Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is a 78 year old American global doughnut company and coffeehouse chain which was founded in July 1937 by Vernon Rudolph. The headquarters are in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States. The brand has more than 1000 shops all over the world. There was a rapid expansion in 1990’s when the brand started opening its shops outside southeast United States where most of their stores were located. Krispy Kreme came to India in January 2013 and opened its first store in Bangalore, Karnataka. Later in 2013 and 2014, it reached to the foodies of Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai.
Krispy Kreme created a great buzz about their first store launch in India via social media. Before opening the first store in January 2013, the brand had already created its presence on Facebook. They started sharing the sneak peaks of the launch a month before. The page made use of the images to showcase the countdown and the page owners also made an effort to reply the queries. The brand started inviting fans to the opening ceremony of the store and started some attractive offers. One of the offers was the Golden Ticket. Whosoever was the first one to join the opening ceremony would get a chance to win one year supply of free Krispy Kreme doughnuts. There was also Silver Ticket and Bronze Ticket with 6 and 3 months supply of free doughnuts respectively. On twitter, a contest with #GetGlazed hashtag was created and the winners were given free boxes of doughnuts.
In India, the Krispy Kreme stores in the western and southern region are operated by Citymax hotels India Pvt Ltd, which is the hospitality division of the Dubai based retail giant Landmark Group. Bedrock Foods Pvt. Ltd is the the franchise partner for the stores in northern India. There are more than 25 Krispy Kreme stores in India.
Let us now see how Krispy Kreme India used the social media platforms to boost its sales on different occasions.
Objectives:
Be it Diwali, Father’s day, Teacher’s day or any other special occasion, we Indians celebrate with
full fun and food and lots of sweets make them more exciting. Krispy Kreme wanted to turns these special days into doughnut eating occasions with the loved ones.
Strategies Adopted:
Diwali 2014:
As Diwali is all about sweets, dry fruits and family, Krispy Kreme came up with their “desi” doughnuts aka “nutty circle”. They were a unique combination of vanilla and chocolate doughnuts with toppings of almonds, pistachio, walnuts and cashews. The brand wanted to create awareness about their new product and connect with their customers.
- The brand created a nutty circle campaign on their facebook page. Each post under this campaign was dedicated to a particular circle one has. It could be either a family circle, gossip circle, movie circle and many more. Fans were invited to tag to their circles on these posts which led to some interesting conversations. To attract them more, 10 doughnut boxes were awarded to the most interesting groups.
- To spread more, this campaign was also started on twitter and instagram with the hashtag #nutty circle.
- A number of video posts were created for Krispy Kreme.
This campaign ran for 10 days from 12th October to 22nd October 2014.
Father’s Day 2014:
Krispy Kreme created a campaign named “Say it with a doughnut” where people could connect with their fathers even while staying away. The brand created a Facebook application on their Krispy Kreme India page where people could enter a special message for their fathers.These messages were then iced on the doughnuts and delivered to the address provided.
Teacher’s Day 2014:
Krispy Kreme India used hyperlapse by instagram to have a fun teacher’s day campaign. Hyperlapse from instagram is an application to capture high quality time lapse videos even while in motion. The brand created a video campaign called “Krispy Lessons” to show that teachers are everywhere. The 3 day campaign also shared some life lessons through their doughnuts and coffee but in a fun way using the Instagram’s hyperlapse feature.
Results Achieved:
During the Diwali Campaign, around 1500 doughnuts boxes were sold. 5 lac people were reached and there was huge customer engagement. There were about 6500 more likes.
Father’s day campaign led to 10% increase in the engagement and there were more than 100 requests for the Krispy Kreme boxes. Instagram campaign also enhanced the engagement.
Learnings:
Krispy Kreme made some smart moves by making its presence on social media platforms. They were able to create an extensive buzz during their launch in India. It is very important to understand that when is the right time to target the customers and the brand was successful in the campaigns launched during different occasions. After building its popularity in India, the brand is now expanding in the country.
Image Credits: Facebook
