In order to transform the way people see DoorDash - from a food delivery service to a 24/7 life assistant that can get you anything you need - we hijacked the Super Bowl and turned every ad during the game into an ad for DoorDash.

During the game, instead of merely entertaining viewers, DoorDash directly engaged them with a promo code and a clear CTA: enter the code on DoorDash’s website, and you could be the one lucky winner to get products from every single Super Bowl commercial, no matter if it was a BMW or bag of Doritos.

DoorDash is an app synonymous with restaurant delivery. But the category has grown increasingly crowded, and way less differentiated. Their competitors offer many of the same things: restaurants and grocery, delivered. DoorDash needed a way to stand out from the competition, and a fresh, future-proofed take on how to think about their business.

They knew that with their business model, they offered so much more than simply food–they could connect consumers with whatever they needed, whenever they needed it. By leveraging their data and their deep understanding of human behavior, they could anticipate or answer seemingly every need or want. Transforming the brand from simply a delivery service, to a 24/7 life assistant. And they needed a high-octane way to change people’s perceptions of the brand. Where better than the Super Bowl, America’s biggest cultural moment?

DoorDash is renowned for restaurant delivery, but not for the millions of other convenient items it now offers. They needed to show consumers that the brand was more than just a food delivery service–DoorDash is a 24/7 life assistant, able to get you whatever you need, whenever you need it. And to truly change how people saw the brand, they needed a huge, exciting way to launch their new positioning, showcasing their ability to deliver just about anything.

This campaign had two main objectives. First, it needed to show consumers that DoorDash delivered more than just food, in a memorable, engaging way. Second, it needed to increase buzz and conversation around the brand’s ability to deliver pretty much anything. And both of those tasks needed to be accomplished during TV’s most competitive night.

During the Super Bowl, DoorDash set out to prove it could deliver pretty much anything in the most audacious way possible: by delivering products from all the other Super Bowl ads, all to one person. They would hijack other brand’s ads, to hijack the Super Bowl itself. As other brands aired Super Bowl commercials, DoorDash added their advertised product into an epic online cart in real-time. All the ads meant all the ads: multiple cars, 60 lbs of mayo, and even a gift card to their biggest competitor.

DoorDash’s Super Bowl TV spot then revealed a special promo code for one person to win it all, but not too easily. To increase engagement and memorability, the promo code was incredibly long, featuring the names of brands and items DoorDash could deliver. This would encourage consumers to pause and rewind the TV commercial to capture it all.

To stand out in the Super Bowl, it wasn’t enough to entertain people during the game with a traditional spot. So DoorDash went a step further, and hijacked the Super Bowl: by delivering every product advertised during the big game’s broadcast, to one lucky winner via a promo code that aired as the spot. Just a sweepstakes wouldn’t be enough to stick in viewers’ minds–to meet our goals, we needed a creative way to directly engage the audience and showcase DoorDash's range. So we subverted one of the most recognizable parts of the ecommerce world: the promo code.

To enter the sweepstakes, viewers would need to write out a code that featured a range of things DoorDash would deliver, beyond just restaurants. We turned a simple promo code into a list that many consumers would cement in their memory by writing it over and over again.

A week before the Super Bowl, a teaser informed people of our prize: getting every item advertised to one lucky winner. This created a flurry of speculation about what would go in the cart, driving conversation on social and news before the game.

As an ad aired, we’d add the corresponding item to the cart via social media.

Then during the Super Bowl, by the fourth quarter, the prize cart and anticipation were both massive. Our :30 ad finally aired and became the catalyst for hours of conversation and engagement. The internet erupted in a frenzy to crack the code: many posted about the process of rewinding, replaying, and rewriting it. We saw millions of attempts, right up until the site closed at midnight.

To win the Super Bowl, we needed to stoke excitement on social, get America talking, and get consumers engaging with our microsite to crack the code.

Well, this campaign delivered, surpassing all benchmarks with 11.9B earned impressions, and mentions on the Today Show, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, and more. Social media flooded with thousands of solvers and memes: one Reddit thread reached over 2.3k comments, with some even selling the code. The average microsite visitor spent two minutes engaging on the site to enter the promo code, twice the benchmark.

In the end, the ad had over 117 million viewers, and many were so focused on DoorDash delivering all the ads, they missed the conclusion of the most-viewed Super Bowl game in history. By the time the sweepstakes closed at midnight, it had 8 million+ entries, and the engagement and excitement continued for days post-game.