What Dunkin Donuts can learn from Starbucks’ social strategy.Morning coffee cup and sweet pastry of chocolate donut on pink pastel table top view.įamed investor Bill Ackman recently revealed an investment in Starbucks worth about $900 million.ĭunkin’ Brands announced that it would be changing the name of its flagship stores to simply Dunkin’ to capture more of the beverage market. What appeals to you? Simple, classic and elegant Starbucks or bright, cheery and fun Dunkin Donuts?Ĭohen, D. Ultimately, it’s up to the consumer to decide which brand is more appealing to them. The two brands have certainly created a different feel to their branding with Starbucks having a more simplistic and sophisticated feel and Dunkin Donuts having a more child-like appeal. The strategic goals of both brands social media accounts are to create brand and product awareness and encourage followers to choose their product over their competitors. Dunkin Donuts shares the same content across all platforms not giving the brand a tailored feel. They’ve done a great job of customizing their posts for each social media network, giving customers a reason to follow the Starbucks brand on multiple different platforms. One of the main things that sets Starbucks apart in the social media world is that the brand changes its content across platforms, tailoring the content to the platform. I’ve Already Seen That… BORING!!!īoth Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts have a presence on all of the main social media channels and are very active with their consumers. Starbucks are more known for their coffee house atmosphere that encourages its consumers to stay awhile, slow down and enjoy their coffee. For this reason Dunkin Donuts strategy has been to use social media to market themselves as a brand that serves delicious and economical coffee with more of a fast food style atmosphere that differentiates themselves from Starbucks that has focused on creating a more laid back experience for consumers. Starbucks is well known all across the globe and Dunkin Donuts is more of a regional brand.
While each brand has used their social media campaigns to build and define their brands across America, Dunkin Donuts dominates the east coast and Starbucks owns the market on the west coast, Midwest and most metropolitan areas. Dunkin Donuts was founded on the east coast in Boston, while Starbucks was founded on the west coast in Seattle. The coffee war battle lines have definitely been drawn because the battle of the brands is also tied to where each brand was founded. Starbucks works with influencers that repost their experience with the brand with more of a stylish content that has an artsy appearance while Dunkin Donuts posts seem to be less about content that can live on across multiple social media platforms. Show Us Your Coffeeīoth brands engage with their audiences on social media and repost user-generated content, but Starbucks appears to do it a little better. As seen below, both brands have a totally different feel to them. Nearly half (48%) of the fans posting about Dunkin Donuts are under 18 years of age. Starbucks has created a social media persona that exudes a feel of being simplistic, upscale, cool and somewhat subdued, focusing on a more mature audience while Dunkin Donuts appeals to a different audience with their social feed being bright and colorful with a pink and orange aesthetic, appealing to a much younger audience. There is a definite difference in the look and feel of the two brands. They have over 36 million fans on Facebook and 11 million on Twitter while Dunkin Donuts has 13 million Facebook fans and 1.06 million fans on Twitter. Starbucks is a vastly larger chain than Dunkin Donuts and has a larger following on their social media channels. In a study completed by ShareIQ, Starbucks tallied nearly 17 times the engagement of Dunkin Donuts, with 5 times more engagement on Facebook and more than 12 times the Instagram followers. The great debate from coffee lovers all over the world… Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? Based on their social media strategies and the volume of social engagement Starbucks is a definite winner in the social media game.