From Glazed to Grounds Dunkin's Evolution into a Coffee Empire - Campaign Crunch

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to Campaign Crunch, our concise companion to socially unacceptable. Here, in this shorter version of the show, we'll delve into the anatomy of real-world marketing campaigns, dissecting successes, missteps and everything in between, all in just 15 minutes. I'm Chris Norton and, as always, I'm joining with my business partner, will Ockenden, and together we bring our experience of working in social media, marketing, content creation and public relations. Each episode of Campaign Crunch will tackle a specific campaign or crisis, particularly examining its strategy, execution and, most importantly, the key takeaways for you. We'll analyse both the viral sensations and social media horror shows, extracting those actionable insights that'll save you time marketing your own brand.

Speaker 1: 0:49

And I'll be honest with you, the whole reason we're doing this is because we do it with our team. I've got a team of 30 creatives here. We get together once a week and someone will present a campaign that really has inspired them over the last month. So why do we share campaigns internally every week? I'll tell you why because we want to share expertise, inspirational stories and just best practice, so we can share the best work and in great work that you guys are doing out there. So we sometimes just look at what's happening, share it in the team, and I felt that that would be a brilliant thing to bring to this show, so I hope you enjoy Campaign Crunch. It's a much smaller, shorter version of socially unacceptable 15 minutes. Here we go.

Speaker 2: 1:32

Is it acceptable to be so excited if you're unsocially unacceptable? It is unacceptable, actually.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Hi, everybody, welcome back to Campaign Crunch, the micro pod where we try and get a campaign across in 15 minutes, where we celebrate the inspirational bits and pieces from campaigns that we've seen and we wanted to share internally and now we're sharing externally. For this episode we have the lovely Catherine Bibby.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Hello, hello.

Speaker 3: 1:56

You're very excited to be on the product.

Speaker 2: 1:57

I'm very excited.

Speaker 1: 1:59

That's what we want, isn't it? So, katie, do I have to do what you originally did there? Katie, catherine, or do you remember this?

Speaker 2: 2:08

thing. Yeah, I call you.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Katie, normally.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Yeah, well, that's try to rebrand when I moved to the UK, to Kate. I wanted to be a bit, because my last name is Bibby, so like Katie, Bibby is just like a lot, it's a mouthful and so I changed my email to Kate and then I just fell right back into Katie. So, yeah, your first call with me was the hell is your name?

Speaker 1: 2:28

Oh we've got that on the platform. It was like call me whatever you want if you hire me, so why don't you walk us through? Well, what do you do here and what have you brought for us today to discuss?

Speaker 2: 2:38

Yeah, absolutely, I am Katie. I am a junior account manager at Prohibition. I've been here for just over four years. The time has flown and I did a bit of a different creative campaign. So one of our coworkers, who's actually going to be on the pod at some point soon, talked about the Super Bowl in the US and all the different commercials that they have, and I did a bit of a deep dive into one of the gin formerly known as Dunkin Donuts and Ben Affleck, they've dropped the donuts. They've dropped the donuts. They rebranded just Dunkin.

Speaker 3: 3:13

Is that because they're broadening the product range?

Speaker 2: 3:15

Yeah, and they're trying to make it more of like a coffee, less donut focused. So they've changed their menu food wise, but now they have more just coffee pop ups. So they have a few in California.

Speaker 3: 3:26

That seems like a bit of a risky brand extension.

Speaker 1: 3:28

A bit of a leap, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 3:30

Yeah, although we're not terribly familiar with the brand here are we?

Speaker 1: 3:32

They could do a great thing with it, like a person called Dunkin. No, is that too far?

Speaker 2: 3:41

They did have one in Leeds, which was really exciting. I was like, oh, a little piece of home. I went twice. It just didn't taste as good as the one in the US. But they have clothes now. I don't think that the people of Leeds were ready for Duncan.

Speaker 1: 3:52

Donut, duncan Donut. I love a Duncan Donut. Okay, cool, walk us through what they did and yeah, that sounds good.

Speaker 2: 3:58

So basically it is, there's lots of different coffee chains in the US, but Duncan is specifically more like Northeast New England and, in particular, very focused around Boston. So the reason I liked this campaign is that Ben Affleck is from Massachusetts, is known as a Boston actor and pretty sure he's from outside of Boston. Hang on a minute.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Where are you from?

Speaker 2: 4:21

I'm from Connecticut, so still New England, but just wedged in between New York and Massachusetts.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Just be clear. I knew that I was just like, because I think they all thought, oh, maybe she's from Boston.

Speaker 2: 4:31

But I went to school near Boston so I feel like I have an affinity for the city and my family is also big New England Patriots fans, also a Boston team. So yeah, duncan, a huge brand, especially in New England, but really has like a heart in Boston and in like, probably in like the town I'm trying to think about their Boston based films like you'll always see someone with a Duncan coffee in the background, like they just they call it their dunks or their dunkies and yeah, they love it. So Ben Affleck is from Massachusetts and he is a big fan of the brand and there's some you know those like paparazzi pictures at the moment where he looks just miserable with life. But sometimes he'll have like large deliveries of Dunkin Donuts, so like trying to, like you know, precariously balance 15 Dunkin Donuts coffees. So he's been long affiliated with the brand and they totally capitalized on that and they've done this Duncan and Ben Affleck campaign where it called the Dun Kings and it just had so much star power behind it.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Ben Affleck, for those of you who don't know, is married to Jennifer Lopez or JLo and his best friend, who he co-wrote Goodwill Hunting with I believe they wrote it together Matt Damon yeah, matt Damon is his best friend, also from Massachusetts. So this commercial aired before the Super Bowl, but was the Super Bowl commercial of the year and it's all about Ben Affleck, you know, promoting Dunkin, or these Dunkings in this wild track suit. They've done all this like branded merch behind it. They've come up with a different menu and in the video clip is or the commercial is JLo Matt Damon, tom Brady, former quarterback of the New England Patriots, who is just synonymous with the team and brought us what like five Super Bowl rings, so he's beloved in Boston. And then, randomly, rapper Jack Harlow, who's from like Mississippi.

Speaker 1: 6:34

I don't know why he was there, but I mean, the amount of celebrities in this video is insane. The budget must have been off the charts.

Speaker 2: 6:42

Absolutely, and it was just like it's very silly. The commercial is very silly and you have, like, serious actors like Matt Damon and, honestly, like Ben Affleck I'm pretty sure he's meant to be a serious actor just all goofing off. So, yeah, a bit of a different creative campaign. I just loved that they, the brands, just went so grassroots and they knew that like their brand loyalty was people in New England who loved this and they knew that they could go on a national scale with it, but just keeping it in the heart of Boston and, yeah, picking up on the things that Boston love.

Speaker 3: 7:17

So, katie, for anyone that doesn't follow Super Bowl, let's just break it down a bit more so you get these basically ad slots, don't you? And I was reading?

Speaker 1: 7:28

and it's the America's version of Christmas. The only time that we get that sort of visibility is a Christmas on our adverts. But over in America the Super Bowl is like the moment, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 7:38

Yeah, and I was reading it's something like seven million dollars for a 30 second clip, isn't it? It's phenomenally expensive. So you get the biggest brands doing the biggest ads, don't you? And, first of all, one of the trends I've seen which maybe you could talk about is the idea that brands are now previewing their Super Bowl ads, aren't they? So? Is that something that happened in this case?

Speaker 2: 7:58

Yeah, it did. So that's a bit of a strange one and something that I don't necessarily like, because it used to be that you would wait for Super Bowl Sunday and growing up I wasn't the biggest fan of football but I loved the halftime show and I loved the ad breaks and you just wait until the commercials came and then after that they would, you know, play them loads. You'd have like a roundup of commercials, but now brands are releasing them, maybe even upwards, to like a month before including this one. So it's like still the commercial, like the best one of the Super Bowl, but they get a lot more air time with it. Still that 30 second slot during the Super Bowl, like how long is it? Two and a half, three hours, is that seven million? But you also have a little bit more time around it.

Speaker 3: 8:43

So it's fascinating that the ads alone are becoming a cultural phenomenon, aren't they? Yeah, they're an event in itself, in addition to the Superbowl.

Speaker 2: 8:50

And the articles on it are endless to be in these roundups of the top 10 best and worst Superbowl ads what the brands are looking for. I did see an interesting stat though, because obviously it's like seven million for 30 seconds or something like that, which is extortionate. But because it's so broad like how many people are watching the Superbowl on a given Superbowl Sunday you don't really get the brand interaction that you're looking for, so it is just kind of throwing money away.

Speaker 3: 9:19

It's a bit of a flex, bit of a brand flex, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 9:21

I think it's a bit of a brand flex Like you wouldn't, because you're not really getting the best return on investment with it. It is just kind of a drop in the ocean with all these different adverts and people who like football. Once the adverts come on, that's when you get up to get a drink or get a snack or you're chatting. So you could have seven million dollars worth of advertising happening and you're crunching on some crisps, so not donuts.

Speaker 1: 9:45

Talk to us about this ad then.

Speaker 3: 9:47

So I presume they did more than just an ad. Was there a broader kind of comms campaign supporting it?

Speaker 2: 9:52

Yeah, so they did the ad. They had a full menu released. They did branded product, branded merchandising, and they didn't necessarily do they had a press release. That wasn't necessarily that successful, it was more like oh please watch our commercial. But they had a huge social campaign. And, yeah, the advert has also been broken down into smaller segments as well, so they can kind of keep repurposing it. They have a lot of behind the scenes footage that they put on their YouTube showcasing Ben Matt and Tom Brady all trying to throw the football. Obviously, ben Affleck and Matt Damon aren't the most, aren't the best quarterback in the world, tom Brady is, and all of them just kind of goofing around. But that's gotten loads of views and has nothing to do with the brand, except they're still wearing the track suits from the shoot and it feels very organic.

Speaker 3: 10:41

And is it too early to say what kind of results Duncan have got from this? I'd be fascinated to see. Sentiment on the brand what we're looking at. Seven million for the slot. Let's call it 14. If they did two slots, probably.

Speaker 1: 10:51

But how much did they pay the?

Speaker 3: 10:52

actors 40 or 50 million for the actors and the production.

Speaker 2: 10:56

It's like a movie, isn't?

Speaker 3: 10:57

it Movie budget.

Speaker 2: 10:59

Yeah, I feel like it would be movie budget. I'm not sure exactly what the results are as of yet because obviously it's only a month after the Super Bowl. But brand recognition, I think because of how niche chains can be, even though the bigger chains in the US, every kind of corner of the US, has their own. Tim Hortons is more like the Midwest and I can't think of the one that's up north, like north of New York, but there's different chains that people really resonate with. So for Duncan to try to take it nationally is a big step, kind of similar to a Starbucks that started off in Seattle and now global.

Speaker 3: 11:35

Is everywhere, so we're always obsessed with which Super Bowl ads go out every year and I'm intrigued which brands do you think won the Super Bowl this year? Obviously, we've seen things like Uber Eats and the Beckhams, which I know we're going to talk about on a separate show. What grabbed your attention? Was it this one or did another brand get all the color munchers?

Speaker 2: 11:57

I think it was this one. I'm a huge fan of the brand to begin with and I just really like that Ben played into it and released this very goofy side for someone who's a very solemn looking man and known for being a bit of a sour face, and I do like his relationship with his friend Matt Damon a lot, and I just thought that they really did it perfectly for people who are loyal to the brand from that area as well as like just kind of showcasing it in a bit of a goofy light. So this was it for me.

Speaker 3: 12:30

I think there's quite a good lesson for marketers listening. An ad or a piece of content shouldn't just be a piece of content, should it? There's a whole kind of halo of communications that can go on around it, whether it's point of sale activations, it's social media behind the scenes, vignettes for social media. An ad shouldn't be an ad, should it?

Speaker 2: 12:48

It should be so much more, yeah it should definitely have a lot of legs to it and it should have as many cutaways so you can make it work smart or not, harder kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 12:56

And there was some coverage in the Independent the week after that said Super Bowl viewers declare Ben Affleck's Duncan ad the best of the night.

Speaker 3: 13:04

There we go.

Speaker 1: 13:05

So yeah, I mean it won the ad of the night, which is like you say, it's the number one spot. It always amazes me how many people do one-off ads on the Super Bowl nights because of the sheer amount that it costs to do it. You would think it'd be the big brands that are doing regular often and it's just to remind everybody, but it is like a one-off event to do a big one-off ad campaign to get people in front of.

Speaker 3: 13:28

Yeah, there can't be any other event in the world where we I mean, I suppose the UK Christmas ads.

Speaker 1: 13:33

That's what I say. Christmas is similar, isn't it? The holidays are coming, the Coca-Cola all on the John Lewis.

Speaker 2: 13:38

And I would be interested to see, like the big brands, like the Aster, john Lewis I'm trying to get some of the other, like M&S, I guess, like there when they have all the hype before they announce their Christmas thing, like how that would look in comparison to a Super Bowl advert.

Speaker 3: 13:54

Yeah, absolutely. And we can't talk about Ben Affleck without talking about Ben Affleck memes. The man has become a meme, hasn't he? Ben Affleck angry? I love the one where he's in slow motion. Jlo gets in the car and he shuts the door, just sort of turns his head and he's so angry and so depressed. This is past being the eye. I've not seen these.

Speaker 2: 14:13

Well, I know this is an audio based podcast, but here's a picture of Ben serving at Dunkin Donuts at a drive-through window. But just look at the sheer anger on his face. It's just not a happy man.

Speaker 3: 14:24

I say, At least he's getting his hands dirty. I like that. Ben Affleck is a mood.

Speaker 2: 14:28

Ben Affleck is a mood yep.

Speaker 1: 14:31

So every guest that we get on this show, no matter how brief, we ask what is their biggest professional fuckup and what did they learn from it. I'm sweating already. So obviously you worked for us, so this is going to be interesting.

Speaker 3: 14:44

And this, of course, was before you worked for us, wasn't?

Speaker 2: 14:45

it Absolutely had no affiliation with this company.

Speaker 1: 14:49

Hires lawyers quickly.

Speaker 2: 14:50

Yeah, yeah. Well, this was years ago, years and years ago, when I was first getting involved in influencer campaigns and influencer marketing and just working with influencers in general. I was working with a brand that had a very strict cutoff for like engagement rates, so it didn't matter the following like they needed to have, because there's a lot of like followers and they were really specific about having a strong engagement rate and fine. And there was an influencer that had been on a television program that had gotten in touch actually with the brand and I was the one manning the community management that day and I seemed gray and having this conversation with this person. But then I checked their engagement rate and it was extremely low, like lower than I'd seen for. So what rate are you looking for?

Speaker 1: 15:43

normally.

Speaker 2: 15:43

I think we're like probably industry standard, but what they were looking for was like 1.13, like nothing crazy no. But like, as like the benchmark, like nothing really below that, maybe 1.2, but this was 0.0018% engagement rate, which means what it's like your.

Speaker 3: 16:02

Twitter account well. Which means that so it's the quality of followers, not the quantity of followers, but the rackabalm of followers we're looking for, didn't it?

Speaker 1: 16:10

Yes, he does.

Speaker 3: 16:11

Remember that Hashtag blue, yeah, and what does that mean? That's a red flag, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 16:16

It is a red flag. So, even though this person had a million followers, it means that every piece of content that they're putting out is getting such a small fraction of that, like the eyes, that they're getting maybe a like, possibly a couple of comments, but there's a huge like a disproportionate, like cavern between where they should be in comparison to people who have similar followings, and that if someone who has a following of a million or plus followers will also expect a high fee. So to have to put that to the client and say, oh, you know, this person wants X amount of money because they have this many followers, but actually no one likes their posts because they don't have a good engagement.

Speaker 3: 16:56

Or fake followers as well, which is the other consideration.

Speaker 2: 16:58

Right.

Speaker 3: 16:58

That sounds liable, doesn't it?

Speaker 2: 17:00

But yeah Well, we've seen it before, haven't we?

Speaker 1: 17:02

Yeah, we've seen it before you can buy followers a lot platforms.

Speaker 2: 17:06

Anyway, I let the influencer know that we probably wouldn't progress because you know the opportunity wasn't right. And this person asked why? And I just said, oh, unfortunately it's. The numbers just aren't matching up with what we're looking for from someone of this caliber. And the person went straight to the client.

Speaker 3: 17:28

Ooh, I told on you.

Speaker 2: 17:30

And told on me and, yeah, I got a scolding and then I told my mom which is, you know, once you tell your mom, then that's like that person's in the bad books for life and she was like what's their name? And I was like I'm not telling you. I'm so scared.

Speaker 3: 17:44

And was there a famous, semi-famous person?

Speaker 2: 17:46

It was a very much I don't know, type D, type E, celeb. Okay, okay, interesting A reality show and we'll leave that hanging for the future.

Speaker 1: 17:56

Yeah thanks for coming on the show, Kay. You know it was great. You've done a great, you've done us proud there and, yeah, thanks for sharing your story. We might get you on again when you've got another campaign to share.

Speaker 2: 18:06

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 18:06

Next Superbowl.

Speaker 2: 18:07

Yeah, a repeat customer. The end of the video.