Starbucks red-cup controversy

The recent Starbucks red cup controversy has created a lot of buzz and promotion in the market. Fundamentally, the new cup is just a version of Starbucks rebranding itself. Not once have the cups they push out during the holiday season denoted anything geared at a certain religion.

The whole downward spiral began with a man named Joshua Fuerstein who posted a video on his Facebook saying “Do you realize that Starbucks wanted to take Christ and Christmas off of their brand new cups? That’s why they’re just plain red.”

According to the Starbucks website, the coffee company has made it a tradition to have ombré red cups for the holidays. “In the past, we have told stories with our holiday cups design,” said Jeffrey Fields, Starbucks vice president of Design and Content. “This year we wanted to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories.”

Starbucks, in reality did not release these red cups in order to offend Christians, summon the devil or make any kind of political/social statement. The company did it so that people can draw their own designs on the cups if they wish.

As reported on the WSJ, there was good and bad news, which goes to prove the adage, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” According to Amobee Brand Intelligence’s data, 67 percent of Tweets about the cups have carried negative sentiment, but only 17 percent of the negative sentiment tweets were directed towards Starbucks. Instead, it was the reaction to the Starbucks red cups which has received the most negative sentiment.