Starbucks partners with China's leading location-based social media application for holiday promotion in which customers can earn free drink upgrades

Nevin Barich

SHANGHAI , December 7, 2011 (press release) – Jiepang, china's leading location-based social media app, today announced it has partnered with Starbucks to embark on the final part of a holiday promotion by using a combination of outdoor advertising, NFC technology, location-based service and social media to create rich and engaging experiences for consumers.

From Nov 8 to Dec 17, Jiepang users who “check-in” at a Starbucks store in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces will receive a virtual Starbucks badge. When the number of badge issued hits 30,000, the virtual Christmas tree at Starbucks’ event webpage will fully light up, and those who have collected the badge will be able to enjoy a free upgrade – a bigger size of drink at Starbucks between Dec 17 and Dec 25.

To further engage with consumers, starting this week, Jiepang has placed digital signs that display the campaign advertisement at over 30 commercial buildings around those Starbucks stores in Shanghai. More importantly, these digital signs all have NFC tags on them. When consumers swipe a NFC-enabled smartphone over the tag, the phone will pop up a message showing them where the nearest Starbucks store is, and the fastest route to get there, thus prompting them to participate in the holiday promotion.

Also, on Dec 17, the huge LED screen of Raffles City Mall in People’s square, which is one of the busiest spots in Shanghai, will broadcast live the lighting up of the virtual Christmas tree for two hours. It offers a brand new interaction experience for consumers.

“This is the largest as well as most creative campaign we have ever worked with Starbucks,” David Liu, Founder and CEO of Jiepang said. “It is interesting to see how a more traditional ad medium becomes a vital part of the location-based marketing, we believe this is going to be more and more popular going forward.”

“We are happy to partner Starbucks with Jiepang to roll out this really engaging, interesting and impressive campaign that connects online interactions to the offline world. It successfully brings Starbucks closer to the consumers during this holiday season,” said Lu Huang, Marketing Director of President Starbucks Coffee Shanghai. Previously the number of virtual badges, which entitle customers to a free upgrade of drink at Starbucks, had been limited to 20,000, but since the campaign has gained so much traction throughout the past few weeks, Starbucks decided to increase the upper limit to 30,000.

About Jiepang

Jiepang (jiepang.com) is a location-based social mobile app that helps friends share where they are offline and in real-time. By “checking-in” with Jiepang’s iPhone, Android, or other mobile application, users share that they’ve arrived at specific venues, as well as share tips, photos, and comments around those venues. Merchants and brands can use Jiepang to reach, engage, and learn about their customers in both the offline and online worlds. To date, over 300 brands have partnered with Jiepang including Starbucks, McDonalds, Nike, Louis Vuitton and more. Jiepang is available for download in the iPhone App Store and Android Market, as an HTML5 or WAP mobile website at Jiepang.com, and also preloaded on all new HTC, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and other smartphone brands in China. Jiepang is headquartered in Beijing, with offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taipei, and other cities as it serves its over 1.5M users in the major cities of greater China region.

Latest updates about Jiepang are available from the official blog and Sina Weibo (Chinese language):

http://we.jiepang.com/

http://t.sina.com/jiepang/

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