Starbucks opened its fall season with a social-first campaign marking the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte — fronted by Martha Stewart and Belmont Cameli, the breakout star of Amazon Prime Video's hit "Off Campus." In the hero video, Stewart gets the jab in first: "Oh, Pumpkin Spice Latte? The drink that makes us all a little more basic?" Then the shrug: "This smells like my house in the fall. It's perfect." Within days, the video passed 10 million views on Starbucks' Instagram.
The PSL is both an autumn ritual and a long-running punchline — meme culture's shorthand for "basic," cookie-cutter taste. Starbucks' move this year is neither to dodge the joke nor to argue with it, but to absorb it: basic isn't a bad thing. The casting is what makes that position credible. Stewart — framed in the release as "the queen of fall and keeping it real" — isn't celebrity authority deployed to overrule the mockery; she's the most tasteful possible person declaring love for the most mainstream possible drink, which quietly disarms the insult at the root.
Cameli is the second axis. Referencing "Off Campus" — part of the wave of hockey-romance adaptations with an established fandom — the ad plays a generational collision for laughs: Cameli comments on Stewart's hot order (his is iced), and she brushes him off with "Should I know him?" Ancillary content, including a video of Cameli repeatedly winking at the camera, is pulling strong engagement. Anomaly, Starbucks' U.S. creative agency, built the campaign, running across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube Shorts.
Separately, Starbucks is airing "There's Only One PSL," a 30-second TV spot built around user-generated content from fans and creators who've gotten inventive about their PSL love — with a "Family Guy" clip spliced in. The business backdrop supports the playbook: August's Unicorn Frappuccino return drove the brand's best sales weekend ever, and Q2 2026 comparable sales rose 7.9% in the U.S. and globally, prompting Starbucks to raise full-year guidance.
The lesson isn't the celebrity budget — it's the sequence. When a meme about your brand already exists, you have three options: ignore it, rebut it, or embrace it. Starbucks embraced it and solved the credibility problem through the messenger. Once the brand says the insult out loud first, the insult stops working as an attack. It's the same family of move as Pizza Hut Dropped 'Pizza' for a Month — Why the Brand Is Just 'Hut' — confronting the perceived weakness head-on.
The second lesson is how to borrow fandom. The "Off Campus" reference rides an existing audience rather than manufacturing one, and cutting fan UGC into the TV spot applies the same principle: don't create the conversation, make room for the brand inside the one already happening. Read it alongside How Coca-Cola Is Playing College Football Season — Creators, Fantasy Sports, and a 74-Campus Tour, which takes the same approach to seasonal sports fandom.
Since its debut, the PSL has become a mass-market autumn ritual — and meme culture's shorthand for conformist taste. Rather than fighting that perception, Starbucks built this year's campaign around embracing it.
The Martha Stewart hero video generated over 10 million views on Starbucks' Instagram within days of debuting, and supporting content featuring Belmont Cameli has drawn strong engagement.
Messenger choice is everything. Starbucks had a high-credibility figure voice the insult and defuse it, rather than rebutting it in the brand's own voice. Riding a meme without fully understanding its context can backfire.
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