Clever Coffee Marketing

It was a rough morning for Goldman Sachs employees.

On the same day the giant investment bank started requiring employees to return to the office full-time since the start of the pandemic, it also removed the free cold-brew coffee station in the lobby.

The move was hardly major news. But one marketer recognized opportunity in all those groggy Goldman bankers.

Britton O’Daly is the special projects manager at Cometeer, a start-up that makes frozen coffee capsules with scientific-precision and coffee-snob sensibilities. A friend texted O’Daly an article about Goldman’s caffeination elimination as a joke. “How funny would it be if Cometeer handed out samples outside of Goldman?”

O’Daly took the idea and ran with it.

Marketing To-go

Less than 24 hours later, O’Daly had a table set up outside Goldman Sachs HQ filled with coffee capsules, oat milk, cups, straws and a sign that read “Free coffee for Goldman analysts!”

Instead of business cards, O’Daly’s team handed out additional capsules. He estimates they reached about 100 appreciative potential customers.

But the stunt also garnered some good coverage. The key, O’Daly told Inc., was to act fast.

No detailed strategy docs or carefully orchestrated timelines. Just quick action to execute on a good idea. O’Daly and his colleagues rushed around the city to find ingredients, even grabbing capsules from their personal stashes.

The scrappy campaign underscored Cometeer’s value prop around providing good coffee quickly and on-the-go. It also reached its B2C audience through a decidedly B2B filter, positioning the company as a solid break-room coffee option.

One more lesson in understanding your audience: Targeting any group too aggressively can be a turn off. At first, O’Daly only served Goldman Sachs employees. That made them suspicious. When he switched to serving everyone nearby, the bankers were more willing to check out the complimentary caffeine.