Kelly Clarkson sharing a cup of coffee with farmers in Peru. Promotional photo by GMCR.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is enlisting the help of pop star Kelly Clarkson to help push its Fair Trade-certified coffees in a promotional campaign called “Great Coffee, Good Vibes, Choose Fair Trade.”
The campaign highlights a trip Clarkson took to a Green Mountain supplier farm in Peru. In a travelogue, Clarkson comments on pictures from her visit, saying things like “Not how I imagined coffee would look” (regarding a picture of a ripe coffee cherry), “The whole community gets involved!” and, “Through Fair Trade, Green Mountain Coffee and farmers work closely to bring the best tasting coffee to market. Yum!”
GMCR was recognized by Fair Trade USA as the largest purchaser of Fair Trade-certified coffee in 2012 for the third consecutive year. The campaign with Clarkson includes a Facebook promotion, retail activations, digital advertising and a microsite. It will also include a live Clarkson concert webcast on Facebook on October 10. A goal of the Clarkson promotion is to drive consumers to the company’s “Three Continent Blend” of Fair Trade-certified beans, with a special emphasis on its Keurig K-Cups.
This is is not the first time a massive coffee company has enlisted the voice of a celebrity to help promote the sustainability value of its single-serve coffee capsules (this, of course, is regarded by many specialty coffee professionals as an oxymoronic concept). George Clooney is currently a member of the “sustainability board” for GMCR’s single biggest competitor in the pod market, Nespresso.
Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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Pretty light weight position, pretty expensive puff piece. Kelly should check the prices GMCR is paying for coffee and how they are paying less every year while their profits soar. See CNBC of september 9, 2013.
A fact that does not back their fair trade claim. Fair trade also means insuring that the farmers make a livable wage not “directly squeezing a low price from them”.
Isn’t it ironic that they’re talking about “sustainable” and K-Cups? Seems to defeat the purpose of having sustainable coffee in disposable cups.
I actually used to have a lot of respect for Kelly Clarkson, but she is either so enamored of the enormous paycheck she got from GMCR, or such a bonehead that she doesn’t read much. Earth to Kelly: There are serious fair traders right under yer purty little nose and oh by thwe way, GMCR’s nonrecyclable, non-biodegradable KCups are the single most destructive coffee contribution to the environment in the history of coffee, with the exception of DDT, Malathion and Parathion sprayed on many non-organic coffees (Oh, GMCR, do you know what’s sprayed on YOUR coffees?)