Going To Great Lengths To Compete With Starbucks

Lewis Lazare: Maybe it’s the name. Dunkin’ Donuts, after all, doesn’t suggest it’s a chain that puts quite as much emphasis on its coffee as it does doughnuts. But starting this week in the Chicago market, and nationally as well, Dunkin’ Donuts is introducing a new ad campaign from Hill, Holliday Connors Cosmopulous/Boston that hopes to convey the message the chain takes its coffee very seriously indeed.
The launch commercial, called “Traffic,” is supposedly based on a true story provided by a loyal Dunkin’ Donuts customer in Brockton, Mass. It opens with a woman leaving a Dunkin’ Donuts shop with a tray of four coffees. As she makes her way through the parking lot, we assume she’s going to her car.
Wrong.
She continues past the lot and goes on walking for what looks to be a few miles until she reaches a gridlocked expressway where she climbs over the guardrail and crosses three lanes of traffic before she finds the car she’s been looking for. She then gets inside and hands her co-workers the coffees they’ve been waiting for as the voiceover helps explain the strange scenario we’ve just witnessed: “Why do people go to these kinds of great lengths for our coffee? Because we do.”