Coffee Talk (Show and Tell)

Considering how many Starbucks cups are carried into Room 309 every Saturday, I couldn't pass this up.

A few years ago, Starbucks started printing little nuggets of crowdsourced wisdom on their coffee cups, as part of their "The Way I See It" campaign.  They welcomed (and continue to receive) submissions from authors, entertainers, social leaders and plenty of regular ol' caffeine fiends. Some -- though not all -- of these saccharine little quotes tell a brief story or share some lesson.

And interestingly, while the outward narrative is what appears on each cup, Starbucks is also weaving its own corporate tale between the lines. The Starbucks website describes the campaign as "continuing the tradition of the coffee house as a place of conversation, ideas, and enlightenment."  By printing these cups with their customers' own stories, they're really selling the idea that Starbucks is about more than just coffee, without directly saying so.