Yesterday Starbucks held 'Free Muffin Day' across the UK. It was entirely promoted on Facebook and to get your free muffin you had to download your voucher on the Facebook event page. http://www.facebook.com/thinklemon?ref=profile#/event.php?eid=145280424069&ref=mfYou had to buy a coffee to receive a free muffin. I tentatively printed off a voucher thinking that the free muffins would be smaller, not so delicious versions on their normal muffins. We pass a Starbucks on the way to work anyway so on Monday morning in we went to check it out. No promotion of the muffin day anyway in store but we asked and it was true. And with normal-sized muffins!
Anyway it wasn't so much the idea that impressed me, (although I enjoyed the lemon and poppyseed), but the way they did it. Through facebook they knew exactly how many people had said they were attending, who they were and where they were from, which they can now compare with how many people actually went in and got their free muffin.
And cakes make people happy. Especially when they feel like they're free.
