Dunkin Donuts | Cheryl Waller

Dunkin’ Donuts Launches Search for “President of Dunkin Nation” via Foursquare, Facebook Places

If you missed your chance to become Dunkin’ Donuts’s ultimate coffee fan, you still have a chance to leverage your social media savvy for proper fanboy (or fangirl) recognition: From now until September 23, the food and beverage chain is giving customers who check in to U.S. Dunkin’ Donuts locations using Foursquare or Facebook Places a chance to be named the “President of Dunkin’ Nation.”

To enter, participants need to register their Facebook Places or Foursquare credentials on Dunkin’s Facebook Page. Fans are then invited to check in at Dunkin’ Donuts locations once per hour, up to 10 times per day.

The person with the most checkins each week is eligible to be named the President of Dunkin’ Nation for the week. (There will be five winners in total, for each of the five weeks.) A leaderboard on Dunkin’s Facebook Page will help them track their status in real-time.

Those whose checkin behaviors are less naturally competitive are also eligible to win a $25 gift card simply for checking in.

One concern: spam. Ten checkins at the same retail location in a single day is considered excessive by most users of location-based social networks, and while users can opt not to broadcast their checkins to their friend networks on Foursquare, the same option does not exist for Facebook Places users. Although there’s a chance that so many checkins will quickly alert participants’ friend networks to the promotions, there’s also a serious risk that participants will overwhelm their friends, thus losing a chunk of their followers and developing a less-than-savory association with Dunkin’s brand in the process.

Kevin Vine, interactive marketing manager in Dunkin’s brands division, admitted that he hadn’t considered the possibility of spam, but noted that participants using Foursquare could hide their checkins. At the end of the day, he says, it’s more important to open up the promotion to as many people as possible — and that means making it available to Facebook’s vast userbase in addition to Foursquare’s.

In speaking of goals for the campaign, Vine says the company would be pleased to see 100,000 people participate. He emphasized that the campaign is less about driving traffic to Dunkin’ Donuts locations than “celebrating and rewarding our dedicating fans who are already engaging in this kind of [checkin] behavior,” although the former is still important.

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Blast Ice With User-Controlled Water Cannon in Dunkin’ Donuts Facebook Game

To promote the arrival of Mountain Dew’s new Coolatta beverage at Dunkin’ Donuts locations, the two brands have created a Facebook game that allows selected users to melt a cup of Coolatta from a block of ice using a computer-controlled water cannon.

From May 2 until May 29, those who complete the online entry form at dunkindonuts.com/dew will be entered for a chance to play the game. Selected participants (about 500-600 each day) will then be prompted via e-mail or SMS to pre-program three shots and tune in to a live video stream at facebook.com/DunkinDonuts the next day to see if their shots in action. The first person to unfreeze the cup each day wins a prize, such as a surfboard or mountain bike.

The brands were inspired similar campaigns from Saatchi & Saatchi LA and Real Art Design Group this past holiday season. The former set up a game of “Nog Pong” that allowed users to play a live game of virtual pong using a webcam and a computer-controlled robot against some of Saatchi & Saatchi LA’s employees, dressed in festive gear. The latter enabled participants to control a mammoth “Santa Claw” to pick up plastic-encased prizes from a bin using their mice.

The problem with both games is that they amassed huge queues. Would-be players often had to wait hours to play, and were not always online when their turn came up, leading to further delays and a boring livestream experience for observers. Thus Dunkin’ decided to ask users to pre-program their shots, Dave Tryder, Dunkin’ Donuts’s director of interactive and relationship marketing, says. Dunkin’ also decided to host the game on Facebook because Facebook’s younger core demographic aligns well with the company’s target consumer, he adds.

While logistically we think the campaign is an improvement on similar past promotions, we’re not terribly excited by the prospect of unfreezing a soft drink cup with a pre-programmed water gun. It’s less engaging if we’re not participating in real time, we find.

Do you agree? Will you give the game a go?

More About: dunkin donuts, facebook, MARKETING, mountain dew, pepsico

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