Overview

Develop a social media strategy for senior executives at Dunkin' by conducting a brand audit, identifying growth opportunities, and constructing a multi-channel strategy designed to strengthen brand loyalty, boost engagement & position Dunkin’ as the most community-centered coffee brand across platforms, translating into measurable business growth.

Challenge

Dunkin’ is one of the leading quick-service restaurant franchise providers in the world. The brand has long maintained a casual, friendly relationship with its customers. However, Dunkin does face specific weaknesses that limit its full social media capabilities, such as infrequent posts that affect visibility and momentum, and a pattern for when content is published. Dunkin’ has the opportunity to catch their audience's attention leveraging their current engagement to build more momentum.

Key Insights

With a deeper understanding of Dunkin’s social media performance across Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, and YouTube—supported by competitive benchmarking against Starbucks and Peet’s—provides a clearer picture of how Dunkin currently stands on social media and areas for optimization.

Dunkin’ maintains a strong brand presence across all socials. The brand’s humorous and playful voice resonates with their audience; consequently, this highlights Dunkin’s key strength: their high shareability and cultural relevance.

More importantly, I noticed a unique trend: fans weren't just engaging with the brand and making drink suggestions; they were consistently interacting with each other.

We built our campaign to intentionally leverage and scale this peer-to-peer community behavior.

Solutions

Dunkin’ Made For You transforms fan creativity into the centerpiece of Dunkin’s social media presence. Under some of Dunkin’s posts, especially on TikTok, I noticed people suggesting drinks and talking about their own spin on ours. It is great that Dunkin is able to foster such a community, and since they have celebrities create their own drinks, why not have their customers do the same?

Fans are invited to share their dream drink + donut combinations, order personalities, and Dunkin-inspired ideas across TikTok, Instagram, X/Twitter, and YouTube. Dunkin responds with fun, personality-driven content that showcases fan submissions as official posts, Reels, or short-form videos.

The Dunkin’ Made For You campaign launches as a fall seasonal pilot centered on pumpkin spice, cozy aesthetics, and fan-driven creativity, setting the foundation for an annual tradition.