Apple's Passbook, Dunkin Donuts & Facebook Offers

An example of the potential power of Apple's new Passbook for:Brands (here Dunkin Donuts) Platforms (here Facebook / Facebook Offers) Consumers (simplicity, speed)

Dunkin Donuts running a week-long promotion for their holiday bagel using Facebook Offers:

Upon acceptance, Facebook shares socially and then emails users steps for redemption:

Users then have to print the coupon (per below). But this could pass through to Passbook or into a Facebook Offers Book / application. Thus keeping everything mobile, eliminating friction, and adding tracking throughout the entire process:

Dunkin Donuts Promotional Facebook Timeline Page

I've written a few times about Dunkin Donut's clever use of their Facebook fan page to spotlight fans and drive on-Facebook promotion. Dunkin Donuts would reward fans each week with a spotlight in their Facebook Profile Picture - to win, users would upload photos of themselves drinking coffee and tagging @Dunkin in the photo. Want proof that it works? Check out how many fans post to their Facebook wall.

With the introduction of Facebook's Timeline, the profile picture is less prominent and Dunkin had to rethink the Fan of the Week promotion. The result: Dunkin now includes those fans directly in the cover photo... which is a ton of visible real estate and a fun way to highlight fans, drive social activity, and keep the Timeline fresh.

Facebook Enables Photo Tagging For Pages. Some Marketing Opportunities.

Facebook quietly released an important product update for marketers and page-owners: the ability to tag images with pages (in addition to people). It's a simple update / change - but very meaningful and, in the short term, probably introduces an immediate first-mover opportunity for marketers. This is another opportunity to engage with your community and make existing content more visible / viral on Facebook (ie more traffic).

Here are a couple ideas / opportunities.

Tag products.

For instance, what is the celebrity wearing? What is the athlete using?

(related) Alter the way you think about Photos and Feed Posts.

This is a new opportunity for brands to engage via the newsfeed. Similarly, brands can feature photos from the community (yet another way to engage and reward).

Create contests.

Dunkin Donuts has run a daily contest on where fans drink their Iced Coffees. Entrants should be forced to tag the brand. That would be significantly more effective.

Combine tagging of places and pages.

Currently Facebook does not allow places to be tagged... but it should come and that will make the act of checking-in more robust. Photos from a place can be accessed via Places... but with tags, a user's friends will be able to happen upon the location from the feed and from photos.

My Proudest Day as a Blogger

If you read this blog enough, you surely know that I love Dunkin Donuts (both their iced coffee and use of social media).

The above Dunkin Donuts Twitter post was in response to my "Dunkin Donuts Uses Maurice to Drive Facebook Tab Clicks"

Dunkin Donuts Uses Maurice to Drive Facebook Tab Clicks

So much of the best content on branded Facebook Fan Pages is within custom tabs - which most fans fail to recognize and click. Dunkin Donuts (who always does a great job with their social media campaigns) has a clever solution: use the Facebook logo to drive viewers / fans to the click the special tab.

Facebook now allows users to use large, skyscraper-esque icons... allowing brands to creatively insert specific messaging. Facebook automatically crops the top section of the graphic into the 'feed icon' (which is why the Dunkin Donuts logo is prominently placed at the top). Dunkin uses the remaining space to insert marketing messages and offers - currently that includes the "Maurice" character - but typically it is reserved for promoting the Dunkin Donuts "Fan of the Week" (users are entered by uploading unique photos of themselves drinking Dunkin coffee).

There are lots of possibilities - but this particular example is a clever way to drive usage of their custom tab while also spotlighting fans to their 960,000 Facebook fans... a unique, ego-satisfying contest!

The "Meet Mauirce Tab":

Starbucks' 3 Million Facebook Fans: A Lesson in Facebook Marketing, Engagement

Starbucks is approaching 3,000,000 Facebook Fans (a huge number - they have 220,000 Twitter followers) and is engaging those users to find out how to better utilize Facebook and their popularity:

Starbucks Coffee Company: About to pass 3 million fans here on Facebook. Wow! We are honored and humbled by this. Question for you all: what more or what else would you like to see us do on this site? By that I mean what type of content, discussion or offers regarding Starbucks would you like to see on this page?

Within two hours of the post, ~7,500 users "liked" the discussion and 3,500 comments. There are several takeaways:

- the ratio of comments to likes is astronomical (1:2)

- the quality if the content is fantastic... Starbucks asked for feedback and got a huge amount of relevant, valuable answers:

I would say since we took the time on FACEBOOK to be your fan then maybe you should offer coupons or a half off day at a local starbucks just for facebook users and fans. And you could use this to let us know about new products and specials. Maybe a discussions about what we like about starbucks and their products and we could learn some things from other people

Janet at 2:23pm June 19 I would say since we took the time on FACEBOOK to be your fan then maybe you should offer coupons or a half off day at a local starbucks just for facebook users and fans. And you could use this to let us know about new products and specials. Maybe a discussions about what we like about starbucks and their products and we could learn some things from other people.

Jim: at 2:23pm June 19 Have Pike Place Blend Decaf brewed all day, not just in the morning. Many of us drink decaf or half-caffs.

Marianne at 2:23pm June 19 Bring back the almond flavoring please.

- Users want coupons and exclusive offers... the theme among the comments is that discounts through Facebook would be welcome. While this is unsurprising, the marketers at Starbucks must be thinking about ways to engage 3m fans via time-sensitive coupons (Dunkin Donuts has done this wonderfully). Furthermore, it's proof that mobile / social ads can be powerful and welcomed by users.

- Finally, coffee companies get social media! When asked who does social marketing best, I always encourage people to look at Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks (in that order) on Facebook and Twitter. Their marketing teams are innovative, responsive and in tune with the web.

The Economy Boosting McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts; Hurting Starbucks

Unlike many regular coffee drinkers, I actually quite like Starbucks. I plan to write further about this, but Starbucks is innovative, open to consumer feedback (hence the Pikes Place brew) and make consistently good coffee. I written many times though that I prefer Dunkin Donuts - in part due to the pricing. One outcome of the economic climate is that cheaper coffee producers (namely McDonalds) are finding success as consumers aren't willing to forgo their morning joe... but are willing to buy from cheaper locations.

Douglas Fisher, president of consultancy FHG International Inc, said, "The consumer is retrenching. They're out less and they're spending less. It's the low end of the market that is picking up now. A lot of it is consumers trading down."

I've heard - but been unable to verify - that Starbucks in fact saw sales rise, but revenues and profits fall as their consumers were shifting from more expensive, espresso-based drinks to drip coffees (which are about 50% of the cost). Whereas as latte can cost over $4.00, drip cofees are $1.50-$1.85 with available refills.

More from ReportonBusiness.com:

Meanwhile, business at McDonald's continues to grow as it cashes in on consumers' appetite for value. "Value, which has always been important, is mission critical today," McDonald's chief executive officer Jim Skinner said last month in reporting strong third-quarter results. Its U.S. same-store sales, a key measure in retailing, rose 4.7 per cent.

The picture is in stark contrast at Starbucks. It reported a same-store sales decline in the United States of 8 per cent, which was more than the company had anticipated. ... It doesn't help that McDonald's, which has declared itself to be "recession-resistant," is putting a push on selling coffee. In Canada, McDonald's premium drip coffee costs $1.13, $1.36 and $1.54 for its various servings compared with $1.58, $1.79, $2.05 and $2.24 at Starbucks.

Dunkin' Donuts Aren't in California... Yet?

It's July 4th weekend and I'm in Cape Cod... which means that I've now enjoyed several Dunkin' Donuts iced coffees and wondered why the only DD coffee I can enjoy in California is brewed at home.

Every day, my blog gets a fair amount of traffic coming from Google for search terms like:

- Dunkin Donuts California - Dunkin Donuts in CA - No Dunkin Donuts in California

And so on. Those aren't short / intuitive queries ... and they occur thousands of times a week. I've even gone as far as to suggest a business model around natural search logs considering that Dunkin Donuts would likely find this information interesting. I've received offers to sponsor pages based specifically on the keywords it ranks well for. According to Compete, "Dunkin Donuts California" is the #1 affinity query to my site (I wouldn't go quite so far...):

Search Google Maps for Dunkin Donuts and the only result is in California... and it's a closed location that has a request to shut down this listing:

According to Quantcast, "Dunkin Donuts" is the 1,700th most common search query on the web... yet despite California's size, population and collection of Boston-transplants, there isn't a single Dunkin Donuts in California. Why?!