‘Dumb Starbucks Coffee’ A Genius Guerrilla Marketing Stunt?

This past weekend, a new kind of coffee shop opened in Los Angeles, CA called ‘Dumb Starbucks Coffee‘. The parody coffee shop obviously pokes fun at the coffee giant, Starbucks. Although the pop-up coffee shops uses practically the same logo, branding and menu items, the staff insists they are not braking any laws.

In fact, the coffee shop is almost identical to a real Starbucks apart from the word ‘dumb’.

The parody shop has been generating a lot of buzz recently and has attracted a large crowd eager to get some dumb coffee. Starbucks recently responded to the fact that they are aware of the coffee shop.

In an email to USA TODAY Network on Monday, Starbucks said Dumb Starbucks is not affiliated with Starbucks.

“We are evaluating next steps and while we appreciate the humor, they cannot use our name, which is a protected trademark,” according to Starbuck’s email.

With this amount of press covering the new store, it begs the question if it is truly unaffiliated or in fact a funny marketing stunt conceived by the coffee giant.

You can follow the updates via the Dumb Starbucks Coffee Twitter account.

UPDATE: 4:47pm PST

Dumb Starbucks responds.

[ via USA Today & Dailymail ]