New LFC Partner (Jan 2014) - Dunkin' Donuts

Reports coming in that Jam Molby brokered the deal with Dunkin Dounuts (for the donuts across the other side of the pond who have basterdised English, the proper spelling for donuts is: doughnuts) 

In a perfect world we'd have no sponsors at all....nice clean shirt with no logo other than our own.

Indeed, it's why you won't hear me protesting very loudly, it's the reality of the modern game.

Just hope they're paying us top dollar for the honour of supplying us doughy delights!

Loving the homer Simpson at the side of my screen.

Loving the homer Simpson at the side of my screen.

That freaked me out. 

The fuckers are running rings around us 

Loving the homer Simpson at the side of my screen.

It's brilliant.

Genius.

Nice touch with the Homer Simpson.

At first I thought this was a joke and that someone had photoshopped the name 'dunkin doughnuts' onto a shirt to take the p!ss out of the owners by implying that they would EVEN go to these lengths to make a quick buck, and then I realised that, no, in fact we actually are now sponsored by a doughnut company. Then like most I thought that for an elite professional football club to associate itself with a company that sells deep fried rings of potentially deadly dough covered in sugar was a ridiculous idea UNTIL I realised that this was just a partnership and that the players aren't going to be running around with 'dunkin donuts' on ther chests.

I think as long as the association isn't too strong, it isn't a problem, particularly if they're paying us millions for the privilege. If this was a deal with a local pie company who sold equally unhealthy but locally produced pies that had none of the 'fat Americans'/cheap fast food chain connotations then all but the most puritanical would be saying 'supports local business, brings in money, a good deal all round', and it's not as if unhealthy foods and football supporters don't go together, either. Not that we're all fat bas**rds, but just look at the replies in here from people keen to reveal their favourite doughnut stories. The marketing men have cottoned on to this and so have the club.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jan/16/liverpool-dunkin-donuts-multi-million-partnership

Hmmmm donuts along with the big mac and 1/4pounder excellent exports from uncle Sam .loving homer at the side .

Loving the homer Simpson at the side of my screen.

Thought it was attached to your post somehow until I scrolled down!

Excellent! 

Homer is a Kopite !!!

Dunkin' Donuts apologises for Liverpool FC tweet error

One of Liverpool FC's sponsors has apologised after tweeting a version of the club's badge replacing the Hillsborough eternal flames with cups of iced coffee.

Dunkin' Donuts also replaced "You'll Never Walk Alone" with "America runs on Dunkin".

Charlotte Hennessy, whose father James died at Hillsborough, called the advert an "embarrassing mistake".

A company spokesman said it did not intend to cause any offence.

He added: "We have removed the tweet and halted the campaign immediately."

'Embarrassing'
Ms Hennessy said the club's symbolic crest was important, "not just to the families, but to the club as a whole".

"It's something very special and very meaningful," she said.

"I don't believe that it was done to cause offence. We are sitting here at the inquests every day, there are bigger things to be offended about.

"It was a silly mistake, an embarrassing mistake, and it just needs to be left there really."

However, Ms Hennessy said the US doughnuts firm should have got to know the club better before choosing to manipulate the crest.

She added: "It's really embarrassing on their behalf."

Holy sh*t.

On my phone so can't post the link, but Jim Boardman has an excellent article regarding their screw up on the Mirror website.

Well worth a read.

Stupid mistake but I'm still going to eat their donuts.

They obviously didn't mean to cause offence but you'd have thought that PR people would do a little research before doing stuff like this.

Jim Boardman

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/dunkin-donuts-gaffe-liverpools-tacky-5235952

Dunkin' Donuts gaffe was Liverpool's tacky, corporate selling-out coming home to roost

Dunkin’ Donuts, one of Liverpool’s many corporate partners, thought it would be fun to replace the memorial flames on the Liverpool crest with a couple of soft drinks and to invite their Twitter followers to come up with their own ideas along the same lines. The flames were first added to the club’s badge after the Hillsborough disaster, as a mark of respect and remembrance of those who lost their lives.

Not everyone will be offended, not everyone will be upset, but swapping flames that represent the eternal memorial at Anfield for a couple of cups of coffee is at best insensitive and at worst downright ignorant. That it could happen at all is perhaps more of a failing on the club’s part than that of their sponsor from the other side of the Atlantic.

In many ways the effort was little more than tacky.

Swapping “You’ll never walk alone” for “America runs on Dunkin’” is about as harmful, or funny, as a Christmas cracker joke. Exchanging the ironwork of the Shankly Gates with doughnuts, or one of the Liverbirds with a takeaway coffee cup, is harmless fun. It probably won’t make many people laugh but it won’t illicit much more than a shrug and shake of the head either.

But not so when you are replacing the memorial flames with milkshakes, frappes or whatever soft drink it was meant to be. You just don’t do that. Do you?

Looking at the list of official partners Liverpool now have, it’s difficult to work out if there is actually anyone left for the club to be official partners with.

The most recent announcement ventured right into parody territory with Billy Hogan, the club’s commercial chief, telling the world he was “thrilled” (his words) at the tie up with Nivea: “We’re thrilled to welcome our very first grooming partner to the LFC family.”

Thrilled to have a grooming partner? Can you imagine the excitement in The Albert at the news? “No new signings this window and we still can’t get Raheem to sign a new deal but you know what, we’ve never had a grooming partner before!”

I might be wrong but I don’t think Liverpool have used a Robin Reliant to promote anything before either.

Dunkin’ Donuts clearly had no idea that their actions might upset anyone. Some creative people somewhere in the US knew they needed to do something to promote their company’s expensive partnership with Liverpool FC and to engage with supporters. Someone had an idea – why not give them a chance to come up with their own personal crests?

The people involved probably know as much about LFC and its badge as their equivalent in a studio on Merseyside would know about Minnesota Wild Hockey Club and its badge. Which probably does need a bit of explaining, to be honest with you, so I won’t comment on it without looking into what it all means. Just in case.

The Dunkin’ partnership isn’t even aimed at Liverpool fans in Liverpool anyway. The nearest branch of Dunkin’ Donuts to Anfield is a ‘Donut Cabinet’ in a service station on the M40 near Oxford, 173 miles away. And that’s a long way from Donut HQ, wherever that may be.

Dunkin’ Brands, the parent company that owns Dunkin’ Donuts and shares its annoying use of an apostrophe in its name, issued a statement in the end, some time after the tweet had been deleted.

“We apologize for any insensitivity regarding our tweet supporting an LFC-themed promotion featuring the LFC Crest. As a proud partner of LFC, we did not intend any offense, particularly to the Club’s supporters. We have removed the tweet and halted the campaign immediately.”

Good on them.

That was exactly the right thing to do and really that should be the end of it. They messed up and the reason they messed up was because they had been let down by the people they had partnered with. Liverpool Football Club let them down.

Big brands around the world – and given the money in football these days Liverpool FC is obviously a big brand – have brand guidelines. They issue suppliers with their own little rulebooks warning them to “never allow typography or other elements to invade the logo” and to “only use authorised artwork”.

Would it be difficult to issue similar guidelines about the LFC crest to partners? Would it hurt to include a little explanation about what those flames represent and, as a way of avoiding any offence, request they steer clear of tampering with that badge?

The club are well aware of the need to think before tampering with the badge.

Back in 2012 Liverpool and Warrior Football unveiled the first home kit of their new partnership and announced that the club crest would no longer appear on the front of the club’s shirts. The old-style badge Liverpool wore during the seventies and eighties, simply consisting of a Liverbird with the initials ‘LFC’ underneath, was to be brought back in place of the more elaborate design used since the nineties.

That would also mean that the memorial flames that are an important part of that crest would no longer be seen on the club’s shirts. After consulting with one of the groups that represents Hillsborough families, Warrior came up with the idea of putting the flames on the back of the shirt, either side of the number ‘96’.

The consultation process typified Liverpool’s approach to the bereaved families at the time. The Hillsborough Family Support Group do represent the majority of the families, but by no means all, and the remainder, including those represented by the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, only found out about the change by reading the minutes of a supporters’ meeting. Not all bereaved family members are Liverpool supporters, of course.

This approach caused a great deal of upset and anger at the time, with the HJC saying: “The continued refusal of the club to acknowledge the HJC is insensitive, divisive and deplorable – 96 is more than a number. LFC would do well to remember that. This situation is symbolic of the lack of relationship between LFC and HJC.”

The club, again ignoring the HJC, responded through a spokesman: “The club consulted with the HFSG committee and shared a number of alternative designs which were considered by the committee and they selected the new design which includes the number 96 to recognise those who lost their lives. Nobody has more respect for the 96 and their families than this football club.”

Three years on and Liverpool come across as ham-fisted as ever. As it is, the families will be more concerned with what is happening at the inquests in Warrington than what a US snack food company puts up on its Twitter feed, but the incident calls into question the relationship between the club and the brands it is using to help introduce itself into new markets. Are LFC sending the right message to potential new fans?

Liverpool’s image is becoming increasingly tacky.

He is right in some respects, but I get the feeling he is having a go at the club rather than DD.

He is right in some respects, but I get the feeling he is having a go at the club rather than DD.

Seems that way to me as well, although to be fair the writer has a point about advertisers using our club badge in that there really should have been guidelines in place to make sure this type of thing doesn't happen.

Still, DD sorted it and apologised quickly.

To be honest I thought the donut drowning sh*t was a wind up, a manifestation of an enforced American culture shock.
But no first impressions and worst scenarios are upon us - if that annoying F***ing thing doesn't disappear when I press post PC's are going to be F***ing binned.