This work transformed the way people think of and relate to DoorDash–from simply a food delivery service, to a brand that can deliver whatever consumers need, whenever they need it.

Starting two weeks in advance, the campaign subverted every aspect of the Super Bowl experience, across film, earned and paid social, PR, OOH, and more. By partnering with and hijacking other brands’ Super Bowl announcements and using different channels strategically, DoorDash engaged multiple audiences and subcultures, capturing their imaginations and creating waves of hype and anticipation well before the game even began.

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 items it offers.

To truly change how people saw the brand, DoorDash needed a huge, exciting way to launch its new positioning: not just telling people but showcasing its 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.

The idea was breathtakingly simple: DoorDash would deliver all the products advertised in the Super Bowl.

But it was also breathtakingly audacious.

Delivering the Super Bowl required rethinking every part of brand engagement:

rethinking brand partnerships, rethinking PR, rethinking promotions, rethinking direct response, rethinking real time social, rethinking what a Super Bowl campaign should look like and how a Super Bowl advertiser should act.

To stand out during Super Bowl, we couldn’t just tell America that DoorDash delivers basically anything. We had to go a step further and prove it: by delivering every product advertised during the Super Bowl broadcast, to one lucky winner. But a sweepstakes wouldn’t be enough. To really stand out, we needed to create genuine hype and excitement among consumers for two whole weeks. Giving people constant new news, a sense of the size of the prize, and a reason to stay engaged with DoorDash’s brand experience. That meant updating the campaign in real-time, both as other brands announced their campaigns, as well as maintaining a responsive, always-on social presence.

We also had to ensure that we didn’t funnel a huge volume of people to the DoorDash app. Crashing the app sounds great in a case study video, but it’s a commercial disaster for an online business like DoorDash.

Two weeks before the game, we launched our campaign with a teaser film explaining the idea. Seven other Super Bowl advertisers were directly featured, including M&Ms, Kia, and Dove, kicking off an always-on ecosystem to drive anticipation of what DoorDash would deliver. “The cart” - a running record of the prize - was placed everywhere from influencer films to OOH, to partner social handles. Upon launch, several brands reached out to partner us. Major Super Bowl advertisers collaborated with us across social, donated products for the cart, and even requested being added to the hero film itself. This required mapping a dizzying amount of brands, outreach decks, and brand safety guidelines across multiple channels, executions, and platforms. Every time brands announced their ad, we added it to our prize. As the prize grew, so did the conversation, the audience, and the anticipation for DoorDash’s Super Bowl delivery.

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.