Bad, bad Dunkin Donuts!

Last week, while I was in Vermont, I had an opportunity to catch up on several years’ worth of back episodes of the few TV show I liked (back when we got TV), Law & Order, for instance, and Home Improvement (I know, I know, but I like it). I also caught up on what has been going on in advertising and was shocked to see Dunkin Donuts latest campaign “Order In English”. In case you haven’t seen this ad series, it features all sorts of people at a coffee shop counter attempting to order coffee with names like “Latte Vente” (i.e. Starbucks) and other such names, usually in Italian, Spanish or French. They can’t pronounce it and are frustrated. The entire campaign basically says to Americans that : a) it just isn’t normal to try to say anything in a different language; b) they should object to being “forced” to order in anything other than English. Now, I live in Québec where the official language is French, which puts a whole new spin on this unfortunate idea.I immediately picture Dunkin Donuts trying to get this campaign aired in Canada or even worse, Québec (hah!). Just the title of the ad campaign insults my intelligence and I am dismayed to see anyone from my own country proposing this very narrow point of view. I couldn’t imagine how any creative person, at whatever huge ad agency did this, could be so small-minded or unaware of how BAD this is. Honestly… it’s just plain insulting, and really, really bad thinking. So I did a bit of Googling and discovered that this approach seems to actually be driven by customer complaints about Dunkin staff not speaking English. Sigh. I’m afraid that my country is turning into something I don’t like. And ironically, one Dunkin restaurant where English service became the rule was run by an Ecuadorian immigrant. The irony of it all. And even weirder, they just launched a line of latte products called… Dunkin Donuts Latte (Italian word for milk).