Earlier this spring, the Starbucks White Cup Contest got started, asking people to submit their creative coffee cup doodles to Instagram and Twitter with #WhiteCupContest. With its minimal branding, Starbucks cups are the perfect blank canvas for creatives to draw on. Plenty of Starbucks' customers do this on their own, so the choice to hold a cup design contest seems like a smart one.
With nearly 4,000 submissions that came in over just a few weeks, Starbucks has just announced that the design by 20-year-old Brita Lynn Thompson is the winner. Thompson's artful cup creation was quite spontaneous and began with a zig zag line around the bottom of the cup. Now, as the winner of the competition, her design will be printed on Starbucks' limited-edition reusable white plastic cups and will be made available for sale online this fall.
More of the creative designs can be seen on the Starbucks White Cup Contest Pinterest board.
Artful Cup Design Contests
Starbucks' White Cup Contest Challenged Customers to Make Art on Cups
Trend Themes
1. User-generated Designs - Businesses can launch design contests to encourage user-generated content, creating a sense of community and engagement with the brand.
2. Minimalistic Design - Minimalistic design themes may offer enormous marketing and branding opportunities for businesses.
3. Branded Merchandise - Businesses can turn user-generated artwork and designs into branded merchandise, such as reusable cups, to boost brand awareness and loyalty.
Industry Implications
1. Food and Beverage - Restaurants, coffee shops, and other food and beverage businesses can launch similar design contests to showcase their products and engage customers.
2. Marketing and Advertising - Marketing and advertising agencies can develop campaigns around user-generated content to create unique and memorable branding opportunities for clients.
3. E-commerce - E-commerce businesses can explore user-generated content as a way to differentiate their products and foster a sense of community among their customers.