Every agency has been there—sitting in a conference room with an idea so audacious it feels like professional suicide to even suggest it. Rename an entire Massachusetts town after a coffee chain? Put crowd-sourced profanity on a liqueur bottle? These sound like the kind of pitches that get agencies fired, not celebrated.
Yet two independent agencies recently pulled off exactly these kinds of campaigns. Their secret isn’t about convincing reluctant clients to take impossible risks. It’s about understanding when bold ideas become inevitable—and how to navigate the logistics without killing the magic.
The Massachusetts Town That Couldn’t Live Without Dunkin’
Eva Wasko saw the opportunity before anyone else. As SVP of public relations at Boston-based Allen & Gerritsen, she’d been tracking a story that started in fall 2022: the small town of Stow, Massachusetts had lost its last Dunkin’ location. Population 7,000. Thirty miles west of Boston. And suddenly, no Dunkin’.
Local radio reporter Matt Shearer branded it a “Dunkin’ desert,” and the story went viral. “We’re talking all local news all the way up to today.com, to the Daily Mail in the UK,” Wasko explains. “People were distraught, because this is New England, after all.”
When franchisees Megan and Mark Page prepared to renovate a building and bring Dunkin’ back in 2024, Wasko knew they had lightning in a bottle. “We knew if we wanted this story to be as unforgettable, as unignorable, as the original story, we had to go big.”
The idea? Rename Stowe to “Dunkin'” for the day of the grand opening. Have Cuppy, Dunkin’s mascot, receive a key to the city. Throw a celebration worthy of the cultural moment.
“Dunkin’ has always been synonymous with New England, so let’s literally make it synonymous,” Wasko says. The Stowe Select Board voted unanimously to approve the temporary name change.
When Cultural Relevance Meets Creative Courage
Andrew Graff, CEO of Allen & Gerritsen, points to what made the Dunkin’ campaign different from a typical publicity stunt. “You have a great idea when it starts picking up its own steam,” he says. “The more you start sharing it and getting everybody else involved, it starts picking up momentum.”
The campaign succeeded because it felt authentic to Massachusetts culture. “I don’t know that this idea would ever be pulled off by a Starbucks,” Wasko notes. “Dunkin’ is so masterful at really understanding their audience and understanding culture, and I think that makes all the difference.”
Graff emphasizes the importance of making ideas “uniquely unignorable”—campaigns that hit the national stage because they tap into something real. “How do you create an idea that’s unignorable that actually hits the national news as well? That was what we set out to do.”
Chicago’s Most Honest Liqueur Campaign
Meanwhile in Chicago, Amy Edwards faced a different kind of bold creative challenge. As managing director of Quality Meats, she was working with Jeppson’s Malört—a bitter Swedish liqueur that’s become a Chicago rite of passage specifically because it tastes awful.
“Malört is to Chicago what Dunkin’ is to Massachusetts,” Edwards explains. “If you’ve lived in Chicago, if you’ve passed through Chicago, someone has dared you to take a shot of Malört. That’s usually how it goes down.”
The challenge: create a campaign that could expand Malört beyond Chicago while staying true to its reputation. Quality Meats’ solution was breathtakingly direct—embrace exactly how people describe the taste, no matter how crude.
“We were inspired by consumer behavior,” Edwards says. “People were doing this. They were talking about what it tastes like online using completely not safe for work phrases.”
The “Malört Tastes Like” campaign featured real bar patron reactions, with descriptions including “a rat’s farthole” and “donkey dick dipped in gasoline.” The brand then invited consumers to submit their own taste descriptions, with the winning entries becoming limited-edition label names.
The Self-Aware Client Advantage
Edwards reveals that working with provocative brands can make selling bold work easier—if you know how to read the room. “I feel like we had an upper leg because the clients just know what the product is to people. They’re super aware.”
The key is understanding why clients call your agency in the first place. “You got to ask a lot of questions up front to see what they’re like. Why did you call us? We’re not calling Quality Meats to get an SEO campaign,” Edwards says. “What work do you like of ours? What work do you like of others? Give us some examples out of your category that’s interesting to you.”
Still, even self-aware clients have boundaries. “There were definitely conversations around the language. Can we say this? And if you can believe it, some things did hit the cutting room floor,” Edwards admits. “There were things that were worse than what made it.”
Building Trust Before Building Campaigns
Both agency leaders emphasize that bold work requires establishing trust long before wild ideas enter the conversation. Graff identifies relationship-building as the foundation: “You kind of have to start with trust, and really sort of build that relationship with the client.”
Trust comes from track record and understanding outcomes. “Really building that relationship with each other. And how do you start that relationship and know that it will work? Part of it’s track record, part of it’s who else you’ve done it for if you haven’t done it for that client,” Graff explains.
Edwards adds practical advice for preparing clients for provocative presentations: “There’s lots of little tips and tricks to getting to a good meeting that’s got some scary stuff. Making sure the clients’ expectations are set for that.”
Her approach is refreshingly direct: “Heads up, there’s gonna be some weird stuff coming. Donkey dick is in the deck, right? Just so you’re aware.”
When PR Leads Creative Strategy
Wasko’s role leading the Dunkin’ campaign represents an important shift in how agencies approach bold ideas. Rather than treating public relations as campaign support, Allen & Gerritsen positioned PR expertise at the center of creative development.
“Creativity is not just the noun, it’s an adjective,” Wasko says. She credits early collaboration with making complex logistics manageable: “Whenever you can get your comms people involved early, not only will they have a worldview as to where this is going to go, they’ve really positively contributed to getting to a stage where it’s like, oh, we never thought of that.”
The Dunkin’ campaign required navigating town council meetings, construction timelines, franchisee coordination, and media relationships simultaneously. “There was a lot of pacing involved, and a lot of different people from the town board, navigating all of these different elements,” Wasko explains.
Crucially, Wasko built relationships with key players like reporter Matt Shearer, who had originally broken the “Dunkin’ desert” story. “To have somebody who is as curious about his community, who’s creative, and to not just be able to pitch him, hey, we want to do this, and do you want to be involved, but who you could really build the story with? That all goes into that trust factor.”
Knowing Where to Draw Lines
One critical skill both agencies demonstrate is knowing when to push boundaries and when to pull back. Edwards describes finding the “break point” where creative goes too far: “Where does the idea not work anymore when we start to push edges? What’s that agreed upon trench that we’re just not going to cross together?”
This requires ongoing collaboration with clients, not unilateral creative decisions. “Sometimes you also know, hey, no, they’re not gonna buy a donkey dick. So don’t put donkey dick in,” Edwards says. “Maybe in this instance we’re not putting donkey dick in.”
The goal is winning the war, not every individual battle. “Okay, we lost this battle, but ultimately we’re winning the war, and it’s a beautiful, great idea that’s going to make it out in the world,” Edwards explains.
The Over-Engineering Warning
Perhaps most importantly, both teams warn against the tendency to over-complicate brilliant ideas. Edwards points to Quality Meats’ collaborative approach with clients: “Sometimes talking internally about, okay, what’s the break point? What’s that agreed upon trench that we’re just not going to cross together?”
Wasko notes that great campaigns gain momentum when agencies trust the process rather than trying to control every detail. “The client could really feel at ease with that story and say, yep, we’re in good hands. We can trust what’s going to come and not need to over-engineer or micromanage this.”
The Dunkin’ campaign succeeded partly because Allen & Gerritsen let the story develop naturally rather than forcing every beat.
Both campaigns succeeded because they tapped into something that was already true. New Englanders really do have a cultural relationship with Dunkin’. Chicagoans really do dare each other to drink Malört and describe the experience in colorful language.
As Edwards puts it: “Sometimes you also know, hey, no, they’re not gonna buy donkey dick. So don’t put donkey dick in.” But when they will? That’s when you get unanimous town council votes and limited-edition labels that celebrate exactly what people were already saying.
Learn more
Allen & Gerritsen
Andrew Graff LinkedIn
Eva Wasko LinkedIn
Allen & Gerritsen LinkedIn
Contact: ag****@*-g.com | (617) 421-1919
Quality Meats
Amy Edwards LinkedIn
Quality Meats LinkedIn
Contact: am*@******************ve.com | (312) 733-6328
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