It’d be hard to overstate how important Dunkin’ Donuts has been for New Englanders in general, and Bostonians in particular.

For decades, the chain’s storefronts have been part of the regional landscape, pieces of infrastructure as common and essential as streetlights, crosswalks, and mail boxes. The fat white cup with the pink and gold lettering has served as a badge of office, a semi-conscious signal of one’s status as a local. And the waxy paper bag full of Munchkins has been a staple at countless PTA meetings, church breakfasts, and kids’ soccer games. Regular customers relied on this chain so much, in fact, that we gave it a few nicknames—shorthand used by people in the know.

In addition to “Dunks” and “Dunkies,” there was “Dunkin’,” which referred both to the chain itself and to its products. You could “go to Dunkin’,” but more often you would “get Dunkin’” or “grab Dunkin’” for yourself, your coworkers, and/or your loved ones. The abbreviation grew out of and reinforced the brand’s central place in our lives. Again, “Dunkin’” was practically a public service on par with the MBTA or the Boston Police Department, an institution that helped the city function on a basic level.

We needed it. We loved it. And by giving it a nickname, we claimed some part of it as our own, in a way that made us stick with the brand even when competing national chains offered us better coffee, fresher donuts, and cleaner floors. With perverse joy, we watched the Starbucks-swilling hipsters agonize over flavor profiles and cake pops, while we crunched on the granules at the bottom of our massive, over-sugared iced coffees. We were the townies who didn’t have time to learn what a venti was, and wouldn’t bother to find out if you put a gun to our heads. Life was good.

Then, in 2018, Dunkin’ Donuts officially changed its name to Dunkin’, and ruined the whole bit.

The Deadly Temptation of Coolness

On paper, at least, the rebrand makes a certain kind of sense. People have already been referring to Dunkin’ Donuts as “Dunkin’” for years, and donuts are only a tiny part of the ever-evolving business. Surely it makes sense to use that customer data that marketers are always raving about, and meet people where they’re at by showing them that the brand is in on the joke?

The problem is that this move demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes brand nicknames work—where they come from, why they stick around, and what they offer the people who use them.

As marketing professors Zhe Zhang and Vanessa M. Patrick explain in a recent article for the Harvard Business Review, the use of a brand nickname lends credibility to that brand’s customers when they are talking among themselves about the brand. Referring to McDonald’s as “Mickey D’s,” or to Target as “Tarjay,” signals knowledge of and affinity with the brand, as well as membership in the group of frequent brand users.

By contrast, when a company starts referring to itself by an unofficial nickname, people quickly start rolling their eyes. As Zhang and Patrick put it:

“When a company blatantly tries to adopt its customers’ language for marketing purposes, it can come off as forced, transforming the nickname from a consumer-owned term of endearment into an official, company-owned name. This often eliminates the authenticity and genuineness that the name conveyed when used exclusively by consumers.”

In other words, the urge to co-opt a consumer-generated nickname results from a confusion about the roles that company and customer should assume in relation to one another. To put it bluntly: a brand nickname is cool because the company doesn’t use it. The vain attempt to cash in on that cool factor by making the nickname official—to be the consumer’s buddy, rather than their provider of goods or services—is a straightforward example of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Take control of a valuable brand nickname from the consumers who give it life, and it will quickly wither away.

A Brand Deflated

Zhang and Patrick’s framework neatly describes one factor in the diminishing brand experience that Dunkin’ has offered its most loyal customers over the last few years, and especially since the 2018 rebrand.

As the company has gone national, and expanded its menu to include lunch items and specialty coffees, the idea of what makes Dunkin’ Dunkin’—as something different from any other fast-casual chain—has gotten more and more fuzzy. By yanking a local linguistic quirk out of its natural habitat and plastering it on storefronts around the country, the company sealed its transition from beloved local fixture to indistinct national megachain.

The whole effort has the tragically hip vibe of an English teacher using slang to talk about Hamlet—an authority figure’s well-intentioned attempt to relate, which backfires by co-opting something that was never really theirs to begin with.

The takeaway: Let people have their fun. And don’t allow a craving for coolness to send your brand barging in where it doesn’t belong.