How a tea drinking Englishman came up with 'America runs on Dunkin': PART 1 - The Call to Adventure
I was working recently on a project referencing famous advertising slogans and decided to look online for some fresh inspiration.
To my delight, high up on the first ‘best ever slogans ’ list I clicked on, sat the one I wrote, ‘America runs on Dunkin’.
Higher even than ‘A diamond is forever’ - for me, the slogan of all slogans.
That, and the fact that it will soon be exactly 15 years since its conception, made me think this might be a good moment to tell the story as I remember it of how ‘America runs on Dunkin’ came to be, for those interested in reading it.
To both keep it digestible and committed Aristotelians happy, I’ll do so in three parts.
With an eye to three specific curiosities relating to its invention:
I was a planner, not a creative
Who grew up in the UK, not the US
And drank only tea, not coffee
The story began, back in the fall of 2005, with an assignment.
Dunkin’ had a new Vice President of Marketing and he was coming into the agency to meet the team for the first time.
Which, of course, got everyone a little on edge.
Since we had been wrestling for a while with two big ‘crossroads’ dilemmas:
1) was Dunkin’ first and foremost a baked goods company - or a beverage company?
2) should it now seek to appear more like Starbucks - or less like Starbucks?
Perhaps he might express disappointment with the perceived rate of progress on resolving these dilemmas?
Or suggest that others should now be given the chance to wrestle with them too?
But after listening patiently and politely to our historical summary and situation analysis, he announced that he had a task for us.
He wanted us to go away for a month (remember, it was 2005) and come back with our answers to these two questions:
WHO is Dunkin’ for?
WHAT is Dunkin’ for?
And that was it.
In the meeting room after he’d left, amidst the used pink and orange cups and leftover donuts, the mood was one of relief.
Answer two straightforward questions - how hard could that be?
We don’t need a month, we’ll be done by the end of the week!
Won’t we?
TO BE CONTINUED…