DoorDash
Delivering social engagement for a delivery giant
( Services )
- Brand & Media
As a leading delivery platform, DoorDash opens the door for users to boost their access to local businesses while empowering Dashers with work that is flexible.
By fostering connections between individuals and businesses in this way, DoorDash is literally a Door to More for over 37 million consumers.
Since 2023, DEPT® has been DoorDash’s social creative and media partner, helping the brand conceive, create, and launch tentpole campaign moments and evergreen social that drive meaningful engagement and brand awareness by drawing on the power of relatability and authenticity.
Building relatability with consumers
From the beginning of our work together, DoorDash had a history of successful collaborations with popular social media personalities.
Knowing that creator content was an essential part of DoorDash’s overall brand presence, DEPT® and DoorDash decided to explore the value of creator-led sketch and situational content in addition to production content we created in-house or on set.
This strategy informed a series of seasonal tentpole campaigns that aligned with DoorDash’s values and gave their brand a relatable voice that was cohesive across social platforms.
With the Back To School (BTS) tentpole, for example, DoorDash wanted to boost the message that they provided the ultimate all-in-one tool for retail delivery during the BTS shopping season. To lean into the chaos of this season, our creative concepts leaned into “back to school scaries” with a humorous take on that all-too-familiar feeling of dread/anxiety.
We worked with skit creators like Zachariah Drake Porter and Terrell and Jarius to reminisce on their BTS shopping scrambles, but this time avoiding the chaos with DoorDash. We also partnered with popular internet moms like Caitlin Murray (@bigtimeadulting) and Chancé (@hindirlanefamily) to encourage consumers to let DoorDash handle lunchboxes this semester. And Gen Z Creators introduced College Students to DashPass through the most unhinged college predicaments that brought the scaries to life.
Driving relevance with authenticity
Building a strategy for campaigns grounded in creator-driven content also gave DoorDash the added edge of authenticity, which is crucial in today’s world for capturing audience attention.
Authenticity was an especially important ingredient in the holiday activation we helped create in celebration of DoorDash’s “Everyday Miracles” platform for their holiday tentpole campaign. To resonate with audiences, we needed to capture the spirit of the holiday season—the true spirit.
During the holidays, it’s all too easy for brands to advertise their products or services against a cliched, sanctimonious version of what the season represents. That’s why, for “Everyday Miracles,” we wanted to focus on the real experiences and sentiments of consumers during the holidays through influencer content and in-house content creation.
“We wanted our owned content to feel representative of holiday truths. Sometimes you burn the turkey, sometimes you show up to potlucks with a store-bought dish, and sometimes you want to skip events altogether,” said DEPT® Creative Director Ro Otamendi. “We tried to capture that in paid content that’s straightforward and that complements the longer-form storytelling of the TVC and the creator videos.”
To ensure we fully encapsulated the spirit of humor and humanity within the overarching “Everyday Miracles” platform, the owned content that we created in-house supplemented the campaign’s influencer content with captivating portraits, punchy copy, and (of course) plenty of shots of mouth-watering holiday treats.
“The holidays can be as stressful as they are delightful. DoorDash wants to help customers focus on the latter and let us help with all the madness. We love how this campaign taps into the authentic ways people really think and live the holidays, and how it all feels so relatable.
”DoorDash Representative
Connecting with audiences meaningfully
Typically, DoorDash approaches their brand’s tentpole moments from a campaign-first lens as opposed to a social-first one. For their Mother’s Day campaign, however, DoorDash wanted to do something different and drive real connection with real people and the moms in their lives. To accomplish this, we worked together to show how the simple act of flower delivery has the power to bring people together, figuratively and literally.
We kicked off the campaign by bringing popular influencers—like Allison Kuch and The Basement Yard—and their moms together to have a conversation about flowers and ended it with an epic, one-of-a-kind stunt that resonated deeply with audiences.
For this part of the campaign, DoorDash orchestrated a series of reunions between four real people and their mothers, who’d been separated due to a variety of circumstances. Each mother was told that they’d be filmed receiving a flower delivery sent by their child, but what they didn’t know was that their children weren’t just sending flowers—they were delivering them as well.
To extend the same feeling of warmth and connection to every consumer, DoorDash also created an AR lens that allows people to connect to the moms in their lives. Whether in person or in separate locations, the lens will prompt you to ask your mom the same questions, getting to know her on a deeper level.
The impact of the campaign was as rewarding to see as it was to create. Inspired by the social trends around Mother’s Day, the ideas behind the campaign quickly became bigger than social: Spotlighting the universal feeling of human connection and inspiring people everywhere to celebrate it.
The power of social that resonates
Across our work with DoorDash, we’ve tapped into relatability and authenticity to drive meaningful brand engagement by relying on a mix of owned and creator content that blends trends and unique insights by focusing on punchy, relatable copy.
For all owned content, our paid media and creative teams work alongside one another, focusing on delivering quality design and production that looks and feels distinct to the DoorDash brand as well as handling pushes to specific audiences with paid media boosts.
It’s all part of the central goal of the social strategy we’ve created together: Reinforcing that DoorDash is more than just a delivery platform, that they represent a solution for the complexities of modern life, and—ultimately—that they are literally the Door to More for consumers.
In turn, the tentpole moments and campaigns we’ve created as part of our partnership have regularly earned millions of impressions and engagements, hundreds of thousands of link clicks, and garnered positive sentiment among audiences across social platforms.
