America Runs on Dunkin'

When the founder of Dunkin’ Donuts, Bill Rosenburg, opened his first store in 1950 in Quincy, Massachusetts, his goal was to "make and serve the freshest, most delicious coffee and donuts quickly and courteously in modern, well-merchandised stores."

As a market leader in coffee and baked goods, selling about 2.5 million donuts a day, more than 1 billion cups of coffee a year, and serving more than 3 million customers per day, it is clear that America certainly does run to Dunkin' in order to get fueled up for work or play.

At the end of 2011, Dunkin' Donuts global presence included 10,083 stores worldwide (7,015 franchises in 36 states and 3,068 international shops in 32 countries) with reported sales of approximately $8.4 billion.

 

In April of 2006, Dunkin' launched their primary advertising campaign "America Runs on Dunkin'." The launch of this campaign marks the most significant repositioning effort in the company’s 60-year history. The campaign comes to life through a set of interactive icons that represent the campaign tagline, “America Runs on Dunkin’.” The icons help to drive the concept that Dunkin’ Donuts’ freshly made coffee and baked goods energize Americans from all walks of life so they can keep the country running on their dedicated hard work and positive outlooks.

Within this parent campaign, Dunkin' has launched a multitude of promotions, contests, and sweepstakes, including "The Great Gronk-Off," "Create Dunkin's Next Donut," "Caught Cold," and "UnFreeze," to name a few. They have also brought several celebrity athletes onboard to endorse them, such as Miami Heat's LeBron James, NY Giants' Eli Manning, NE Patriots' Rob Gronkowski, Boston Celtic's Avery Bradley, Boston Bruins' Tyler Seguin, along with tv/film personalities Rachel Ray, Derek Ramsay, Al Pacino, and John Goodman (voice-overs).

In monitoring Dunkin' Donuts social media activity for this campaign over the past few weeks, I present here somewhat expected, but nevertheless interesting, analytical data associated with this wildly successful campaign.

Utilizing such online monitoring tools as Addictomatic, Google Trends, Ice Rocket, SocialMention, QuantCast, and Social Bakers to track and analyze the social media buzz surrounding the brand throughout the "America Runs on Dunkin'" campaign to see how Dunkin' is tapping into the groundswell.  I will look at social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Dunkin' website, blogs, videos, and images posted on said networks, that directly relate to the brand to see how Dunkin' connects with their customers and uses promotions, contests, sweepstakes, games, etc. to grow their customer base. 

Below are the results of a search on Addictomatic for Dunkin' Donuts social media activity over the past few weeks. Not surprisingly, there are many and varied social media sites, news sites, image areas, blogs, and feeds where there has been some mention of the Dunkin' Donuts brand.

 
Look Who's Talking

Twitter and Facebook:
The Dunkin' Donuts brand created an online presence starting in 2008 and it currently exists across multiple social media platforms. Their strategy, aimed at growing and maintaining a highly engaged global community of their fans, has taken off with 8.3+ million Facebookers, 204,000+ Tweeters, as well as regional accounts like @DunkinBoston, which boasts over 15,000 followers.

Dunkin' Donuts does an outstanding job of engaging with their customers by responding to them on social networking sites like Twitter (below) and Facebook. By posting questions and polls, Dunkin' is very successful in generating conversations and interest with their audience.

 

Whether comments are positive or negative, or a customer has a question, Dunkin' always makes a timely response, as can be seen in the three Facebook posts below.

negative comment

positive comment

general question

 

In addition to the 'DD Mothership' (corporate) Facebook account, individual franchises and groups of franchises have their own pages as well. These are typically a group of several franchises located in and around a large city such as Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. It is through the use of these more specific pages that franchises can have special promotions and events just for their area. This works especially well for the international locations. 

Website:

With a bright, colorful, easy to navigate, user-friendly website, Dunkin' Donuts provides a wealth of pertinent information that any individual in their demographic might want or need. 

From coffee products, bakery items and sandwiches to nutritional information, store locations, merchandise, blogs, and DD Perks Rewards program customers can easily find their specific interest. The most pertinent information appears on the homepage, such as the current contest or sweepstakes, links to their blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and the new mobile app download.

Blogs:

With the launch of a revitalized dunkindonuts.com in January 2011, the Behind The Beans blog was born.  The blog is utilized by corporate executives like CEO and President, Nigel Travis, and employees such as Jessica Gioglio, Public Relations and Social Media Manager; Heidi Curry, Culinary Team; and Rick Golden, Manager of Donut Excellence, to cover a variety of topics and issues that would be of interest to their audience.

YouTube:

The "America Runs On Dunkin'" campaign has been a huge success in the video realm, with 2,664 subscribers and an aggregate number of views at 1,182,964. With 55 videos including celebs like Rachel Ray, Avery Bradley, Rob Gronkowski, and Eli Manning, subscribers and views continue to rise daily.

Analytical Data Observations

Social Mention: 
According to Social Mention, Dunkin' Donuts is definitely being talked about.  Social Mention provides reports on Dunkin's social media activity based on strength (the likelihood the brand is being discussed), sentiment (the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are negative), passion (measure of the likelihood those talking about the brand will so do repeatedly), and reach (measure of the range of influence).  This analytical site uses algorithms to aggregate social media data which appears below for Dunkin' from February 11, 18, and 25.  Sentiment for Dunkin' is consistently positive, with their customers using social media to talk about the brand. 

Google Trends:
Below is a graph from data on Google Trends which charts Web Search interest in DD from January 2005 to date for the United States. The time period from April 2004 (2 years prior to campaign launch) through the first spike in 2006 is pretty flat...this was the period before the launch of the America Runs on Dunkin' campaign. You’ll notice that in addition to several spikes throughout the time of the campaign, interest in DD continued to climb overall. These spikes were precipitated by the news headlines, promotions, contests and sweepstakes.

QuantCast:

Drilling down even further QuantCast reveals the composition of Dunkin' Donuts online viewership.  This valuable data shows where Dunkin' Donuts could focus their marketing efforts to increase their customer base.

IceRocket:
Here, IceRocket shows the percent of all blog posts mentioning Dunkin' Donuts brand over the past 3 months. The spike on the left for December 02, 2012 was buzz surrounding the Dunkin' Donuts Patriot's PreGame Special...world's biggest virtual tailgate. The previous spike in November pertains to news, videos and information on The Great Gronk-Off. On November 30, Dunkin' published news and videos of Patriot's Rob Gronkowski hanging out with lucky Dunkin' Donuts sweepstakes winners at Gillette Stadium. The last spike on the right corresponds with the news about Dunkin' holding onto their Customer Loyalty top ranking it's seventh year straight.

 
Below is data collected for 2012-2013 showing the amount of unique visitors per month for that time period. The upward climb and spike in September coincides with the launch of Dunkin's new mobile app.
  

 

Dunkin's customers are an enthusiastic group.  The company does a phenomenal job engaging this enthusiasm with a consistent use of promotions, contests, sweepstakes, and all around general conversations with them. Finally, with the data collected from socialbakers, you can see how Dunkin's following continues to climb steadily in an upward trend.

(Social Media Monitoring Project Part 1)