What do you feel like?... Rebranding Donut King!

I've been working on a detailed advertising plan as a major assignment at university over the last month. I chose Australian doughnut outlet Donut King as the brand I was going to devise a plan for. My plan extended to a few thousand words but I'll just lay down the bare bones of it here, because I think Donut King should listen!

A little bitta background: Donut King has been Australia's only answer for deep-fried batter cravings for over 25 years. Competitors have come and fallen, leaving Donut King to comfort a nation with almost 300 stores dotted across the great southern land. King's monopoly, however, seems to have met its judgement day. The purveyor of this misery: the yanks. Krispy Kreme has exploded on the scene through a gob-full of word of mouth. KKs are only getting bigger and now dominate the dozen doughnut box market. The Donut King is being usurped by the Krispy Prince, but your majesty surely will not give in. After all, he still owns much more land (about 15 times as much) even if turf wars are being declared every week. So what will the King do to keep his crown?

Current marketing plan: Donut King's marketing slobs are clearly shaking in their hot dog slippers and have had stabs at campaigns using competitions, internet games and tie-ins with movies. All of them have been pretty unsuccessful if you ask Barry the Plumber on the street. Worse yet, King is now trying to cut the Prince's snack lunch with its new Sensations range, which imitates KKs soft filled doughnut range (very poorly too, which I discovered after a bit of market research).

Donut King should not be imitating though, they've got to keep some sort of product difference. The Sensations range is a cheap imitation, but it is actually more expensive than Krispy Kreme!!! So what we've got to do here is play to strengths and set up brand difference.

Strengths: Donut King is much cheaper than Krispy Kreme. A luxury mud cake doughnut (my favourite) from Donut King will set me back $1.80 (and just last month it only cost me $1.20, suggesting a price rise in line with food shortages but also because of market averages- this means the product could plausibly be cheaper if we wanted it to be) while a similar decadent doughnut at Krispy Kreme will take away $2.85 in coinage. Even more tragic, Kreme's doughnuts are fluffy, inflated shells while Donut King has a bit of dough substance to it, whether people desire such an attribute in a doughnut is feverishly debated on doughnut forums. So in the current economic climate, which hasn't really hit home for many of us yet apart from a bit of raised fear and caution, the King may have the upper hand. But we all know the product has got to be good too. 

Target Market: If Donut King keeps low-price as a priority they could tap into the mines of Australian suburbia, which are laced with doughnut diamonds. We saw the fervour Middle Australia holds for doughnuts with the hysterical arrival of Krispy Kreme and its continued success. Donut King is perfectly positioned to win back the affections of the big comfort food spending sector of middle Australia as it already has its outlets placed in just about every shopping mall food hall. But they can't keep going on the way they have, their current brand image is too novel and bright and similar to Krispy Kreme's branding, so its time for the King to move on, but to move up.

The Rebranding: Krispy Kreme doughnuts are mainly made behind closed doors in Australia, unlike the US, whereas Donut King products are crafted within view of the customer, behind the counter in a little baking kitchen. Unfortunately, most of these kitchens are dingy grottos with a  none-too-tasty-looking mote of oil surrounding a conveyor belt. Nevertheless, the products are made in front of you. They'll have to clean this up a bit but the concept of watching the products being made will form the backbone of Donut King's rebranding as a 'fresh' and trusted doughnut outlet. And to complement this change I suggest the rubbishing of the garish pink uniforms and chubby outdated logo, and the spawning of 'DKs'. It'll be less like Krispy Kreme and more like Gloria Jeans, but much cheaper to keep those purses full. DKs should become trusted as a brand that will use the 'freshest ingredients' and offer timeout for families, with coffee for the parents and doughnuts to keep the kids interested. 

This is only the skin of the nutshell of this idea, I provide can a lot more justification for why this would work with Generation X parents in suburbia and creative and IMC strategies for getting the message out there.