DoorDash - Self-Love Bouquet (case study)

Background
In 2022, DoorDash celebrated Valentine’s Day by announcing same-day flower delivery from local florists with a campaign mainly focused on awareness. But in 2023, DoorDash was already established as more than just a food delivery service. So we needed a big idea that would go one step further: sell flowers on the scale of both delivery rival Uber Eats and flower delivery giant 1-800-Flowers.

We knew that most other delivery services would cater to traditional couples. Rather than get drowned out in their conversation, we decided to start a conversation of our own by prioritizing other, less often celebrated, kinds of love.

Ultimately, our task was to show consumers that DoorDash could be a go-to destination for same-day flower delivery on Valentine's Day by meeting two important KPI's: 200MM earned media impressions and 500k social impressions.

Idea
Though part of larger cultural conservation, self-love takes a backseat around Valentine’s Day. Since self-love isn’t new, it was important to have a fresh take. We decided to take self-love literally, tapping into the 72% of US adults that believe self-pleasuring is a form of “therapy”, and start a conversation that is weirdly taboo: female self-pleasure (Tenga, 2021).

We grounded the conversation in destigmatizing female self-pleasure using the most iconic Valentine’s gift — a bouquet of red roses. Introducing: The Self Love Bouquet, a bouquet exclusively on DoorDash made of 11 real roses and one Rose™, the best selling female sex-toy of the last five years.

In creating the bouquet, we were able to sell flowers to a new demographic – single people who don’t purchase flowers on this holiday. What could have just been a conversation about destigmatizing self-love actually put it into practice: helping women self-pleasure without shame.

Strategy
More women than ever are spending Valentine’s Day alone (1 in 4, according to SWNS). DoorDash’s target audience for Valentine’s Day was existing consumers between 18-30 years old. With 52% of DoorDash consumers being women, we knew that we’d have to craft a narrative that gave single women permission to enjoy Valentine’s Day to the same extent that people in couples would.

This meant capitalizing on the existing narratives around pleasure, passion, and romance that are always front and center on Valentine’s Day – and tailoring them to single women. Our key message was: Be your own Valentine. Buy yourself flowers.

Through the use of curated mailers, we secured 963,200 social media impressions, with total impressions landing over 749,000,000 thanks to broadcast coverage and coverage in multiple online publications listed below.

Execution
We crafted The Self-Love Bouquet, a 12-rose bouquet, with a twist. It held 11 traditional red roses, and one very special rose, The Rose™. We teamed up with local florists to provide the roses and sold The Self-Love Bouquet in DashMarts in select markets in the four days leading up to Valentine’s Day.

Outcome
963,200 Social Impressions
39,000 Total Mentions
749,000,000 Total Impressions
$17,000,000 Gross Merchandise Volume.
$6,000,000 Local Florists’ Gross Order Volume (2x year prior)
Sold out within 4 days