Ah, November. The unofficial start to the holiday season. The creepy costumes and shelves of candy are gone from the supermarkets, and instead the aisles are filled with enough Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations to make your head spin.

With the start of November, we also get the annual reveal of the new Starbucks holiday cup. Consumers eagerly await the new design of the Starbucks cup each year, flooding Instagram with pics of when and where they got their first Peppermint Mocha of the season.

This year, that reveal has given consumers a little more than they bargained for — whether they were actual Starbucks patrons or just the average Joe looking at social media for the latest news of the day. It turns out the basic red "Christmas cup" design Starbucks put out this year has upset and offended a few Christians who thought the design's lack of holiday symbols was yet another sign of the "war on Christmas."

Now, whether this minimalist version of the Starbucks cup is really worth all the fuss and outrage is certainly one question that's floating around the social media sphere. I think the real question should be, did Starbucks' marketing team just receive the best Christmas present of the year?

We've all heard of outrageous marketing campaigns, but in today's world companies are benefiting from outrage marketing. And I think that's exactly the case we have here.

Do you know what the No. 1 goal/hope of most every marketing executive is these days? To have one of your content pieces, events or videos go viral. You can't look at the trending marketing news these days without finding tips on how to make your marketing content go viral.

And to make that "viral" status more attainable these days, it seems all you have to do is add in a little consumer outrage be it legitimate or not.

Take, for instance, the case of Chick-fil-A: Remember when everyone was up in arms because the home of the original chicken sandwich's president Dan Cathy came out against gay marriage? Social media news feeds lit up in the summer of 2012 with people calling for boycotts and demanding justice over the outrage caused by the company's discrimination.

The only problem there? Outrage can backfire. It may start out unifying one group for the cause, but the tide can quickly change, bringing out the other side. In fact, instead of shutting down due to the boycotts of gay rights activists, Chick-fil-A actually saw sales rise after that negative PR because of outrage marketing.

The same type of thing happened with Hobby Lobby as well. Back in 2014, when the company tried to exempt certain contraceptives from employees' medical insurance on moral grounds, they were met with fierce outrage. And by fierce, I mean dozens of protesters. That’s right ... dozens.

And guess what? The boycott didn't work. Instead, outrage marketing took over. Since there was so much press coverage over the Supreme Court decision and the ins and outs of Hobby Lobby's business practices, the company probably ended up losing some customers, but also winning over consumers that may have not even shopped there before all the outrage.

Again, we're forced to look at the old saying, "There's no such thing as bad publicity." With the viral momentum outrage marketing creates, and the ease with which social media networks spread the outrageous message, negative coverage doesn't always mean a decline in sales.

Therefore, companies have to embrace the outrage and capitalize on it. No, I'm not saying, go out there and say or create something offensive just to get your name in the news. I'm just saying, don't panic if something potentially negative comes out about your company. Take a breath, look at both sides of the argument and make a plan to make the best out of a bad situation.

In the words of Starbucks chairman and CEO Howard Schultz, "Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising."

So, what do you think of the latest Starbucks news? Accidental offense-inducing material, or brilliant marketing strategy by a corporate giant?