People think DoorDash is just a restaurant delivery service. It’s not. It’s really a 24/7 life assistant that can get you pretty much anything you want or need. Yep, anything.

To put this to the test and change the way Americans think about DoorDash, we turned Super Bowl marketing on its head, hi-jacking every other brand’s campaign in the process and promising to deliver everything advertised during the Super Bowl.

The delivery service landscape is cluttered and undifferentiated - which is a damn big problem when your business relies on being the first app people open when they need something.

Competitors have relied on celebrities and huge media spend to create awareness. But DoorDash needed a smarter, more sustainable strategy.

In addition, DoorDash was known primarily for restaurant delivery. But to drive the business it needed to grow beyond this into grocery, convenience, health, and more.

Super Bowl commercials are an American cultural institution, with huge emphasis placed on their entertainment value and memorability.

But they’re also the most cluttered advertising space in the world. With huge budgets and huge creative brain power pointed at winning this single moment in time.

We realized that entertaining people for 30 seconds in the Super Bowl wasn’t enough. That we needed to engage with them for the two weeks leading up to the game.

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 everything advertised during the Super Bowl required rethinking brand partnerships, 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.

DoorDash has mass appeal, and we had to speak to a mass audience. Super Bowl was the perfect moment to demonstrate the power of the platform, at scale.

Although the audience is massive, the noise around Super Bowl commercials is equally massive. From celebrity cameos, to million dollar giveaways.

The key to success would be building an audience prior to the game. That meant creating ripples of anticipation and excitement about the size and audacity of the DoorDash prize.

In practice, this meant hijacking every other brand's Super Bowl ad announcement or ad teaser so that it became just another part of the ultimate DoorDash delivery.

By the time our commercial aired during the Super Bowl, America was primed and excited to take part, turning the ripples of excitement into a tidal wave of engagement.

Two weeks before the game, we launched our campaign with an announcement film explaining

the idea, and created 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.

As part of our social effort, we identified key subcultures, like snacks and cars, and tapped relevant influencers to help amplify the campaign, alongside our very own correspondent, the Dashspondent.

Every time brands announced their ad, we added it to our prize. As the prize grew, so did the conversation, audience, and anticipation for our ad on gameday.

On gameday, we placed our ad strategically in the fourth quarter, allowing DoorDash to intercept every brand conversation as ads were released and discussed.

Before Super Bowl weekend, DoorDash had already amassed over 8 billion earned impressions.

National TV morning shows and local news were all talking about DoorDash delivering the Super Bowl, putting us in the top 10 of most discussed brands pre-game (and the only top 10 brand without a celebrity).

When our Super Bowl ad launched, social media flooded with thousands of solvers and memes: one Reddit thread reached over 2.3K comments, and some even tried selling the code.

By the time the sweepstakes closed at midnight, it had over 8 million submissions.

With 11.9B earned impressions, the campaign blew our benchmarks out of the water: overall earned impressions beat our targets by 200%, earned social mentions by 150%, and influencer impressions surpassed targets by 1,250%.

Not only helping change perceptions of DoorDash, but changing the way people think about Super Bowl campaigns forever.