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Dunkin' Goes Gold With Waze to Fight Childhood Cancer
Dunkin' launched the 'Joy in Childhood, Dunkin' and Waze are Going Gold for Childhood Cancer' campaign in the United States in August 2019, partnering with Waze and the Joy in Childhood Foundation to raise funds and awareness during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month by offering an exclusive downloadable Waze navigation voice pack featuring children affected by cancer.
The campaign went live on August 27, 2019, according to News Dunkindonuts, and ran throughout September 2019 in alignment with the international observance of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Its mechanics were precise and participatory: every consumer who downloaded the special 'Going Gold' Change Voice pack on the Waze platform triggered a one-dollar donation from Dunkin' to the Joy in Childhood Foundation, with the brand committing a maximum donation of $100,000, as confirmed by news.dunkindonuts.com. Dunkin' locations also appeared across the Waze map marked with distinctive gold map pins, extending the campaign's visual identity into the daily navigation experience of millions of American drivers.
The creative and strategic ambition behind the campaign reached well beyond a standard cause-marketing tie-in. By embedding the voices of real children — those battling cancer and their siblings — directly into the navigation experience of Waze users across the United States, Dunkin' placed the human reality of childhood cancer into an intimate, everyday context. The Joy in Childhood Foundation, Dunkin's own charitable arm, served as the beneficiary organisation, directing raised funds toward sending children with cancer and their families on special experiences and helping young patients discover the simple joys of childhood. Created in partnership with agency BBDO, the campaign was executed as a film and digital activation, containing one principal media asset that anchored the broader Going Gold narrative. Clapboard scores this campaign 78/100, reflecting strong cause-marketing integration and emotional resonance within the United States Food and Drink category.
Dunkin' identified a precise intersection between its existing consumer base and the Waze platform's reach across American commuters. The strategic insight was straightforward: Waze's navigation community in the United States skews toward exactly the on-the-go, convenience-oriented consumers who already form Dunkin's core audience. Rather than running a conventional donation campaign, Dunkin' translated that overlap into an action — the download of a voice pack — that required genuine engagement rather than passive awareness.
The broader market context sharpened the rationale. In the United States, the coffee and snack shop market was valued at $50.7 billion in 2019, with a 4.6 percent annual growth rate, according to HTF Market Insights. Within that competitive landscape, Dunkin' held approximately 22 percent market share among leading United States coffee chains, while Starbucks commanded 39 percent market share among leading chains and approximately 23.9 percent of the broader coffee-and-snack-shop industry in 2018 and 2019, according to LinkedIn and Scribd research data. Against a dominant competitor with a well-established brand philanthropy narrative, Dunkin' required differentiation that felt specific and credible rather than generic.
The Joy in Childhood Foundation provided that specificity. Kari McHugh, Executive Director of the Dunkin' Joy in Childhood Foundation, stated publicly on August 27, 2019, that the goal was to drive awareness during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and to support organisations assisting young cancer patients and their families, as cited by news.dunkindonuts.com. Emma Weisberg, Global Head of Waze Ads Marketing, praised the partnership between the Joy in Childhood Foundation and the Waze community on the same date, according to news.dunkindonuts.com, affirming that the collaboration was built on complementary audiences and shared purpose rather than opportunistic alignment. Karen Raskopf, Dunkin's Chief Communications Officer, confirmed that the children featured in the voice pack were individuals who had experienced cancer firsthand, lending the creative its authenticity, per news.dunkindonuts.com. For the Food and Drink category in the United States, where cause-marketing credibility is increasingly scrutinised by consumers, this foundation of verified personal stories represented a meaningful strategic advantage.
BBDO built the Going Gold campaign around a creative mechanic that was both simple and structurally unusual within the Food and Drink advertising landscape. The agency's central idea placed real children — those affected by childhood cancer and their siblings — at the literal voice of the experience, embedding their recorded navigation directions into a bespoke Waze Change Voice pack available exclusively during September 2019 across the United States.
The decision to use authentic voices rather than produced or celebrity talent carried significant craft implications. Each navigation prompt delivered by a child participant became, in effect, a micro-narrative moment: a small, joyful presence inserted into the mundane act of driving to work or picking up a coffee. The emotional mechanics operated through accumulation — repeated exposure to these voices across daily commutes transformed a functional tool into an ongoing act of witness. Dunkin' locations rendered as gold map pins on the Waze interface reinforced the Going Gold identity visually, extending the campaign's colour language into the map layer itself and creating a consistent aesthetic across both the audio and spatial dimensions of the platform.
The film asset anchoring the campaign contextualised the voice pack within the broader Joy in Childhood Foundation mission, presenting the children not as subjects of pity but as active participants bringing joy into the lives of Waze users across the United States. Karen Raskopf, Dunkin's Chief Communications Officer, affirmed this framing publicly, noting that the children involved had direct experience with cancer and were central to the campaign's authenticity, as reported by news.dunkindonuts.com. Production credits for the Going Gold campaign's film component are not fully documented across public sources, though the work was created by BBDO for Dunkin' and submitted to industry archives including adsoftheworld.com. The restraint of the creative — one voice pack, one film, one clear donation mechanic — reflected a disciplined execution philosophy consistent with cause-driven work that aims to sustain credibility rather than overwhelm with production scale.
Dunkin' committed a verified maximum donation of $100,000 to the Joy in Childhood Foundation through the Going Gold campaign, with the donation structure tied directly to consumer downloads of the Waze voice pack, as confirmed by news.dunkindonuts.com. This performance-linked donation model meant that campaign impact was measurable in real time: each download represented both an act of consumer engagement and a quantifiable contribution toward helping children affected by cancer experience the joys of childhood.
No publicly available third-party data specifies the total number of voice pack downloads achieved during the September 2019 campaign period in the United States. However, the structural mechanics of the activation were designed for scale: Waze's broad footprint among American drivers, combined with Dunkin's network of gold-pinned locations on the Waze map, created multiple entry points for discovery and participation. The campaign's integration across a navigation platform used daily by a large portion of the United States commuter population meant that exposure to the Going Gold message was embedded in habitual behaviour rather than dependent on deliberate media consumption.
From a brand effectiveness standpoint, the campaign demonstrated several markers of well-constructed cause marketing within the Food and Drink category. The donation cap was transparent and pre-declared, the beneficiary was Dunkin's own established foundation rather than an unrelated third party, and the creative vehicle — children's voices in navigation — generated earned media interest beyond paid placement. The campaign received recognition from industry sources including iacaward.org and mmaglobal.com, indicating acknowledgement within professional advertising communities. Clapboard assigns this campaign a score of 78/100, reflecting its strong emotional integration, clear mechanic, and credible cause connection, tempered by the limited scale of a single downloadable asset as the primary activation vehicle within the broader United States Food and Drink advertising environment.
Dunkin' launched Going Gold on August 27, 2019, partnering with Waze and the Joy in Childhood Foundation during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. The campaign offered a downloadable Waze navigation voice pack featuring children affected by cancer, with Dunkin' donating one dollar per download up to a maximum of $100,000, as confirmed by news.dunkindonuts.com.
The Going Gold Change Voice pack replaced standard Waze navigation prompts with the voices of children affected by childhood cancer. Each download triggered a one-dollar donation from Dunkin' to the Joy in Childhood Foundation, capped at $100,000. Dunkin' locations also appeared as gold map pins on the Waze platform throughout September 2019 in the United States.
BBDO created the Going Gold campaign for Dunkin' in 2019. The agency developed both the Waze voice pack mechanic and the film asset that anchored the broader campaign narrative, positioning children affected by cancer as joyful active participants rather than passive subjects, consistent with the Joy in Childhood Foundation's mission across the United States.
Dunkin' committed a maximum donation of $100,000 to the Joy in Childhood Foundation through the Going Gold campaign, according to news.dunkindonuts.com. The donation was structured at one dollar per voice pack download, linking consumer participation directly to charitable contribution during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September 2019 across the United States.
The Joy in Childhood Foundation is Dunkin's own charitable arm. It funds experiences that allow children affected by cancer to discover the simple joys of childhood. Kari McHugh, Executive Director of the Foundation, confirmed its mission publicly on August 27, 2019, as reported by news.dunkindonuts.com, in connection with the Going Gold Waze partnership.
Clapboard assigns the Going Gold campaign a score of 78 out of 100. The score reflects strong emotional integration, a transparent donation mechanic, and credible cause alignment through the Joy in Childhood Foundation, balanced against the campaign's reliance on a single downloadable asset as its primary activation vehicle within the United States Food and Drink advertising category.
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