Tim Hortons has earned another social media success for indugling a special donut request from a celebrity – this one from one of Canada’s most famous DJs.
The Ontario-born Deadmau5 (real name Joel Zimmerman) tweeted Tim Hortons Monday, asking, “Can we make a mau5head donut?” – a reference to the mouse head mask the DJ wears on stage.
According to Michelle Robichaud, manager of PR and social media at Tim Hortons, the tweet was spotted by Tim Hortons’ in-house social media team, which then designed something for the DJ out of Timbits and tweeted a picture of it back to the celebrity on Tuesday morning.
Within about an hour, the response had collected over 500 retweets thanks in part to Zimmerman’s own retweet to his 2.6 million Twitter followers.
Robichaud said the team decided to respond because the brand “loves to interact and have fun with our followers on an on-going basis” and not just because of Zimmerman’s fame. “We’re always engaging with our social media followers, sometimes those people also happen to be celebrities.”
It’s not the first time Zimmerman has offered Tim Hortons some brand love. Last fall the DJ took the American singer/producer Pharrell on a “coffee run” to Tim Hortons and filmed a half-hour video of the two talking in a car, driving around Toronto with Tim Hortons in their hands. The video was later picked up by CBC Music.
The international DJ’s love for the coffee chain seems to date back at least a couple years, with Deadmau5 tweeting about it as far back as September 2012, when Tim Hortons sent him a branded coffee maker. His response? “THANK YOU!!!! @TimHortons !! I love you. You are my best friend.”
While Robichaud said Tim Hortons does not have any kind of formal business relationship with the DJ (the company only says “we have had some fun with Deadmau5 through social media in the past”, Zimmerman is no stranger to formal brand deals. Last October he headlined a party in Toronto for Microsoft Canada’s Surface 2 launch and has done work for Puma in the past.
In the past, Tim Hortons has also capitalized on brand mentions from other Canadian celebrities, including former 90210 star Jason Priestly. After the brand was mentioned in the same breath as Priestly on How I Met Your Mother, the restaurant acted quickly, similarly creating a mock up of the fake Priestly-themed donut on the show.
The brand then later tapped Priestly to judge a donut contest, bringing the brand mention full circle.
