Week 0 · Kickoff

Welcome to the brand team

You are a Marketing Coordinator on the Dunkin' brand team. Leadership has greenlit Cold Brew Summer, a new cold brew line targeting Gen Z, launching across the Northeast in a 12-week campaign. Your job: build and run the paid media plan.

How your budget really works

Dunkin' corporate doesn't pay for this campaign out of its own pocket. Franchise owners contribute 5% of weekly gross sales into a shared advertising fund, and that fund pays for campaigns like yours. Your $2.5 million regional budget is, quite literally, the franchisees' money. They watch how it's spent — and they expect it to bring customers through their doors.

The meter at the top of the page tracks franchisee confidence in your plan. As you consider each decision, you'll see how the room is likely to react before you commit. Let confidence drop too far and this campaign gets a lot harder to run.

Jordan Reyes · Marketing Director (your manager)

Welcome aboard. Budget is $2.5M for 12 weeks, Northeast region, goal is awareness with Gen Z plus real store traffic. One wrinkle: our two senior leaders don't agree on influencer marketing, and both of them will read your plan. You'll make six calls between now and August. I'll be watching all of them.

Alexis Chen · VP of Brand

Gen Z doesn't trust ads, they trust people. Micro-influencers gave our competitors their best engagement numbers last year. If we show up on their feeds through creators they already follow, we win the summer. Don't build me a plan that looks like 2015.

Derek Okafor · Director of Media Buying

Influencer spend is the hardest money to measure and the easiest to waste. Paid social, search, audio, and out-of-home near stores are proven, trackable, and they drive traffic. Every dollar you hand a creator is a dollar I can't optimize mid-flight. Spend the fund like it's your own money — because to our franchisees, it is.

Tony Marchetti · Franchisee Advisory Council chair, owns 6 stores near Worcester

My stores put about $190,000 into the ad fund last year. I'm not against new ideas — but when I see fund money going to somebody dancing on an app, I want to know how that sells iced coffee on Route 9. Billboards near my exits? Search ads when someone types "cold brew near me"? That I understand. Convince me.

Campaign brief

Budget: $2.5M (franchisee ad fund)
Flight: 12 weeks, June–August
Region: Northeast U.S.
Primary audience: Gen Z (18–27)
Awareness goal: 4.0M unique reach
Business goal: Lift iced/cold brew sales at franchise stores

Week 0 · Decision 1 of 6 · Allocation

Allocate the $2.5M ad fund

Distribute the full budget across five channels. Projections and stakeholder reads update as you adjust. You must allocate exactly $2,500K to continue.

Paid social (Meta + TikTok ads) Precise Gen Z targeting, strong measurement. Approx. $9 CPM.

Paid search Captures "cold brew near me" intent. Franchisees love it. Approx. $22 effective CPM. $300K

Streaming audio (Spotify, podcasts) Commute-time frequency with younger listeners. Approx. $16 CPM. $400K

Out-of-home near stores (billboards, transit) Hits commuters right before the purchase moment. Hard to measure. Approx. $26 CPM. $500K

Influencer pool Reserved for creator partnerships. You'll decide how to spend it in Week 2. $500K

Allocated

$2,500K

Remaining

$0K

Projected impressions

—

Est. unique reach

—

Week 1 · Decision 2 of 6 · Creative direction

Pick the campaign's creative platform

The agency has presented three creative territories. Every channel you funded will carry this concept for twelve weeks — the look on the billboards, the hook in the audio spots, the brief the creators receive. Select an option to see how the room reacts, then commit.

Choose one creative territory "Runs on Your Route" — hyper-local pride Every billboard, spot, and post is anchored to real local landmarks and store locations: "Route 9 runs on cold brew." Franchisees see their own towns in the creative. Warm, ownable — but it's a traffic play, not a culture play, and Gen Z has seen hometown ads before. "Iced Different" — chaotic Gen Z energy Meme-literate, self-aware, built for remixing: absurdist spots, reply-guy social copy, creator-friendly templates. Highest ceiling for awareness and engagement with the target audience — and the highest odds that a 58-year-old store owner asks what on earth the fund just paid for. "Summer Classic" — polished seasonal campaign Beautiful product shots, sunshine, condensation on the cup. Tested, safe, on-brand. Nobody will object — and nobody will remember it. In a summer where a competitor is about to make noise, safe has a cost.

Week 2 · Decision 3 of 6 · The influencer question

How will you spend the influencer pool?

This is the decision Alexis and Derek have been circling since your first day. Select an option to see how the room reacts, then commit.

Choose one approach Sign one mega-influencer — $400K A creator with 8M followers fronts the whole campaign. Massive splash, national spillover — but one brand-safety incident away from disaster, and franchisees have never heard of them. Alexis calls it "a statement." Tony calls it "somebody dancing on an app." Build a portfolio of 25 regional micro-influencers — $375K Local creators (15K–80K followers each) across Boston, Providence, Hartford, and Worcester, each tagging their neighborhood Dunkin'. Authentic engagement and a story franchisees can see in their own towns — but 25 contracts is a heavy coordination lift for a coordinator. Skip influencers entirely Redistribute the influencer pool into paid social and search. Derek will back you fully and the fund stays in measurable channels — but Alexis will say you left Gen Z's trust on the table, and a competitor may not be so cautious.

Week 3 · Decision 4 of 6 · Mid-flight optimization

The first performance data is in

Three weeks of delivery data just landed, and it's a mixed report. Paid social is overdelivering — CPMs are coming in around $7.40 against the $9 plan. Streaming audio is underdelivering with younger listeners; completion rates are soft. And out-of-home is doing what out-of-home always does: standing there, unmeasurable, while Derek's dashboard shrugs.

Derek Okafor · Director of Media Buying

This is the moment mid-flight optimization exists for. Social is cheap right now — ride it while the auction is friendly. Or don't, and explain to me in August why we paid list price for soft audio inventory. Your call, but the data has an opinion.

Choose one optimization Follow the data — shift $150K from audio to paid social Classic performance move: feed the overdelivering channel. Awareness and engagement climb, Derek is delighted. Franchisees are indifferent — the money moves between two channels they can't see from their parking lots. Hold the plan — three weeks is too early One soft read isn't a trend; audio frequency compounds over a full flight. Disciplined and defensible — but if audio stays soft, you knowingly paid full price for it, and Derek will have the receipts. Shift $100K from audio into search and OOH near stores Use the moment to double down on the channels franchisees can see and feel. Store traffic and council goodwill climb — at the cost of some Gen Z reach, and Derek will note you optimized for politics, not performance.

Week 6 · Decision 5 of 6 · Competitive response

Bean Scene just went viral

Six weeks in, your campaign is tracking. Then Monday morning happens: regional competitor Bean Scene drops a stunt campaign with a viral TikTok creator — free cold brew for anyone who shows the video at the counter. It's everywhere. Gen Z group chats, morning radio, two local news segments.

Tony Marchetti · FAC chair

Three of my managers texted me before 8 a.m. asking what we're doing about this. The council meets in three weeks. Whatever you decide with the rest of the fund, be ready to explain it to a room of owners.

Jordan Reyes · Marketing Director

About 40% of your budget is still unspent in the back half of the flight. You have three real options. There's no free move here — chasing costs focus, holding costs headlines, countering costs margin. Your call, Coordinator.

What do you do with the remaining budget? Chase the moment Divert remaining funds into rapid-response creator content and boosted social to fight for the same attention. High engagement upside — but you're playing on Bean Scene's field, and franchisees see fund money reacting to a competitor instead of selling coffee. Hold the course Viral moments burn out; your plan was built for twelve weeks, not one news cycle. Stay disciplined and let the flight finish. Steady — but if Bean Scene's momentum holds, you'll spend August explaining why you did nothing. Counter with a store-traffic play Launch "$2 Cold Brew Happy Hour, 2–5 p.m." promoted through search, audio, and OOH near stores. It answers Bean Scene with a reason to walk into a Dunkin' today — franchisees love it, though the discount eats margin and awareness reach dips.

Week 9 · Decision 6 of 6 · The advisory council

Thursday, 7 p.m., a function room in Worcester

Tony made good on his word: you're presenting the campaign to the Franchisee Advisory Council — forty owners who collectively funded every dollar you've spent. Jordan can't make it. You get fifteen minutes and one approach. How do you make the case?

Choose your presentation strategy Lead with the dashboard Impressions, CPMs, search lift, week-over-week delivery. Rigorous and transparent — the owners who run their stores on spreadsheets will respect it. The owners who don't will hear a corporate kid reading numbers at them. Lead with their stores Open with the campaign as it appeared in their towns — the billboard on their commute, the local creator tagging their drive-thru, the customer who mentioned the ad. Lands hardest if your plan actually showed up in their communities; rings hollow if it didn't. Promise them the fall Acknowledge the friction, then commit to a co-op program giving owners direct input on fall creative and local placements. Buys real goodwill tonight — and writes a check your team has to cash in September. Jordan will have opinions about promises made in his absence.

Week 12 · Debrief

Campaign debrief

Reflect before class discussion

Whose money did you spend, and how did that change (or fail to change) your decisions?
Which executive's philosophy did your allocation actually side with — and did you realize it at the time?
The reaction panel showed you consequences before every commitment. Did that make you braver or more cautious? Is that how real stakeholder pressure works?
OOH and influencer marketing are both hard to measure. Why did franchisees trust one and not the other?
At week 3 the data "had an opinion." When is following performance data mid-flight the right call, and when is it chasing noise?
Was your week-6 response strategic or reactive? How would you tell the difference?
In Worcester you chose how to tell the story of your own campaign. How much of marketing leadership is media math, and how much is that room?
If you ran this campaign again with the same $2.5M, what one change would you make, and what evidence from your results supports it?

Instructor notes

Outcomes are deterministic: identical decisions always produce identical scores, so student results are comparable and defensible in discussion. Franchisee confidence starts at 62 and moves with the budget allocation (out-of-home and search raise it; an oversized influencer pool lowers it), the creative territory, the influencer decision (micro +, mega −, skip slightly +), the week-3 optimization, the week-6 competitive response (counter +, chase −), and the council presentation — where "lead with their stores" pays off only if earlier choices actually put the campaign in franchisees' communities.

The reaction panels show students the likely stakeholder response before each commitment. This is deliberate: the learning objective is not surprise but informed trade-off. Students who still choose the mega-influencer after watching Tony's reaction are making a defensible strategic bet, and the debrief should treat it as one.

The scenario has no single winning path. A bold-creative, mega-influencer, chase build can win awareness and engagement while losing the franchisees; a traffic-first build wins confidence while missing the Gen Z awareness goal. The debrief question is not "did you win?" but "which trade-offs did you choose, and can you defend them?" The 5% ad-fund mechanic mirrors how Dunkin's advertising was actually funded per its SEC filings, which makes the stakeholder tension authentic rather than invented.

Suggested pairing: have students write a one-page memo to Tony Marchetti's advisory council justifying their plan before revealing scores — then compare the memo to how they actually presented in Week 9.

Hello Learning Nerds!