Starbucks’ Vice President of Brand, Content and Online, Chris Bruzzo, appeared at Mashable Media Summit today and gave away a bit of a ‘secret’ – he revealed that last year’s Free Pastry Day drove more than one million people to stores to grab some free baked goods.  This promotion was almost entirely conducted via social media channels.  According to Mashable (who hosted the Summit), Starbucks has managed to dominate on Facebook, made news as the first company to offer a nationwide Foursquare deal, and was selected to try out Twitter’s Promoted Tweets ad platform before other advertisers will have the chance.

Love them or hate them, Starbucks is the brand to beat on social media channels.  Or at least the brand to take a closer look at and see what creative ideas you can glean from them…