On International Coffee day people from all around the world celebrate their love for the coffee but nobody thinks about those who work every day to make this celebration possible: coffee growers. So we decided to make visible the invisible work of thousands of illy people by asking people around the world to celebrate coffee growers for their hard work and give them the most touching and biggest thanks ever. Via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and in 16 illy’s flagship stores placed all around the world, we collected from 140 countries thousands of messages to be delivered directly into the workers’ hands.

On the occasion of International Coffee Day, we made an official announcement through traditional and social media (such as radio, press, social platforms…), inviting coffee drinkers to express their gratitude to coffee growers posting with the hashtag #thanks4thecoffee or leaving a written message in one of illy’s flagship stores around the world. In a few days, we collected half a million of stirring messages, letters, sketches and pictures from 140 countries to be delivered by illy directly to the coffee plantations. One by one. At sunrise all the messages were hanged on the coffee plants, so that workers unaware of this initiative could find them at the start of their working day. To tell them, in the best possible way, #thanks4thecoffee.

Thanks to the huge engagement across online and offline media, we managed to involve 140 countries, collecting 472,995 thank-you messages. Celebrities, influencers, journalists and Andrea Illy himself (followed by all the people from his company) joined the campaign and also sent messages to the coffee growers. As a result, #thanks4thecoffee trended nationally on Twitter, generating news coverage, blog articles and social media posts with a total reach of 51 million impressions. Most importantly, we raised illy’s fan base and reputation as never before, reporting the highest traffic to our social media channels and our stores of all time.