transactions, and comparable sales. Brand affinity, consideration, and purchase intent were all at five-year highs in the company's latest quarter, and customer connection improved significantly year over year. Niccol said on Starbucks' latest earnings call that the company spends a little more than 2% of sales on marketing and isn't seeing diminishing returns. He expects the budget to grow alongside the business. SBUX mountain 2024-08-12 Starbucks stock performance since Aug. 12, 2024 close For us, the harder evidence will be whether those gains translate into sustained traffic and sales. Starbucks has now posted four consecutive quarters of positive global comparable sales growth, including two straight quarters of margin expansion. Marketing isn't solely responsible for that improvement, but it is one piece of the broader turnaround that appears to be gaining traction on Main Street and Wall Street. While off its 52-week high above $110 from mid-August, Starbucks shares are up 12.5% year to date. Since the Aug. 13, 2024 announcement of Niccol's hiring, the Club stock is up more than 20%. He started at Starbucks on Sept. 9, with the Herculean task of repeating at Starbucks the kind of revival that he engineered at his former gig as CEO of Chipotle . Investors will get the next report card on the Starbucks turnaround next month when the company delivers fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter earnings. Guidance on what to expect in its next fiscal year will also be important. Niccol isn't the only CEO aiming to harness the power of marketing. Marketing is an 'offensive weapon' TJX Companies chief executive Ernie Herrman, who has led the off-price retailer since 2016 , has called marketing an "offensive weapon," as the company looks to attract new shoppers, drive more frequent visits and take market share. While still less than 1% of sales, TJX is changing its marketing formula and getting smarter about how it spends it. "It's not that they're spending more in marketing," Bernstein analyst Aneesha Sherman told CNBC. "But they've shifted the mix much more towards online in the last few years." Increasingly, those dollars are going toward digital and social channels, including paid influencers. TJX also benefits from shoppers posting their finds on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube — essentially marketing the retailer for free. That is particularly valuable because the vast majority of TJX's sales still happen in stores. A show-and-tell of an influencer's purchases on TikTok, known as a haul, doesn't need to generate an online sale for a TJX brand. It can simply entice someone to visit a TJ Maxx, Marshalls, or HomeGoods location. The reach is significant. On its second-quarter earnings call, TJX said its brands generated roughly 1.4 billion paid video views across major social platforms in the first half of the year. Management also said completion rates on TikTok and YouTube were significantly above industry benchmarks, suggesting the content is resonating. TJX is also changing its messaging. Historically, its advertising focused heavily on value — recognizable brands for less. Now, the retailer is emphasizing the "treasure hunt" experience: the chance to discover unique products that might not be there on the next visit. Sherman said that shift has helped TJX appeal to higher-income shoppers who value both price and higher-end merchandise. Behind the scenes, TJX is using more sophisticated data analysis to determine which ads and channels are actually driving sales, allowing it to put more money behind what works and pull back from what doesn't. "They're very good miners of data and reacting," Telsey Advisory Group CEO Dana Telsey told CNBC. So far, TJX has made its relatively small marketing budget work harder. Because the company manages marketing spending as a percentage of sales, the absolute budget can grow alongside the business without necessarily putting additional pressure on margins. "The last few years, TJX has been gaining share," Sherman said. "They've been growing their comp sales above competitors, and so when that happens, your [marketing] budget goes up. … Investors don't mind because they're obviously seeing the returns and they're seeing it translate into sales growth." TJX YTD mountain TJX Companies YTD The risk is if that relationship breaks down. If sales growth stalls, TJX could either pull back on marketing or spend more as a percentage of revenue to keep driving traffic, potentially pressuring margins while also raising questions about whether those dollars are still effective. Shares of the portfolio holding are down roughly 13.5% year to date — hit particularly hard since last month's earnings report , which featured Q2 softness in the company's largest division, Marmaxx, and conservative forward guidance. Herrman blamed the weakness in Marmaxx, which houses the company's T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains, on execution missteps — not having the right product in the right stores — rather than a demand issue. The CEO said at the time that fixes were put in place, and he was seeing a stronger start in the current fiscal third quarter, which is set for a mid-November release. We recently bought more TJX , and Jim Cramer said Friday it could still be bought here. He said he believes in Herrman. That makes the payoff from those marketing investments even more important in the coming weeks and months because TJX needs them to keep driving traffic and sales without requiring a meaningful increase in spending. Treating marketing like capex Capital One went a different way, ramping up its marketing budget in the second quarter by 23% to $1.7 billion. That was driven partly by the May 2025 acquisition of Discover but also by higher legacy Capital One direct marketing and media spending, and investments in premium benefits. Capital One's marketing expenses include not only commercials and digital ads but also significant customer acquisition costs, such as sign-up bonuses and rewards. The Club stock is down 19% this year, including a tough September, amid broader pressure on interest-rate-sensitive financial stocks after the Federal Reserve raised its target fed funds range by a quarter percentage point to 3.75% to 4%. That makes it even more important for Capital One to prove that current elevated customer acquisition costs can yield profitable relationships over time. Friday's really soft jobs report greatly reduced market expectations for an October Fed rate hike, which should help. COF YTD mountain Capital One YTD "The single biggest cost, way bigger than anything else, is the upfront bonuses that they pay to customers, particularly high-spending customers, to take a credit card," TD analyst Moshe Orenbuch told CNBC. Those costs can be substantial. Truist analyst Brian Foran estimated that acquiring a high-quality, super-prime cardholder can cost more than $1,000. While those customers may initially generate less loan growth than lower-quality borrowers, they can become much more valuable over time if they remain with Capital One and continue spending. That long-term payoff helps explain why Foran described Capital One as a "brand and marketing-led company." He added that Capital One thinks of marketing as the capital expenditures spending that "feeds future customers for the business." That helps explain why investors need to evaluate Capital One's spending differently. Like a factory that produces goods for years after it is built, acquiring a customer today can create a relationship that generates revenue far into the future. Capital One has also broadened how it finds and attracts those customers. Direct mail remains important, but television, digital advertising, and social media are now part of a much larger marketing machine. The company is using experiences to differentiate its cards, offering customers access to Capital One Lounges at airports and exclusive events ranging from NCAA VIP packages and athlete meet-and-greets to concert experiences and cardholder-only dinners with chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants. "The days of just setting up email and advertising on TV are long gone," Foran said. AI could make those investments even more efficient by enabling Capital One to test campaigns faster and deliver more individualized offers to potential customers. The challenge for investors is measuring the payoff. Unlike a new factory or piece of equipment, there's no line in Capital One's financial statements showing exactly how much profit a particular advertisement or celebrity partnership generates. There's a significant "trust us" element, Foran said, because outsiders can't know precisely what the company gets back from individual campaigns. That's why the headline marketing number matters less to us as Capital One shareholders than what the company gets for it. Strong new-account originations, gains among high-spending customers, and profitable long-term relationships would suggest those dollars are doing their job. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long COF, SBUX, TJX. See here for a full list of the stocks.) 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