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Social Media Monitoring Project # 1

Introduction

Dunkin' Donuts is an American multinational coffee/donut company and quick-service restaurant. It was founded by William Rosenberg in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1950. The chain was acquired by Baskin-Robbins' holding company Allied Domecq in 1990; its acquisition of the Mister Donut chain and the conversion of that chain to Dunkin' Donuts facilitated the brand's growth in North America that year. Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins have been subsidiaries of Dunkin' Brands, headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts, since 2004. The chain began rebranding as a "beverage-led company", and was renamed Dunkin', in January 2019.

With nearly 12,000 locations in 36 countries, Dunkin' is one of the largest coffee and baked goods chains in the world. Its products include donuts, bagels, other baked goods, and a variety of hot and iced beverages.

Platforms

Dunkin' has a simple strategy on social media - to effectively sell their colorful and quirky personality online. The brand found their social voice through fun, lifestyle images of their desserts, and also by leveraging user-generated content. 
Currently, Dunkin' Donuts has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

               
(15.7-plus million likes on Facebook, 1.2M-plus followers on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+.)
Pumpkin season is here and Dunkin' launched a line of goods featuring pumpkins. Pumpkin coffee, lattes, donuts, munchkins donut holes and more.

Dunkin's social media strategy is aimed at growing and maintaining a highly engaged global community of Dunkin’ Donuts fans. They work to consistently provide meaningful content and promote a two-way dialogue between the brand and passionate fans. They’re a fun brand, and their guests who rely on them for coffee and donuts expect a little fun from them by making Dunkin’ Donuts part of their daily lives, either through status updates with pictures or questions or with fun challenges and sweepstakes tied to marketing calendar initiatives.

Let's take a look at a few of Dunkin' Donuts' key metrics from the last month.

Facebook 

We can see that the growth rate of fans on the facebook account is stable, with some fluctuations, but the overall trend is normal.



From 9.25 to 9.29, there was a significant increase in fan interaction over the five days.
Starting Sept. 25, Dunkin posted five blog posts to warm up for the National Coffee Day and offered a "buy one get one free" deal. Although I didn't know about the festival, the promotion was definitely a success in terms of the number of comments it received
                   

Twitter & Instagram
     
Interactions on Twitter and Instagram also show that holiday promotion works.



As we mentioned above, Dunkin's marketing strategy was defined by a concerted effort to reach an authentic audience and produce high engagement rates by utilizing micro-influencers. They want to use natural and authentic posts to appeal to the sensibility of small influencer followings and raise awareness of Dunkin's coffee-first. Posts mainly focused on being realistic and relatable to the audience, promoting Dunkin's new handcrafted espresso drinks.

Competition


Starbucks and Dunkin' are the two largest eatery chains in the United States that specialize in coffee. Both companies offer similar coffee options—although different food options—and both have similar overall strategies.

A significant difference between Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks involves their generic strategies.

Starbucks is a bigger company in terms of market capitalization and number of stores globally, Dunkin' stores resemble more traditional fast-food eateries. While Dunkin' Donuts focuses on low cost, Starbucks strives to differentiate their products, it has also built a more premium brand, has stores that look more like a comfortable coffee house, and has a more extensive menu and more product customization. Dunkin' Donuts is more affordable to the overall population, but Starbucks is more appealing to coffee drinkers who like to enjoy their specialty drinks in an inviting atmosphere.

 Some coffee lovers adore Dunkin' Donuts, others prefer Starbucks and still others don't give a hoot as long as they get their caffeine fix. On the social engagement side, however, a clear winner emerges. From a social-media perspective, the stronger a company's social media exposure and customer engagement, the more potential it has to increase brand awareness and communicate promotions and loyalty programs going forward. Although Dunkin' Donuts has a strong presence in Northeastern U.S., they do not have a strong presence in other areas of the country.



What's the difference between Starbucks and Dunkin'?

Locations

 First, let's get a simple truth out of the way. The Seattle based Starbucks, is a vastly bigger chain. They operate over 23,000 locations globally, 13,000 of which are in the U.S. Their last widely reported earnings were $16 Billion (about 20% of their revenues are from overseas). Domestically, only 47% of their restaurants are franchises, the majority are owner-operated.
By contrast, nearly every location of the Boston-based Dunkin Donuts is a franchise, with franchise owners responsible for a large amount of the operational costs; including kitchen equipment. The relative sizes of the chains are very different as well. Dunkin has just under 8,000 locations domestically (of 11,300 globally).

The Raw Numbers
  • Starbucks
The Seattle-based coffee giant has 36 million likes on Facebook, with nearly 35 million fans following. Additionally, 5.5 million of us have visited the brand's page. On Twitter, the numbers are just as large: 11.3 million followers who have been on the receiving end of 202K tweets. Starbucks has uploaded 549 videos since it joined YouTube in November 2005. It has about 240K subscribers who have watched the videos 128 million times.
  • Dunkin'
DD, as the brand calls itself on social networks, has a smaller following than Starbucks. There are nearly 15 million Facebook likes. The coffee/fast-food/doughnut chain is a heavy Twitter user, notching up 90.9K tweets with its 1.2M followers. DD has uploaded just 257 videos in the little more than six years it's been on YouTube. It has 40.5K subscribers, and its videos have attracted 32 million views.


Content
  • Starbucks
  1. The social profiles of Starbucks have a very product-oriented feel. Most of the photos posted by the company have a minimalistic feel and feature a Starbuck product one way or another (especially Instagram). The photographs have a 'classy' upper-class feel.
  2. The Pinterest boards of Starbucks shows how Starbucks can be integrated into the daily lives of the consumer. Boards on coffee and tea recipes being an example.
  3. The Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles integrate mission and corporate values of Starbucks. Posts supporting employees, about their commitment to veterans and society (supporting hurricane Irma victims).
  4. The company YouTube account exemplifies the corporate values and also integrates fun into the product. An example of this is the pumpkin spice latte 'hatch video'.

  • Dunkin' Donuts
  1. The social profiles of Dunkin' Donuts also have a product-oriented feel. The photos that are posted on the social profiles focus on the coffees and food items that are sold by the company, however with a flair for color. The pictures are vibrant often with a pink or orange color pallet, a callback to the company's branding as we mentioned above. This is also particularly apparent on their Instagram page.
  2. The Pinterest account of Dunkin' Donuts has boards dedicated to cooking with Dunkin’s and other DD-related boards, such as "our world of donuts' and #DDPumpkin.
  3. On YouTube Dunkin' Donuts utilized celebrities in their video creation to make fun and engaging videos. A very popular example of this is the 'Sippin' video made with David Ortiz and Rob Gronkowski.
  4. The Facebook and the Twitter accounts of Dunkin' Donuts have very similar posts where they are videos posted (that are also available on the YouTube channel).

Differences

 Both companies are present on the same social media channels and the channels they are active on are properly branded. Social media differentiations for Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts are:
  1. Starbucks shares more socially responsible content than Dunkin' Donuts. This will appeal to the socially conscious millennials.
  2. In terms of content posted to social profiles, Dunkin' Donuts has more of a 'fun' vibe, where Starbucks has a more relaxed 'sit back and enjoy life' kind of feel.
  3. Dunkin Donuts shares most of the same content cross-platform, while Starbucks seems to change the format of/content to tailor it to each platform. This sets Starbucks apart from Dunkin' Donuts as they seem to be providing more unique or platform tailored content.
  4. Starbucks has social channels for drinks, in particular, the pumpkin spice latte which can be found at https://twitter.com/TheRealPSL.


Final Thoughts

Dunkin' Donuts has focused on becoming a cost leader in the U.S. coffee and snack shop industry which is defined as "offering the same or better quality product or service at a price that is less than what any of the competition is able to do."And they did. But when compared with Starbucks, we can see the disadvantages of Dunkin'. Starbucks has successfully brought its brand message into the social sphere. DD has not. The former's social networks appear to align with the company's image, and it seems to understand there's a give and take, which ultimately helps the company. DD seems to be on social networks because they have to. DD needs to work harder on their social media if they want to grow better.



Thank you for reading!


Source:
1. Starbucks vs. Dunkin' : What's the Difference? By Shoshanna Delventhal. Apr 19, 2019
2. What Dunkin' Donuts Can Learn From Starbucks' Social Strategy? By David Cohen. April 3, 2018
3. Social Media Throwdown: Dunkin' Brands vs. Starbucks. By Dan Moskowitz. Jan 13, 2014
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