The campaign was not meant to last long. Baristas in certain stores were encouraged to write the words "Race Together" on customer cups to trigger conversations about race. In the NPR story, Karen Grigsby Bates, part of NPR's Code Switch Team, went to six locations over several days and had no invitation to join the race. She said that the baristas appeared to be very busy and perhaps had no time to engage in the conversations.
Although she didn't get invited to the conversation, she did ask one customer, McCall Jones, who said, "I know that some people are uncomfortable with [the campaign]. But I think that to move the conversation forward, simply avoiding it is not the answer."
Barbara Herman from The International Business Times reported that Starbucks' stocks "hit a 52-week high" despite all of the media criticism of the campaign. Herman suggests that Starbucks basically had PR or free advertising for the company that may or may not have been properly effective. Perhaps the employees were not prepared properly, or maybe they just didn't have enough time or will power to talk about the subject.
The campaign also brought parodies. SNL made one called "genderflect" to spark conversations about gender issues at Pepboys.
Finally, there was a lot of controversy on Twitter, especially after a USA Today insert exploring race was released. Many of the tweets were littered with foul language, but here are a few examples of some that were not quite as bad.
Ultimately, it's up to you to decide how compelling this campaign was, depending on how you measure effectiveness.
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