It’s wonderful when a marketing department shows they’re thinking – and the folks over at Dunkin’ Donuts are doing a wonderful job.

Specifically, instead of following the herd mentality (“let’s copy whatever competitors are doing for ads”), they’ve beautifully identified their strengths, chosen their target market accordingly, and pursued it with a vengeance.

But let’s take a step back and review.  For the uninitiated, Dunkin’ Donuts is a popular chain with its roots in the Northeast. Having grown up in the Boston and New York areas, I’m a huge fan of their core product offerings – namely industrial-strength donuts and coffee.  Their donuts and coffee are the platonic ideal “cop” food.  They’re dependable, consistent, greasy and leaden. The chocolate glazed, particularly, may be compared favorably with the lead shielding on a nuclear reactor – and the beverages are sufficiently hot to have come from the inside of said reactor.  The food is great, reasonably priced, and perfect for a New England winter.

That said, in the last decade, Dunkin’ Donuts faced significant competition – from Krispy Kreme (whose Donuts I also love, though it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison, Krispy is for hot climates), and more significantly from Starbucks, who was somehow able to charge obscenely more for worse coffee and dried out pastries, because they were “chic”.

Now, for a while, the folks over at Dunkin’ fell into the McDonalds / Burger King (or Coke / Pepsi) trap, where the current follower’s marketing mimics that of the current leader until no-one can tell the difference – or cares. Dunkin’ tried to upscale their outlets, introduced new flavored coffees and pastries, and in general, tried to be ‘chic’. It was a miserable failure. They didn’t capture the ‘chic’ crowd, who laughed at them, and Dunkin’ annoyed their core “real worker” clientele.

But the Dunkin’ marketers have turned it around.  Their latest TV commercial says it all, making fun of the hordes and huge lines at Starbucks trying to figure out which of the 50 italian-named coffee choices they should order – while a happy Dunkin’ customer (a “regular-lookin joe”) grabs his COFFEE (no fancy smackaccinos here!) and zips past them in a fraction of the time.

What can I do but applaud. Kudos, kudos, kudos!

So the moral of the story?

Be true to your brand. Your offering has value to a customer segment – so don’t hide it. Celebrate it.

With that, adieu until next week, I’m off to find a (quick) donut.

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