Brief:

• Dunkin' Donuts, the coffee and bakery chain with 8,500 restaurants in the U.S., is promoting its dark roast coffee with a #DunkinDarker campaign on the Dec. 21 winter solstice — the shortest (and darkest) day of the year in the northern hemisphere. The campaign includes a Snapchat animated filter that's the first of its kind to be made available nationwide, according to a press release.
• As part of the promotion, Dunkin' changed its Twitter handle to @DunkinDarker, and is hosting a live streamed event on Facebook that offers a full day of tips and tricks, facts and fun games and prizes and surprises.
• The brand additionally partnered with Wormtown Brewery in its home state of Massachusetts to launch a DDark Roasted Brew, the first beer to be made with Dunkin's dark roast beans. The stout-style beer is available exclusively at Wormtown Brewery's Tap Room in Worcester, MA, beginning at 11:28 a.m. today.

Insight:

The #DunkinDarker promotion shows the brand capitalizing on the winter solstice — a perhaps overshadowed event during the otherwise busy holiday period — with a number of popular marketing tactics, including a novel Snapchat activation and live events streamed on Facebook. The news signals that Dunkin' is continuing to focus its campaigns on mobile and social media, in particular, following up on a heavy Halloween push that featured an Instagram costume contest and Snapchat-based games and themed filters.  

It's been an overall busy holiday season for Dunkin'. Last week, the company launched a "12 Days of Dunkin'" sweepstakes to steer people to sign up for its DD Perks Rewards loyalty program. The promotion included a holiday-themed Snapchat 3-D Lens that could be unlocked from its Twitter feed and via a digital billboard in New York City's Times Square. The Snapchat lens transformed smartphone users into a virtual reindeer, and flipping to the front-facing camera opened an augmented reality World Lens that turned surroundings into a winter landscape.

The chain's new brew is likely to grab headlines as well, as the stout-styled beer — only on tap at Wormtown's sole brewery in Massachusetts — is a departure from the usual offerings. A cross-promotional item that combines beer and doughnuts sounds like a college fraternity's hangover cure, and could come as a bid to court the type of young, hip consumers that favor quirky-flavored microbrews. Dunkin's previously made forays into beer via a collaboration with Catawba Brewing to celebrate National Coffee Day on Sept. 29. The Dunkin' Punkin Brown Ale was brewed with pumpkin pie seasoning, Food & Wine reported.