Dunkin’ Delivers The World’s Fastest Donut in 360° Video

Earlier this year, we presented you with this year’s most viewed 360° videos featuring great work from amateur cinematographers and massive brands alike. Thanks to the growing audience embracing 360 content, it got a lot of promotion and shares all over the internet, and on social media in particular.

Today we’ll be presenting you with some insight into the content creators behind one of these firsts, one of these trendsetting viral videos. We’re going to peek behind the curtain of the production and take a look at how one of the world’s most renowned digital advertising agencies — Digitas LBi has utilized this rapidly growing VR / 360° video technology to spearhead a campaign for a top-tier client: Dunkin’ Donuts.

The concept

Earlier this year, the team over at Dunkin’ Donuts wanted to initiate some promotion for their latest digital product — a smartphone app which allows you to order food and drink for your mobile phone to be ready for pickup when you swing by on your way to work. For a full detail of the app and its capabilities check out its gorgeous landing page.

“On-the-Go Ordering represents one of Dunkin’ Donuts’ most exciting and important advances, and with today’s national launch we have achieved an entirely new level of speed and convenience we can offer our busy, on-the-go DD Perks members.” — Sherrill Kaplan, Vice President of Digital Marketing and Innovation, Dunkin’ Donuts U.S.

• DigitasLBi and Dunkin’ recruited the world’s fastest flying woman — 28-year-old wingsuit BASE jumper Ellen Brennan — to do the World’s Fastest Dunkin’ Run for its brand new #WTFast campaign.
• Wearing Dunkin’ colors and a custom-built wingsuit equipped with a Velcro sleeve, Brennan jumped off Aiguille de Varan, a mountaintop 8,346 feet high above the action-sports mecca of Chamonix, France.
• Flying at speeds of 115–120 MPH, and after 30 attempts, Brennan grabbed a Dunkin’ bag mid-flight from a specially-designed cliffside Dunkin’ storefront, built at an altitude of 5,315 feet.
• Ellen was filmed documentary-style with multiple HD and 360° HD cameras by three of the best action sports cinematographers, so that people around the world would be able to experience the fastest Dunkin’ run of all time.
• Ellen marked a professional milestone during the shoot: at age 28, she achieved her 1,000th She’s a rarity in wingsuit BASE jumping: the sport is typically dominated by men in their mid-thirties.
• Ellen marked a professional milestone during the shoot: at age 28, she achieved her 1,000thShe’s a rarity in wingsuit BASE jumping: the sport is typically dominated by men in their mid-thirties.

The 360° Video

Packing in millions of views more than the actual ad that aired, DigitasLBI and Dunkin helped spearhead an effort to show the public the true potential and power of 360 degree video.

The true power of cinematographers and storytelling lies in a flat canvas no more. We’ve found and present to you now, the experience from the point of view of a lionhearted aviator — Ellen Brennan. If you’d like to fly with with Ellen, click the video below. If you’re on a mobile device, fire up your YouTube App and search for “Dunkin 360“:

Video Conent Blast Through 12 Million Views

The Dunkin’ videos and ads that started surfacing about 3 months ago has reached heights almost as unlikely as the jump off of that cliff. A whopping 12,750,000+ views in just 92 days, equates to more than 110,000 views a day.

This is due to several factors, where the perhaps largest one being a comprehensive social media strategy from the side of the agency involved. It’s an easy, and quite common method among marketers to utilize YouTube videos as the only method of video promotion and it’s seen used by most campaigns. DigitasLBI went straight for Facebook, and boy did it work!

Behind The Scenes

In a mad display of aviation-skill, Ellen managed to pull of grabbing the bag mid-air. The “Behind the Scenes” video is a full 7 minutes and 44 seconds video of just what was involved. Check out the video below, and find out what that flight was all about:

Conclusion: What can content creators learn from this?

Our main lesson from this is that we always should strive to use the tools at our hands to the full extent of their capability. The viral results from an ad like this is incredible, and a good story to tell not only for Dunkin’ themselves, but also the agency leading the campaign and for our industry at large. The more content creators using these tools to tell stories, the more appealing it becomes to the general public.

Ultimately, what we’re looking to do here, is to encourage the masses to embrace the future, to give 360° content and Virtual Reality the chance it truly deserves.

What’s next for 360° Videos, Digitas and Dunkin’ Donuts?

The future for 360° videos and advertising is surely going to be interesting to watch, observe and report on here on the magazine. Later this month we’ll be introducing an interesting array of talented reporters, most of which are content creators themselves. Stay tuned to get their points of view of this thing we do.

If you would like to stay tuned on the latest case stories from the DigitasLBi agency (some of which might include 360° content in the future) check out their case-story platform here: www.digitasdose.com.

If you happen to live in the United States of America (which, our internal data shows is highly likely) and you feel like something sweet to go with that morning cappuccino would be nice, head over to Dunkin’s new app!

Originally published at vrtodaymagazine.com on September 13, 2016.