Social Media Monitoring of Dunkin Donuts

For my project, I decided to monitor Dunkin Donuts. I’m sure all you New Englanders are pretty familiar with the coffee as well as the brand. But being from California (where we don’t have Dunkin Donuts) I was really interested as to why and how this chain became such a local obsession.

To start off, let’s look at some facts about Dunkin Donuts:

-founded in 1950 in Quincy, MA by William Rosenberg

-headquarters are in Canton, MA

-subsidiary of Dunkin’ Brands, along with Baskin Robbins

-serves 2.7 million customers per day in 8,800 locations in 31 countries

-has a few locations in Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, but mostly concentrated in New England

-competitors include Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Honey Dew Donuts, and Mister Donut

Social Media:

Twitter:

-DD joined Twitter on September 9, 2007

-as of this blog post, they have 55,027 followers on Twitter (compared with Starbucks' 968,203)

-currently ranked 2,574th (compared to Starbucks at 275)

  

Here's a chart for June and July of 2010. As you can see the number of followers has been steadily increasing. (Statistics provided by Twitaholic.com)

 Here's some of DunkinDonuts' latest tweets:

 

@SoxPinkPony The "Wally the Green Monster" Coolatta is available in VT. Try it and let us know what you think - one of my fav flavors ^MG

@sarahblacker Glad to hear it! After 60 years, we've certainly become a ritual in many lives because we keep people running all day! ^MG

@laurengcarey Old-fashioned cake Munchkins covered with pink and orange nonpareils. Bright and yummy - perfect for summer :) ^MG

Facebook:

-1,802,065 who "Like" DD on Facebook

Here's what some people had to say on the Facebook page:

Destin Shines!  wished there was a Dunkin' Donuts close by!

Farrah Cerrentano Hoehne We had our baby shower this weekend and our favors included the mini bags of Dunkin Donuts coffee! Great favor for the coffee lover, and DD Addicts.

 

Hector Santiago Love DD coffee and the service is usually decent except for one store: the one on Broadway in Jersey City, NJ. Half the time they are ignorant, especially to the kids there. Then they are not very good with their service other half, since they always seems to mess up the most simplistic they could get

 

Click here for Dunkin Donuts Facebook page statistics (provided by Famecount Social Media) 

As you can see, their number of Facebook fans is rising at a much higher rate than their number of Twitter followers.

Youtube:
-DD joined Youtube in 2006 and currently have 2,106 subscribers

-their uploads have 1,144,171 views

Check out their latest video that shows the making of the Times Square mural

Clearly, Dunkin Donuts is doing a pretty good job of utlizing social media. Their sales revenue has been steadily increasing since 2006. (Statistics provided by moneycentral.msn.com)

Negative Trends:

However, there is also a fair amount of negative trends in online conversation surrounding the company which they could better address.

 


There is a Dunkin Cruelty campaign led by animal rights activists urging Dunkin Donuts to stop using eggs and dairy in their products and to offer a vegan menu. The campaign's slogan "Animals run from Dunkin" reinforces the idea that animals are mistreated in the making of some of the company's products. Dunkin Cruelty also has a Facebook page (with almost 1,500) fans who express their outrage at DD's lack of action. They also point out that Starbucks, DD's biggest    competitor does offer a vegan menu.

In May 2010, DD was criticized for advertising "Free Iced Coffee Day" on its national Facebook page, even though the promotion only took place in 14 stores. 

In 2008, Dunkin Donuts cancelled a commercial featuring Rachael Ray wearing a scarf because conservative observers thought it looked too much like a keffiyeh (traditional scarf of Arab men) and accused the company of being terrorist sympathizers. Although it seems a bit silly, DD felt a lot of pressure from the conservative blogosphere and decided not to risk a possible boycott.

Target Audience:

Dunkin Donuts' target consumer is the middle-class American ranging in age from 18-45. They are coffee enthusiasts, mainly people on the go, and some families. The ideal consumer is a working professional with a family. They are generally in their 30s and enjoy a quick coffee and doughnut before work. The consumer is practical and unappreciative of red tape or fancy marketing. (courtesy of Dunkin Donuts)

Generally, I think Dunkin Donuts has been very good about listening to their customers adapting their advertising to their target audience. They have a close relationship with the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots (thereby appealing to all their fans who tend to fall in the same category as DD's target audience). 

In response to trends in healthier eating among Americans, DD announced plans to greatly reduce trans fat from its menu by switching to different oil. Also launched DDSMART, a healthy new menu. Items on this menu are reduced in calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, or sodium by at least 25%.

And to increase appeal to families or individuals too busy to stop by a store, Dunkin Donuts has started selling their coffee beans at supermarkets, which have increased sales revenue for the company since the launch of the new product. 

Knowing that their biggest competitor is Starbucks and that they share a large portion of their target audience, DD has focused their advertising on pointed out the difference between them and Starbucks. In 2007, Dunkin ran a series of commericals making fun of Starbucks.

While both companies are trying to appeal to the same demographic (working adults), Dunkin Donuts focuses on its "Avergage Joe" customers but making Starbucks appear pretentious.

Despite their best efforts, Starbucks definitely has a much stronger online presence than Dunkin Donuts. This is likely due to the face that their customers tend to be younger, more educated, and therefore more involved in social media. This isn't to say that Starbucks is more popular or has higher sales, but DD definitely needs to energize their groundswell and take into account the Social Technographics profile of their customers.

Social Mention's  sentiment graph shows that while sentiment about DD tends to be more positive than negative, it is still overwhelmingly neutral.

Most mentions about the company in blogs and even on Twitter are only mentions, not positive or negative reviews.

They have also failed to address much of the negative trends in conversation surrounding their company. They have simply ignored campaigns against the company instead of providing a space to communicate with those groups/individuals.

Goals for the Client:

When it comes to social media, Dunkin Donuts has essentially done the bare minimum, Yes, they have a Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter page but they have not been actively engaging their followers or fans. Sometimes new content is posted, but customers are not being listened to. 

My goals for this company would be to create a much stronger online presence. Respond to customer concerns and energize the groundswell!  Their advertising has done a fairly good job of seperating themselves from their competition and creating a strong brand connection but they don't utilize the potential of their online community.

Because many of their customers feel a cultural connection to the company (sports fans, New England natives) Dunkin Donuts should also focus on word-of-mouth marketing. Encourage satisfied customers to talk about your brand. Have more promotions such as the

"Create Dunkin's Next Donut" contest that showed a "healthy response in donut sales during the promotion period".

Getting your morning coffee is a routine for most people. Routines tend to be boring. This is why DD needs to come up with ways to get their customers excited about the not-so-exciting. For example, one of the latest new websites for social media foursquare lets customers "check in" to places online when they go there. Lots of companies will offer rewards for customers checking in multiple times. Dunkin Donuts could certainly utilize this website to get their frequent customers excited about visiting. And definitely keep marketing the donuts!! After all, it's not called Dunkin Coffee.