When Starbucks recently launched a major promotion on Foursquare to leverage the growing use of geo-targeting applications, it forgot to tell its employees that "mayors" were being offered free coffees, according to a recent AdAge article. The promotion was a great success in terms of driving customers to the retail coffee house, but a disaster on the customer service side because neither baristas or managers knew what customers were referring to when they mentioned the Foursquare promotion. This illustrates that while the temptation to use the latest and greatest digital tools is very strong, marketers still can't overlook the basics.
