Did the Doordash "All the Ads" Campaign Deserve a Cannes? EP32

Episode 32 Transcript

So do I do the intro or what? You sure do. Hey, what's up everybody? My name is Chris Kubbernus and welcome back to the Marketing Combat Podcast where we dive into marketing topics every single day for your listening pleasure. And with me, as always, is the incredibly supercalifragilistic, expeolidocious, amazing karate kid of marketing. That's what we call him. Jason Donnelly, tell us what is up today? What are we talking about? What are we fighting about?

Today's Marketing Combat episode is all about the All the Ads commercial by DoorDash. They won the Dan Whedon Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes Lion. And we'll put a link in the comments below. We'll put a little thing right here that you can take a look at of what it is. But we want to know, do we think that it deserves a Cannes Lion, let alone any award? I'm going to tell you why it does. And I usually wouldn't.

say that I think it does. But the biggest thing that I say repeatedly about advertising and in general is that it needs to be more entertainment focused and it needs to be something that people are going to watch for enjoyment, not just because they're being sold to like, buy this product, it's great, give us your money. The reason that this ad is so good is because the entire time it's fun, it's silly, there's humor in it, which is a first in a while, and it's so...

You have to follow, like to win this thing, to win the $500 ,000 worth of stuff, you have to put in a specific code for DoorDash. So A, you have to write it down, this insanely long code that you can see in the video when you see it. But you also have to use DoorDash to input the code. So not only are you watching this video, watching it repeatedly,

watching it and making sure that you transcribe all the stuff over and over and over, then watching it again and then watching it again. You're watching this ad so many times to get this thing so that you can try to win this massive prize. It's again, offering money to people to do stuff for your brand in an authentic way. I'm doing finger quotes pretty hard aggressively in this episode.

But they're doing that. They're saying, here's a bunch of money. Watch this ad repeatedly on repeat over and over across all the social platforms, across YouTube, across the TV. Do you still record stuff on TV? Anyway, they're making people watch it over and over again. They're getting eyes on it. And I don't know if it deserves this massive Dan Wyden Titanium Grand Prix Can Lion Prize, but is it an incredible ad? I think so.

because it's got eyes and it keeps people on it and keeps people watching it. So Chris, I want to know why you think it's not good.

because I probably agree with a few things you'll say. It's tough to argue this one. I honestly, I'm going to take the core argument that it should win a titanium award. I think it's okay as a creative ad. don't think it's that mind -boggling or blowing or that impressive that you should win that kind of level of an award with it. That's a bit suspect to me, to be honest. I don't know the judging criteria or who is judging, but I would say they have a serious bias and probably should be investigated because it is a good ad.

Like I sort of agree with you that it is good to, people will pause it, people will spend a lot of time on this ad trying to win something. Is that good for DoorDash's brand? I don't know. Obviously spending time on something, trying to go through this and get it all done is, and get all the words and get all the letters in. I think that's probably good because the

consumers spending a lot of time with you and your brand in an otherwise very almost commodity style. Like DoorDash is like, there's so many different, there's Uber Eats, there's Just Eat here in Europe and there's Volt here in Europe and or VoltWolt, would say. So there's so many different food delivery apps and services that it really doesn't matter anymore who the hell delivers our food. So I have to say like, it's good from that standpoint. It's not that creative. It's just a very long promo ad and they just said, okay.

we're gonna make it very challenging to get this. It's a little bit like Skittles a couple of years ago that was, I think, a Super Bowl ad where they were, please somebody correct me if I'm wrong, count how many, I think it was Skittles in this ad during the Super Bowl and you could rewatch it and then you could win this huge prize. So the mechanic behind it isn't that interesting. It's been done many, many times for.

It doesn't really say anything about the brand. It doesn't allude to the USPs of the brand. If it's fast, if it's cheap service, if it's cleaner service, if it's more food on the app than any other thing, that could have been a more interesting play, think, that's like, know, DoorDash has so much in it that it's like this promo code. It's just gigantic. And I think that sort of connection would have been a little bit better. So I think that it's a good ad, but I don't think it's a great titanium fricking winning be -all end -all ad.

creativity that's just so impressive that we need to bow down to this piece of ad creative. So that's a bit suspect to me. And I think that it's lazy in some ways where it's like just showcasing a really nice camera movement through a house. It doesn't feel to me that...

you're more visually trying to get attention on the actual promo code. So they don't even, I don't even think they needed the background. They could have just had the code flying through space. But of course then the visuals wouldn't been like, this is about delivery to the home and all that kind of stuff. The other thing too is that I would say that it's missing an element of shareability. think contests like this, like there's no way to get your friends involved. There's no way to get this to go viral necessarily on social.

There's no aspect of it that's like playing into the culture to allow it to bubble up where it becomes a word. Like I often think of the pinnacle of good advertising in my mind is got milk. I always use this because it has become a part of our culture. Like people talk about got milk still to this day, that phrase, you know, when, and, the milk mustache and the things like the visualization and the words have become, they built pop culture with that ad campaign.

That's in my mind, a platinum winning ad when you can change pop culture, you can change words in a society with your advertising, that deserves a titanium award. This is not changing that. This is not putting anything into the culture that's gonna long last. We're not gonna talk about this ad in 20 years. We still talk about got milk. That's a platinum winning award in my opinion. This is not on that level. Where's the beef? All those ads. Beef's another one.

So which way do you? It's tough to make cultural items like that, so I get it. Yeah. So sorry about interrupting. No, no. Yeah, so what's everybody think? Do you agree with me that it is a, it's definitely a great ad? I think we both kind of, I think this one we both kind of agreed that this is a great ad for different reasons. Should it be a Grand Prix can lion winning award because it's not changing the culture, it's not got milk, it's not where's the beef. It's not any of that, it's just something that keeps your eyes on the.

on the prize, literally. Tell us what you think in the comments. Give us some reviews, some comments, some likes, some talks, some reach out, email us, say hello, and we will see you tomorrow. Absolutely see you guys.