Case Study: Dunkin' x Dove Partnership Campaign

Dunkin’ (formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts) and Dove did a pretty big partnership campaign recently and for those new to marketing partnerships like this, there might be some head scratching as to why a haircare line and a food & beverage chain are collaborating. So we put together a case study on the Dunkin and Dove partnership campaign.

Why Coffee and Dry Shampoo?

“America Runs on Dunkin’” — most coffee drinkers, donut lovers, and North Easterners know this to be true! Similarly, the millennial love of dry shampoo as a morning beauty hack is no secret. At its essence, the connection between Dunkin’ coffee and Dove’s dry shampoo is really not so far off— both help make mornings easier.

Millennial women picked up on this lifehack a long time ago, and as any web search of “coffee and dry shampoo” will show you, they love to share this on tshirts, decor, and perhaps most naturally, their coffee mugs.

This brand partnership between Dunkin and Dove is a prime example of how thinking outside of the box in terms of where your target market is spending their time and who they are purchasing from can lead to great campaign success.

What Was The Partnership Campaign?

Okay, so this all sounds great, but how did these companies actually partner? If you don’t follow mommy bloggers or women-identifying millennial influencers on Instagram you might not have any idea that this partnership even happened.

In tandem with their name change, Dunkin’ partnered with Dove on a sweepstakes to giveaway a year supply of both coffee and dry shampoo. The companies collaborated with hundreds of influencers to spread the news about the campaign.

Take a look at #DoveXDunkin on Instagram and you will see that the top posts are by these influencers and bloggers — and that the organic posting is pretty exclusive to women. This targeting makes total sense; who needs a boost, and to save some time in the mornings, more than anyone? Moms.

Folks wanting to enter the sweepstakes visited this landing page where they were prompted to share a photo of a busy morning when they would have benefited from a Dunkin’ coffee and some Dove dry shampoo using trackable hashtags — #DovexDunkin & #DXDSweepstakes.

Brilliant! Now women who do not fall in the influencer category are posting photos that their friends will see — meaning that it’s now also possible that their friends will enter the sweepstakes as well.

Was It A Success and How Was That Measured

Let’s answer this question first — was the campaign a success?

We don’t know what goals or objectives Dove and Dunkin’ set together for this partnership campaign. But, we can gather that the ultimate goal here was awareness and brand engagement since nothing in the campaign was attempting to directly drive sales.

If we look at this basic level of success and ask the question: “Did this campaign raise awareness and increase engagement?” we would say that the answer is yes. If you look through the vast number of influencers posting, and the comments, likes, etc. on all the posts you will see that women were fired up about this giveaway.

Trackable Metrics

Organic traffic from Instagram can be hard to track. Instagram users know the pain of not being able to include links in the caption of your post. However, there were a few ways this campaign would have been trackable for the companies involved:

• Website traffic:
  • Many influencers included a link to the campaign landing page in their bio or a ‘swipe-up’ in their Instagram stories. The traffic driven by these links to a specific sweepstakes landing page is something that can be easily tracked and measured.
• Partnership campaign specific hashtags:
  • Searching #DoveXDunkin and #DXDSweepstakes shows exactly how many public posts on Instagram included these hashtags, giving another way to measure engagement.
• User submitted content:
  • You could not only enter the giveaway by posting on Instagram but also by submitting a photo via a form on the campaign website; the number of photo submissions received is something that could be measured and tracked.
• Engagement on each influencer post:
  • The number of likes and comments on each post is another way to understand number of eyes reached.

Note: Dove and Dunkin' did an excellent job of tapping into influencers big and small to spread the word on this campaign.

How to Run a Campaign Like This

We have done quite a few posts on influencers (here, here, here), so if you find level of influencer collaboration in this partnership campaign overwhelming or inspiring, or both — be sure to check out those posts or setup a call with us!

We are happy to chat with you about connecting with influencers or the partners you might need to execute a campaign like this. Get in touch: We're here to help.