DoorDash Self-Love Bouquet

Background

DoorDash, a delivery service in the U.S., differentiates itself from other players in the category by championing neighborhoods through local businesses. Every brand and business decision is made with this mission in mind. As a neighborhood champion, the opportunity was to continue to expand to deliveries beyond food, such as groceries, pharmacies, and beyond. All in efforts to grow business for both DoorDash and a larger range of local businesses that consumers would be able to reach in the app.

Some of the bigger tentpole moments for the brand lean into special dates and holidays, like Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s has historically been one of the biggest opportunities for DoorDash, and in February of 2022, DoorDash kicked off Valentine’s Day celebrations by announcing same-day delivery of flowers from local florists. After all, flowers are one of the most popular valentine’s day presents. In 2022, there were $23.9 billion in sales for Valentine’s Day, and of that, $2.3 billion consisted of flower purchases. 

Uber Eats, one of the leading delivery apps in the U.S., expanded into same-day flower delivery in July 2021 in select markets and launched nationwide by 2022. Grubhub, another key player in the delivery category, sells flowers but does activate special promotions on Valentine’s Day. 1-800-Flowers, a leader in flower delivery, has sold flower bouquets since 1976, which has established them as a well-known and reputable service with nationwide reach.

To help grow flower orders in-app, DoorDash had to re-think its audience for Valentine’s Day. The opportunity was to champion all people, beyond couples, who have love in their life and want to celebrate that. Now, this isn’t just romantic love, it’s all the loves that exist in the world. From self-love to friend love, to single love, to that mom and dad love, co-worker love, neighbor love, bartender love, pet love, or even the love you have for your local butcher.

While DoorDash's flower delivery launch was successful for Valentine's Day in 2022, 2023 had to be bigger. With countless options available to consumers from every conceivable source, DoorDash had to bring an innovative idea in order to cut through the noise and emerge victorious. The mission was to capture the hearts and minds of consumers, while also championing the importance of supporting local florists. Ultimately, showing consumers that DoorDash would have all the flowers they need with same-day delivery, even for those last-minute gifts, while championing the neighborhood.

Objectives

1. Buzz: People and the press had to talk about DoorDash selling flowers for Valentine’s Day. KPI: 200MM earned media and 500k social impressions.

2. Sales: Drive purchases of flowers on DoorDash, doubling sales from the year prior. KPI: Gross merchandise value of $15M.

Audience

While most brands take the traditional route and target couples for Valentine’s Day sales, DoorDash looked elsewhere, starting with their own users. In 2022, many DoorDash users identified as single. So if DoorDash wanted them to purchase flowers, romantic expressions of love would not resonate with them.

Research

Valentine’s Day is traditionally a moment that celebrates love between couples. But, this traditional norm has shifted the occasion into an outdated, commercially driven, Hallmark holiday. In turn, one of the most universal emotions, love, became a commodity “only for couples”.

However, the landscape of love has shifted in culture. From the TV show Parks & Recreation starting Galentine’s Day celebrations and the emergence of Singles Awareness Day, to platonically marrying your best friend, being in an ethically non-monogamous relationship, or focusing on loving yourself, modern love has a new look.

A quick scroll on social media, especially near Valentine’s Day, shows content directed at singles, but not in a nice way. Single Shaming. Where people are othered or called out for not being partnered in life, turning being single into a stigma. 74% of the single-shaming conversation volume came from women with 77% of their posts having a negative sentiment.

So while culture was shaming singles and brands were fueling that by only celebrating couples during Valentine’s day, DoorDash cemented its target—singles who needed less shaming, less stigma, and more love. Who better to provide that love, than themself?

Strategy & Idea

The Strategy Bloomed:

Expand Valentine’s Day participants by celebrating singles with flower orders from DoorDash.

When you’re single, the only love you need is your own self-love. A phrase with more than one meaning, the love you have for yourself, and providing sexual pleasure for yourself.

Sexual pleasure is no stranger on social, with sex toys gaining more buzz in recent years. TikTok was filled with videos about one toy in particular that broke the Internet in 2021. The Rose ™,  a sex toy for people with a clitoris that just so happened to be shaped like a rose, is the most purchased Valentine’s Day flower. Content around the toy had millions of views– #rosetoyreviews with 11.4 million, #inyarose with 40.3 million views, and #rosetoy with 226.9 million.

And then, almost a month before Valentine’s Day, Miley Cyrus dropped the self-love, single people championing anthem of 2023, “Flowers”. Miley’s iconic and powerful line “I can buy myself flowers” built the perfect space in culture for DoorDash to champion people buying themselves flowers during Valentine's Day.

The Creative Idea:

Give yourself the gift of self-love with flower bouquets from DoorDash.

Campaign

DoorDash’s multi-channel approach was designed to generate conversations around the Self-Love Bouquet, discounted flowers in-app, and last-minute Valentine’s Day gifts. Success within this would not only garner earned media but drive sales that would at least double the gross merchandise value from 2022.

Building buzz for DoorDash’s flowers

People and the press had to talk about DoorDash selling flowers for Valentine’s Day. KPI: 200MM earned media and 500k social impressions.

To drive sales, DoorDash needed to build buzz and excitement around the Self-Love Bouquet, and they did just that. During the campaign period, DoorDash received 120 pieces of coverage in national and local outlets notifying the country that we have flowers from local florists. 

This coverage reached almost 4x more than the earned media goal with 794.9MM earned media impressions.

And the social reach from it surpassed DoorDash’s goal at 963k impressions, almost 2x DoorDash’s objective.

In Los Angeles, the pickable billboard saw an astounding 50% of the flowers picked on its very first day. Following the refresh of flowers, another 50% were picked, bringing the total number of picked roses to a staggering 10,000. The Miami billboard also had 50% of the flowers picked on the first day. The momentum continued to build as 95% of the flowers had been picked by the day after Valentine's Day, a total of 7,125 picked roses.

Across Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, the 17 social posts executed during the campaign generated 203k organic social impressions, and reached 6.1k total engagements.

Driving sales of flowers through DoorDash’s app.

Drive purchases of flowers on DoorDash, doubling sales from the year prior. KPI: Gross merchandise value of $15M.

DoorDash’s Valentine’s Day campaign exceeded its $15MM gross merchandise value goal, performing 110% to plan. Effectively driving $17MM in gross merchandise value during its running period from February 11 till February 16.

In just 3 days post-launch, the Self-Love Bouquet’s inventory sold out. 

During the campaign’s running period, there were 233k total flower orders placed through DoorDash, 2x the volume from the year prior. Through third-party fulfillment and grocery store flower sales in-app, we had a $10.8MM gross order volume, a 131% increase from the year prior. The third-party local florist gross order volume grew 10X during the week of Valentine’s Day to $6MM GOV, which was 2x more than the year prior and a quarter of our entire sales in 2023. This increased our average order volume by $9 week over week to $89, averaging 33 orders per store per week. 

From 2/10 through 2/14 Walgreens added bouquets to their DoorDash storefront and reached $575k in gross order volume. Flowers purchased through grocery stores reached $3.7MM in gross order volume during Valentine’s Day week, a 12x increase from the week prior, and a 3x increase from the year prior. Kroger alone amassed $1.6MM in gross order volume with an average of 15 orders per store per week.

This combination of channels effectively drove flower purchases and built buzz while sharing love in local neighborhoods with singles, florists, and everyone celebrating love alike.