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Krispy Kreme

For my JMU School of Media Arts and Design Capstone class, my group and I were tasked with designing an advertising campaign for Krispy Kreme that reached a target audience that the company had yet to reach.

Objectives 

Big Idea

Create a Krispy Kreme advertising campaign that reached and appealed to 40-year-old, upper-class women living in New York City.  

Krispy Kreme in New York City takes indulging to the next level.

Casebook

We designed a casebook that featured our Agency, Pre-campaign research and creative brief. It also includes the print advertisements, television advertisements, social media advertisements, out-of-home advertisements, viral video advertisements, guerrilla marketing, branded product placement we designed. The book takes you through our brainstorming as well as detailed rationales for why we made the design choices we did.  

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Research & Creative Brief 

Through primary and secondary research we found that Krispy Kreme was not successfully reaching a wealthy and sophisticated audience of older millennials/ young Generation Z women living in urban areas. We found that Krispy Kreme was well known, especially the "Hot Doughnuts Now" sign but many people did not go to Krispy Kreme due to their lack of healthy options, child like advertisements, locations or prefer other establishment.  Through interviewees we did see a trend that if people were to go they would go for promotional events or seasonal items.  

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Tag Line: elevate your indulgence.

Print Ads

We designed three print ads that would target our audience through using iconic New York landmarks, fashion and beauty. Our first ad was a take on the Kinky Boots Broadway Playbill that incorporated the glamorous nature of Broadway and Krispy Kreme. Our second print ad was inspired by a Vogue cover where we photographed a model in a homemade Krispy Kreme dress eating a glazed doughnut. For our final print ad we were inspired by combining the everyday action of walking in the streets of NYC with the luxury Louboutin x Krispy Kreme heel. All of these print ads were designed using Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and was photographed by myself. 

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Television
Advertisement

For our television ad we wanted to appeal to the audience through fashion and exclusive events for the New York elite like New York Fashion Week.  We also knew this ad should feature the product and the logo while still maintaing a high fashion feel. We selected a model to be the star of the commercial and a handmade Kripsy Kreme dress was created from Kripsy Kreme boxes, hats and tissue paper for her to wear. We filmed the model walking a runway through utilizing an open stage at JMU, having extras use flash cameras in the audience and a mix of moving dolly shots, overtop shots, and closeups to track her on the runway.  

Viral Video

Viral Video was a tough challenge given our target audience. We wanted to use a platform that our audience uses, while still maintaining its large vertical-video presence. Instagram Reels was the perfect choice, given its large popularity and strong algorithm for vertical videos. Taylor Swift was the obvious choice for music, especially given that almost half of millennials consider themselves “Swifties,”. Posts using Taylor Swift’s songs can go viral just because of the song itself. We decided to go with the song, “The Man” which showcases the difference in attitude towards women in the workplace. Our advertisement began with a hook on the line, “When everyone believes you, what’s that like?” from “The Man”. It shows a man running in an urban park. At that moment, a woman passes, sprinting in high heels. The rest of the advertisement shows her running to her assistant, who has a Krispy Kreme coffee waiting. We decided the main focus of this advertisement would be the hot coffee, given that the woman character likely has a lot to do that day.  

 Out-of-home

Advertisements

After brainstorming for our out of home advertisements, it was clear that these ads needed to convey a high-end, elevated feeling to our target audience while tying in aspects of the New York lifestyle. We decided on locations that our target audience would be able to see frequently throughout their day-to-day lives, such as billboards in SoHo and the tops of taxi cabs. We also wanted to to convey glamour and sophistication through these ads and make the audience associate those words with Krispy Kreme. We were inspired by the New Yorker magazine covers and edited in the most iconic part of Krispy Kreme's brand the "Hot Doughnut Now" light. Street signs were our other inspiration and we made sure the taxi cab ad featured elements of a street sign while still being glamourous. Furthermore, the advertisements needed to be simple so our target could quickly digest them due to their busy lifestyles and the speed of the city. All of these advertisements were created in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

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 Branded Product 

placement

The Morning Show was the perfect choice for Krispy Kreme branded product placement. The show features iconic actresses from the early 2000’s, including Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Our target audience grew up watching these actresses in shows like Friends, Legally Blonde, as well as Steve Carell in The Office. As these actresses tend to attract millennial women, our target audience is met within this show. Also, this show takes place in New York City, where all of our advertisements are based around. With this show being full of sophisticated millennial-aged women making daily commutes to work in the city, this can be a relatable scene for our target audience. We wrote Kripsy Kreme into the dialogue as well as placing it on the desk and in the hands of the hosts. 

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Guerrilla
Marketing

We decided the best place for a Guerrilla Marketing campaign would be inside high-end bathrooms, like Radio City Music Hall and stores in the SoHo area. Women’s restrooms of New York City would be flooded with bathroom attendants, courtesy of Krispy Kreme. Restroom attendants would wear custom Krispy Kreme outfits, with the iconic paper hat on top. The attendants would have a Krispy Kreme box that the target audience could open. Inside would be hand sanitizer, makeup wipes, chapstick, tissues, Q-Tips, lotions, Ibuprofen, and anything else someone may need to get themselves through
the day. The target audience would be able to use and take the items they need. On the mirrors, a vinyl sticker would be placed with words of affirmation. Among them, it would state, “Krispy Kreme looks good on you,” implying the target audience has used one of the products from the box.

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Social Media

Instagram and Partiful, a party planning and evite app, as social media platforms to reach our target audience. Instagram is very popular among older millennials and we wanted to created synergy between the viral video, print ads and social media posts. Partiful is an up and coming app that fits perfectly with our target audiences city lifestyle where they frequently attend and host events. We created five Instagram posts and five Partiful posts. The Instagram posts showed luxury through doughnut jewelry, high fashion through the modeling look, designer through the stack of famous fashion brands books and the New York City lifestyle through the NYC city view post. All of the posts incorporate elements of the Krispy Kreme brand while still staying on theme. The Partiful posts were all centered around events that Krispy Kreme could host or be a part of. The posts showcase Krispy Kreme themed party classics including gift bags, champagne, microphone, invite and a doughnut charcuterie board. Our tag line "Elevate your indulgence" was also used throughout the posts. All the posts were create using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

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Campaign created by: Mackenzie Van Dam, Paige Mudd, Kelli Demkowski, Jess Peterson and Ana Seifert

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