A Penny for a Thought...

Recap  🍩 As one of the world's largest coffee conglomerate, Dunkin' Donuts continues to be one of the most well-known coffee spots in the United States, selling approximately 1.9 billion cups of coffee a year. Despite its popularity, Dunkin' Donuts does not effectively communicate with the groundswell, and receives a lot of negative feedback for this and a very poor review.  On September 25, 2018, Dunkin' Donuts caused a stir with an announcement that they would officially be changing their name to Dunkin', forever changing the iconic name and logo. As seen in the first part of this Social Media Monitoring project,while most customers saw the change as either positive or neutral, there were many that had nothing but bad things to say about the change--which resulted in negative comments and posts on the Dunkin' social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The second part of this analysis will review recent analytics and provide suggesti...

The story of one of the most popular coffee franchises began in 1948 with the opening of a restaurant named Open Kettle in Quincy, Massachusetts. After successfully selling ￠5 donuts and ￠10 coffees, founder William Rosenburg decided to rename his restaurant “Dunkin' Donuts” in 1950 with the goal to "make and serve the freshest, most delicious coffee and donuts quickly and courteously in modern, well merchandised store.” Since its humble beginnings in Quincy, Dunkin' Donuts has become an internationally recognized brand, with over 12,000 restaurants worldwide, including 8,500 restaurants within 41 states in the U.S. and 3,200 across 36 countries. As one of two subsidiaries of Dunkin' Brands Inc. , Dunkin' Donuts serves roughly 1.9 billion cups of coffee per year. America Runs on Dunkin' On September 25, 2018, Dunkin' Brands Group Inc. announced that they would be changing their name from Dunkin' Donuts to Dunkin'. This rebrandi...

Transforming Your Company &  Fostering the Internal Groundswell As discussed in previous blog posts, there are many ways to engage and tap into the groundswell. These include listening to, talking to, energizing, and sustaining the groundswell. Upon reading the ninth chapter of  Groundswell , we learned of the last technique --embracing the groundswell. As Li and Bernoff comment, although it is a great way to get feedback on product development and projected product success, it can be a challenge to collaborate with your customers. No matter how difficult, it is important to engage with your customers because they want to connect and give you their feedback. Since they are already doing so via blogs, ratings, videos, and reviews it is in your companies best interest to embrace the feedback directly, in a positive manner.  The two best ways to embrace the groundswell is to (1) act upon its suggestions and modify products and (2) keep the doors of communication...

For many the winter holidays--especially Christmas and Hanukkah-- are known as the most wonderful time of the year. From the day after Thanksgiving until January 2nd, there is an endless celebration of good cheer and holiday-themed decorations. In order to stay within the lines of political correctness and to avoid offending the masses, many companies have chosen to stick with generic winter holiday decorations and the greeting Happy Holidays , as opposed to the ever-popular Merry Christmas . This has led to the upset and rebellion of many die-hard Christmas fans. One of the most popular examples of a Christmas rebellion comes in the form of Cupgate 2015. Since 1997, one of the largest coffee conglomerates-Starbucks-has released a new holiday design for their iconic coffee cups every holiday season. For many fans the revealing of the year's cup design has been the unofficial start to the holiday season-a design reveal turned holiday tradition. Although the purpose of this...