Dunkin's Shark Week Donut Is Not for Use as a Flotation Device

Dunkin’ Donuts has partnered with Discovery Channel’s beloved Shark Week to bring you the offering above, the Shark Bite donut, a yeast confection iced with a red-and-white pattern resembling a life preserver.

The partnership extends to the Dunkin’ logo on the Shark Week homepage—it’s mostly the same, except it shows a missing bite and the slogan reads, “Shark Week runs on Dunkin'” rather than “America runs on Dunkin'”.

The donut is going out to select stores across the country, says Harold Morgenstern, svp of national ad sales for Discovery. “Very rarely does Dunkin’ Donuts change its logo,” he said. The deal is part of a larger Discovery partnership for the restaurant: “They’ll be in all of our higher-rated premiere shows across the network,” said Morgenstern. “For Shark Week, [Dunkin’ is] new. They’ve been on and off the network for quite some time.” Morgenstern says the partnership will also include a billboard in Times Square and ways for fans to interact.

“We’re going to have ‘Take a Bite, Take a Pic,’ encouraging fans to take a bite and take a picture of it [for social media]. During Shark After Dark, we’ll show some of those and have some prizing involved,” he said.

Accordingly, we thought of some suggestions for future donut/show integrations.

Nude Donut (Naked & Afraid) — It’s free, but you don’t get a napkin.

Crab Surprise (Deadliest Catch) — A box with 11 mousetraps and one donut inside.

Lucky Donut (Gold Rush) — Available to groups of 10 or more. One customer gets a delicious donut of his or her choice, and everyone else gets cold french fries.

Hide-a-Donut (Moonshiners) — Actually a flask.

Experimental Donut (Mythbusters) — Explodes.

We expect to hear back from Discovery about these suggestions any moment now. Shark Week comes back Aug. 10; you can get your life preserver donut at Dunkin’ from Aug. 4.



This Shark Week Teaser Is a Chum-Tossing Celebration of Carnivorous Delights

Just watching Discovery’s Shark Week will make you feel like you’re skiing on two great whites while a mermaid clings to your leg.

Behold the resplendent CGI overkill of this internally produced Discovery Channel spot, featuring different kinds of sharks leaping around our chum-tossing “King of Summer.” You’ll have to watch two or three times to catch all that’s happening as he drives his great whites into a sea of seals, seagull snacks and fleeing penguins.

The mustachioed hero basks in the carnage, a look of unadulterated glee on his face. And then the mermaid winks at us. It is cheesy for the sake of cheese, and it’s blood in the water for Shark Week fans.



Lovely, Sweet, Innocent Seal Bites It in Discovery’s Shark Week Ad

The Discovery Channel is already promoting Shark Week, which doesn't happen until August, but the first ad is a doozy. It features a fake local news broadcast about an injured seal being returned to the ocean. Remember when they fed the lamb to the T-Rex in Jurassic Park? It's kinda like that. "It's a bad week to be a seal," begins the on-screen copy. "For the rest of us it's pretty awesome." (PETA might argue with that.) I don't know how they're going to top this spot, but if they can keep this kind of momentum going, there's a chance I won't be totally sick of hearing about Shark Week by the time it starts.