Mmm, Donuts, Is There Anything They Can’t Do?

This is possibly the hardest assignment for me to write in my time at Unmetric. Not because donuts are a particularly challenging topic to write about, but because for the past week I’ve been eating rabbit food for lunch in an attempt to trim down a bit. However, due to National Doughnut Day, I’ve had to spend the last two days looking at mouth watering pictures of the finest donuts Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts has to offer. Oh Edesia, thou art a cruel temptress.

While you might think that National Doughnut Day was invented by yet another corporate machine designed to vacuum up more money from customers, it actually has its origins in a far more noble cause. It was started in the 1930’s by the Salvation Army who used it to honor the women who served donuts to wounded soldiers in World War One and to help raise funds to feed people during the great depression.

That said, for the likes of Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme, it’s like all their Christmases, New Years and Birthdays came at once. Doughnut Day creates the perfect marketing platform to get more people in to their stores. Krispy Kreme even made an infographic out of it.

Both brands are highly active on social media, with Dunkin’ Donuts performing slightly better on Facebook. DD has 6.4m fans compared to KKD’s 4.3m. DD’s Unmetric Score, which takes in to account over 24 different metrics, is 70 versus KKD’s 55.

In the run up to National Doughnut Day, both brands were beating their drums to raise awareness of the sort-of-free doughnuts they were going to give away on the 1st June. Dunkin’ Donuts were the most vocal, with a total of 5 posts about Doughnut day versus Krispy Kreme’s 3 posts. DD also managed to get higher engagement on their posts compared to KKD.

Dunkin’ Donuts started their free donut campaign more than a week before the day itself, peaking with an Engagement Score (which takes in to account Likes, Comments and Shares) of 224.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts started off with a bang on the 25th May but the engagement dropped off with each National Doughtnut Day post they made. It’s remarkable that they achieved the lowest amount of engagement on the big day itself.

Leveraging big events like this can help brands increase the level of engagement with fans. The chart below shows the average engagement score each brand had in the last 30 days and the average engagement for just the National Doughnut Day posts.

In the last 30 days, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts has had the slight edge, managing to get better engagement on their posts. However, Dunkin Donuts pulled out all the stops and saw better engagement on average for all their posts relating to National Doughnut Day.

The chart below shows just how many more Likes, Comments and Shares the DD posts got on average, compared to KKD. DD received double the number of Comments and more than double the number of Likes. Though it should be said that these numbers are not totally surprising, given that DD has around 2m more fans. On the flip side, the fact that they are able to get double the number of Comments and Likes shows that DD are engaging a higher percentage of fans.

Both companies were able to leverage National Doughtnut Day to their advantage and saw engagement levels well above normal. However, it was Dunkin’ Donuts that came out ahead with more posts and higher average engagement.

I’ve got to go visit the gym now; thanks to airborne calories, just looking at these all these donuts has added several pounds to my waist. Back to the rabbit food for me.

All data has been compiled and analyzed from the Unmetric application which tracks dozens of metrics to enable brands to benchmark themselves against competitors and their industry sector. Gain access to all this data by claiming a 10 day free trial.