I snapped this picture yesterday at Dunkin Donuts, which is about 100 yards from my office (Grateful, but why can’t it be a Starbucks? 
).
On September 21, Dunkin is executing a classic form of cause promotion with their Purple With A Purpose campaign.
To show their support for World Alzheimer’s Day on Tuesday, 1,100 Dunkin locations across Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire will be offering Purple With A Purpose donuts.
And Dunkin is adding even more dough by contributing $10,000 from its foundation to the Alzheimer’s Association (AA).
This is a nice promotion for AA, and Dunkin is a generous community partner.
But for me this is a promotion of last resort–day old donuts if you will–and one reason why I don’t include cause promotion in my definition of cause marketing.
The reason is simple: there’s no money in it.
While I’ve heard that donut sales are only a fraction of Dunkin’s total revenues–coffee leads the pack–a percentage of sales program involving doughy treats for just a week or two at 1,100 Dunkin stores would raise a lot more than $10,000 and get more promotion if employees were engaged in the ask.
Another missed opportunity is with AA’s efforts–as stated on its homepage–to reach 1,500 Facebook likes by September 21st. Dunkin could have helped with a Facebook coupon for a free donut in exchange for a like on the AA Facebook page. That would have been a great promotion for Dunkin stores!
Purple With A Purpose is a good cause promotion. But it will be a flash in the pan compared to a transactional campaign that would raise lots of dough. It also comes up short compared to a campaign that has a connection with Facebook.
At least with Facebook you have the chance gain a friend that might stay longer than it takes for him or her to eat a donut.
Coffee would raise more, but their namesake is the donut; one would raise more money and the other aligns the very namesake of the company to the cause — I say they should do both.
Since Dunks is comprised of franchise groups, I wonder what, if any, limitations in this promotion are corporate directed and what are franchise association mandated. Or, they just didn't think that far down the road.
Joe, you've made great 3 points, although I agree with Holt Murray above about the best combination of donuts & coffee, because of the brand's name.
Well, at least one company bothers to chose Alzheimer as a purpose for cause marketing campaign. It's a start…
I agree with you, Shirley, and I don't mean to diminish Dunkin's efforts of doing SOMETHING in the community. Good for them and us! But, hey, we can always do better, right? And I think some of the things like the Facebook connection would have been easy.
Joe, you set this up well. I thought, hmm, this campaign seems a bit lackluster–is Joe going to condone or improve it? Should have known you never disappoint. Thanks for offering up two straight-forward tactics that other businesses and nonprofits can implement.
Thanks for the clarification, Betsy. Sharing this with my friends on Twitter. What a great campaign!
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